This article was first published in Rouleur Issue 140
When Xaverine Nirere rolled off the start line as the first rider to open the historic World Championships in Rwanda, her home country, I couldn’t help but wonder what her grandfather would have thought. When she first began cycling, Nirere faced cultural resistance. Girls should not ride bicycles. That belief still lingers in many African communities. But it was her grandfather who stood up for her.
I first learned about their bond after Nirere struggled to contain her emotions when she won the opening stage of the Migration Gravel Race in Kenya this year. When I asked her to explain her tears, she told me her grandfather had passed away a year earlier. She wished he could have seen just how far the bicycle had carried her.
When he defended her right to ride, could he have imagined the stage his granddaughter would one day stand on? Not only was she showing that girls can ride bicycles but also where they can ride them: at the UCI World Championships, the first ever held in Africa.
The bicycle carried her from her hometown to the biggest stage in road cycling – just a stone’s throw away.
Black African cyclists now fully believe that professional cycling can be a way out of the circumstances they were born into. Eric Muhoza, cousin of Adrien Niyonshuti, Rwanda’s first Olympic cyclist, knows this firsthand. He says his cousin raced at the highest level in Europe for years without ever winning a major title.
“Maybe the outside world thought Black riders were only good enough to make up the numbers,” Muhoza reflects. Then came Daniel Teklehaimanot and Merhawi Kudus, who began to chip away at that glass ceiling. In 2015, Teklehaimanot became the first African to wear the climbers’ jersey at the Tour de France. Two years later, Kudus came agonisingly close to becoming the first Black African to win a Grand Tour stage at the Vuelta a España, denied only by Alexey Lutsenko.
Muhoza says the groundwork laid by his cousin and the Eritreans paved the way for a continent long in love with cycling. He comes from a family steeped in the sport. When I ask whether Niyonshuti inspired him to start riding, he corrects me. It was actually Muhoza’s father who first inspired Niyonshuti. His father raced all over Africa in the 80’s, but after surviving the genocide, post-traumatic trauma prevented him from ever racing again.
Muhoza only learned this much later. His father died when he was a year old, and the absence defined his childhood in quiet, unspoken ways. His mother bore the weight of raising the family alone, softening the truth by telling him his father had gone to work in Dubai. For years, he believed it. Only as a teenager did he learn what had really happened.
“I never knew him,” he says, “but people tell me he was very strong on the bike. Sometimes when I win races, neighbours say, ‘You ride like your father – but he was even stronger.’ That pushes me to keep going.”
Riding against the odds
While most African riders in Rwanda were relishing the chance to race the world’s best on home soil, the Championships weren’t euphoric for everyone. Joel Kyaviro, the national champion of the Democratic Republic of Congo and a rider for Team AMA-NI’s Black Mamba Development Team, was forced to miss the event due to the political tensions between Rwanda and the DRC.
Kyaviro lives near the Rwandan border and often trains on its safer roads. When he heard that the World Championships would be held there, he was thrilled. It was a bitter pill to swallow when he learned that his federation would not send a team.
It was one of many setbacks in a life defined by perseverance. “The hardest was the war in my country,” he says quietly. “In 2012 a bomb hit our home. My older brother was killed. I was with him but somehow I wasn’t hurt. I was the only one in the family who wasn’t injured. That memory still haunts me deeply.”
Many say politics and sport should not mix. Yet they are inextricably linked – as the protests at the 2025 Vuelta a España reminded us. How does war affect Kyaviro’s cycling today?
“It makes training very hard,” he explains. “In my town there’s too much traffic and it’s not safe. Sometimes drivers shout or try to scare you. That’s why I often cross into Rwanda to train. Rwanda is safer, it has altitude, and it’s where I can focus with peace of mind.”
After joining the AMANI project, Kyaviro received a state-of-the-art bike. Not long after, a drunk driver hit him while training. Nervous about telling his team, he was relieved when they cared only for his well-being, not the damaged bike.
“When I joined AMANI, my mother told me, ‘This is your opportunity, use it well.’
I always try to push myself and not waste it, because chances like this don’t come twice.”
He now spends much of his time at the AMANI House in Iten, Kenya, where he trains safely with access to equipment and proper nutrition. He’s also started an academy back home. As the country’s only professional cyclist, he sees his role as bigger than himself. “I feel it’s my duty to inspire them,” he says.
It’s a noble sentiment but inspiration alone can only go so far in a system where opportunities remain scarce.
Steps forward, and back
Charles Kagimu of Uganda had just abandoned the men’s elite race, about 60 kilometres from the finish, when I caught up with him for a few words. At that stage, only around 40 riders remained, all recognisable names from the sport’s biggest races. Amanuel Ghebreigzabhier, fresh off the Vuelta a España, was the sole African still in contention.
“It was a really great experience, but also a fascinating one,” Kagimu reflected. “At this level, most riders have so many racing days in their legs, and that makes all the difference. If you come in with only a few race days, there’s no way to replicate that through training. Cycling is about racing, not just training. For me, it felt like the beginning of a long journey. But it’s also sad that at such a big race in Africa, only one African rider was still in the mix at the highest level.”
He described progress in African cycling as inconsistent: “Three steps forward, two steps back.” A few years ago, racing was thriving across the continent. Now there are fewer events, and many riders are leaving the sport altogether. Once they step away, few ever return, a sign that something deeper isn’t working.
“Even after this big race,” he adds, “we don’t know what comes next. That’s the problem – there’s no clear pathway. But it’s not all bad. There’s growing interest, especially from the private sector, and in East Africa, momentum is building. Kenya, for example, is seeing more people getting into cycling, both recreationally and professionally. The recreational side matters, it creates numbers. Enthusiasts bring passion, and passion often leads to funding. Cycling needs funding, and enthusiasm helps fuel it.”
Rwanda’s moment
Rwanda is a country that rose from the ashes. An estimated 800,000 to one million people were killed during the 1994 genocide. Today, the finish line in Kigali runs past the modern Kigali Convention Centre and the Radisson Blu Hotel. With its smooth tarmac and gleaming recognisable hotel chains, you could easily mistake it for any city in the developed world.
Niyonshuti, now living in Italy, jokes that he needs Google Maps to find his way around when he visits. “These World Championships aren’t just about sport,” he says. “They’re a message to the world about who we are now. It’s our chance to show that Africa can host, can organise, and can shine.”
Those words resonate deeply with me. As a person of colour who has worked in professional cycling for 15 years, I’ve often been the outsider in the room, pushing myself to maintain the highest standards because I feel I represent more than just myself. It’s been my mission to prove that Africa belongs in this sport.
Now, here we are, with the cycling world in our playground.
Still, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed by the narrative in the months leading up to these Championships: costs and travel distance cited as excuses by federations reluctant to leave their comfort zones for just one event.
Perhaps Kasia Niewiadoma put it best when she reflected on her own preconceived ideas before travelling to Rwanda. She admitted she’d been apprehensive, but concluded, “I might think we need to help them – but maybe they’re actually helping us, softening our hearts.”
Maybe Nirere’s grandfather knew that all along.
