As the tennis competition at the African Games in Accra reached the semi-final stage last week, Kenya’s Angella Okutoyi entered uncharted territory. On the other side of the world, ranked 532nd, was Egypt’s Mayar Sharif, an elite player ranked 70th. The stakes were very high when it came to a potential Olympic berth for the tournament winner. More than four hours later, incredibly, 20-year-old Okutoyi emerged with a 5-7, 7-5, 7-6 (5) victory and left Ghana with the gold medal.
Making history has become a commonplace occurrence in Okutoyi’s short career. She became the first Kenyan to win a match at the junior grand slam tournament called the Australian Open in 2022 and followed this up by winning the Wimbledon 2022 girls doubles title alongside Dutch Rose Marie Nijkamp. Their hopes and dreams on the professional circuit reflect one of the most pressing questions in elite tennis: Can the sport provide a path for black African tennis players to reach the top?
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Despite tennis being such a global sport, Africa has long been in the blind spot, both in terms of its countries’ presence on tours and participation at grassroots level. Notable exceptions came from South Africa and Tunisia’s Ons Jabeur, one of the great pioneers of his time, reaching No. 2 in the rankings and three grand slam finals. Sharif followed in Jabeur’s footsteps, reaching a career-high ranking of 31st last year.
Historically very few players or events in sub-Saharan Africa have reached the sport’s elite. But over the past year, some countries have made progress to help players step up. Last year, Bujumbura in Burundi hosted a professional women’s event featuring back-to-back ITF World Tennis Tour matches for the first time, with home team favorite Sada Nahimana advancing to the final as the top seed. The tournament will be held for the second time next month.
In December, Nairobi leveled up by hosting two events; Okutoyi captured his first ITF title in a single event. Meanwhile, just this month Rwanda held two ATP Challenger events for the first time.
Rwanda Tennis Federation president Théoneste Karenzi says his aim is to bring professional tennis closer to up-and-coming players in the country and its neighbours. “We are also discussing this with other East African countries to make it a tour within the region when a player comes to Rwanda. It becomes easier and cheaper for players to come to the region. That is our philosophy and that is the way forward.”
While a number of African players have reached the highest level of junior tennis in recent years, a transition to the professional league is a more difficult prospect due to the fact that there are so few tournaments on the continent. “Juniors are not a problem, we can keep quite a lot of them as there is no prize money,” says Wanjiru Mbugua, general secretary of Tennis Kenya and vice-president of the African Tennis Confederation. “But when it comes to professional events, more money is needed to run it, so we have very little money available. Therefore, players who want to get their points have to go out of the country.”
Although there are professional events in North Africa such as Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, Mbugua notes that even these events are difficult to access. “Remember, for those of us who live on this side of Africa, before you get to Tunisia you have to go to Europe, to get back to Africa you have to go to Dubai or you have to go to Qatar. [flight] routes you have. “It’s essentially the same as flying to Europe.”
Karenzi also highlights the perennial difficulty of obtaining visas as another obstacle to success for African players. “Tickets and visas in these countries in Europe sometimes create great difficulties. Some of these young people [players] They receive little sponsorship from the private sector. “They have no means, so it’s about money to travel the world, it’s about visas, which are complicated in some countries in Europe and the US.”
Although players typically compete in front of small crowds on the ITF World Tennis Tour, each of these new tournaments has attracted local crowds. As the Rwanda Challenger ended, the visit of tennis-playing president Paul Kagame attracted even more attention.
The tournament also invited former French Open champion Yannick Noah as an ambassador. In 1971, Arthur Ashe discovered 11-year-old Noah on a trip to Cameroon. Noah moved to France and remains the last Frenchman to win the singles at Roland Garros since his victory in 1983. His presence was a reminder of another missing ingredient: inspiration and examples from those who had succeeded before.
“He did a clinic with some of our young players and told his story,” says Karenzi. “It is very important to talk to a professional tennis player and grand slam winning star like him, to tell them that it is possible and to meet them one on one.”
In an interview with Regis Isheja in Rwanda, Noah compared success in tennis to long-distance running. “I would like to say that for an African tennis player, his journey is like a marathon,” he said. “For the European or American player, the marathon is 26 miles. The marathon for the African child is 49 miles.”
For those with talent and hope of moving to the top of the rankings, the marathon can seem even longer. Following his success in the junior ranks, Okutoyi, rather than jumping headfirst into the pro tour like most of his peers, enrolled at Auburn University, where he competed in the NCAA on a full scholarship.
Some of the elite African players were lucky enough to receive help last year, such as Nahimana, who rose to 12th in the junior rankings and broke into the top 250 on the WTA tour, and Ivorian Eliakim Coulibaly, who rose to 16th in the rankings. The duo, who hit a junior and career-high 378 on the ATP tour last year, were both invited to train at the Mouratoglou Academy in France.
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But in Okutoyi’s case, Tennis Kenya did not have the resources to fund his professional career right after juniors. The university system has given him an ideal foundation from a coaching standpoint and I hope he will have a great foundation when he finishes college and turns pro.
“It was way beyond what we could provide,” says Mbugua. “We did the calculations for him to turn pro and realized it would be about $200,000 a year. Even if we found that money, there were still a lot of things we needed. It would help him with travel and accommodations, but we also needed to find a coach and sparring partner. We needed physiology and it will need all the order.”
But his victory at the African Games changed everything. There is also a problem with his place in the Olympics: In order to take his place in the main draw, Okutoyi must be in the top 400 by June 10, the Olympic end date. Between university competitions, his job and all the financial difficulties that come with competing regularly on tour, he, his team and Tennis Kenya must now find a way to give him the best opportunity to reach Paris.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Mbugua says, laughing. “Because I thought: ‘Now we’ve won, now we have to do the impossible.’”