Kenya will bid to become the first African nation to host the Olympic Games in 2024, Raila Odinga, the country’s prime minister, has said.
In an interview with the Financial Times in London, Mr Odinga said Africa’s time to host the games had come. The sub-Saharan region’s trillion-dollar economy was set to boom during the next decade, he said. For Kenya, east Africa’s leading economy, hosting the Olympics would bring a psychological boost as well as “enormous benefits” in terms of investment in infrastructure.
“Kenya had the confidence as far back as 1968 to consider bidding for the Olympics,” he said. But in 2004, when the idea was raised again, local newspapers scoffed, illustrating the drift Kenya experienced after the heady days of independence in 1963.