Have you ever wondered why there are so few Black African surfers in the Olympics despite Africa's incredible Atlantic waves? In another blogpost, I wrote about the history of surfing and its influence on today's surf culture in Atlantic Africa. Here I will suggest three things that need to happen to make sure we will see Black Atlantic African surfers participating in the next Olympics.
First, as another article on Senagalese pro-surfer Cheriff Fall says, important bodies like the International Surfing Association need to advocate for more competitions in all regions of the world, including Atlantic Africa. Currently, major competitions are happening for example in the U.S. or in Central America, such as El Salvador and Costa Rica. The Senagalese government has paid to send surfers to Olympic qualifiers in the U.S., where they reacher the quarterfinals, and El Salvador, where they didn't make it past the first round. Yet, I think it shouldn't be the sole responsibility of a country itself to send its athletes across the world to Olympic qualifiers. Instead, the global athletic community should stand for Olympic qualifiers happening everywhere in the world. That way Sub-Saharan African athletes get the opportunity to compete, improve and mostly, get funding.
Which brings us to the second important change to get Black Atlantic surfers into the next Olympics. There needs to be dedicated a significant amount of funding to coaching, sponsoring, and competitions for Black Atlantic Africans. In the same article as earlier, Senegalese pro-surfer Cheriff Fall tells that it took him 14 years and the help of his wife who is a photographer to get noticed by the global surf brand Billabong.
International important surf platforms, such as Stab Magazine who has recently posted about the film Wade in the Water on, and big surfbrands should broaden their attention and focus on surfing across the world. Personally, I think they should set up special programs to sponsor Black Atlantic surfers from the African continent, and a separate program for Black surfers elsewhere in the world. Because as David Mesfin shows in his film Wade in the Water, the absence of and historical racism against Black surfers has also been present in the U.S.
The film is part of the final necessary change, namely that of awareness and then attention. Starting a wave starts small and can end big when travelling far. In the same way, change can start with individuals. As individuals and creators we have to educate ourselves about colonial history and how it still impacts today, and then talk about. Write about. Bring it up in conversations. Make a video about. In any case, share the knowledge! The more people are flabbergasted, the more people will share these facts again. At some point this knowledge will reach people with power to change policies, or large organisations will pick up on the popularity of the topic.
But sharing knowledge is not the only thing you can do as an individual. Travellers and surfers have an additional role they can play. There needs to be more global attention to Atlantic Africa when it comes to surfing. And what better way to give a region attention than through tourism. Now, I do not quickly advocate for increasing tourism as overtourism is a severe problem in many places and is damaging cultures and our earth. However, in the case of surftourism it would be good to spread that out beyond currently popular regions such as Biarritz in France, North Shore, Oʿahu in Hawaiʿi, Uluwatu and Kuta on Bali in Indonesia, Byron Bay in Australia, and Jeffrey's Bay in South Africa. How strange is it that we as surfers barely talk about surfspots on the African continent beyond South Africa and Morocco, and maybe Mozambique...
With only some information on Surfline, the best way we can find such surf destinations to travel to, is via conversation and community. I would love to start compiling an overview on this blog of good surf destinations on the Atlantic African coast that have some tourism infrastructure and are ready to expand - because that is important when sharing unknown destinations with a wider network. Otherwise the risk of overtourism damages such regions.
Surf tourism can bring more attention to Atlantic African regions as true surf locations, to attract large competitions, but it can also bring more money to the local economy. With that it bridges the first two points that I made in this post: getting more global Olympic qualification competitions to Atlantic Africa and getting more funding to the surfers there. Tourism can help fund the local surfing scenes, training and coaching of surfers, and equipments. With that Black Atlantic African surfers will hopefully have a fairer chance to participate in the Olympics of 2028!
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