Watch the moment Team Amani — the first UCI Women’s Continental Team from Africa — was launched with Xaverine Nirere, Xylon Van Eyck and Ashleigh Moolman Pasio on stage at Rouleur Live 2025
“My dream is to be at the highest level, and to race the big races in Europe – the Giro d’Italia, the Tour de France. These are things we wished for before, and now it’s coming true. It’s the best opportunity I’ve had in my life and I am so happy, so excited.”
Xaverine Nirere – or Xav for short – is sitting opposite me. The Rwandan woman is in London for the first time – “it’s very big,” the 23-year-old laughs – as her team, Amani, have a big announcement to make at Rouleur Live: from next season, they’ll be the first-ever UCI Continental women’s team from Africa. And Nirere is one of their superstars. This is a big moment – both for her, and for the sport. Just months after the first-ever African World Championships in Rwanda (Nirere rode the road race, time trial and mixed relay team time trial), the continent of Africa, which comprises 54 countries, will finally be represented on a more regular basis in the women’s peloton by a greater number of riders. Nirere hopes to prove what she and others have been saying for years: it’s not that Africans don’t have the talent for cycling, it’s more that its people have barely had attainable access to the top of the sport. Amani is seeking to change this – and attitudes across Africa, as well as Europe.
“I feel happy on the bike”
That Nirere took up cycling was not too much of a shock. One of eight siblings, her eldest brother, Valens Ndayisenga, won the Tour du Rwanda twice, and raced for Dimension Data for Qhubeka’s development team in 2016. “My brother was a good rider and he’s why I started cycling,” Nirere says. “He loved cycling and taught me you can do it for work, not just for fun. Even now, I can’t go to bed without phoning him or sending him a message. Before a big event we call for one hour to discuss the race, and to make a good plan. He is the one pushing me to achieve my dreams.”
Nirere was 13 when she raced for the first time. “That day I was dreaming,” she remembers. “But we talked about it with my family and they said I should continue to study and not continue on the bike. They thought I was still young. But I continued to train, didn’t give up, and continued to push. Now I focus on cycling, and I think it was a good decision that I made.” Cycling gives her so much. “I feel happy on the bike,” she smiles. “It’s fun, it makes me meet different people, allows me to travel, and to go to different countries. It gives me opportunities to show people who don't know me who I am and to try to achieve my dreams.”
In 2021, Nirere was invited to Kenya to do a test for the Amani team which had launched three years earlier with a focus on developing East African talents, male and female. In 2023, they called her to say she was selected for the expanding team, along with other riders from Rwanda, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya and Uganda. Their men’s and women’s teams have become regulars across Africa’s cycling scene. “It was amazing – a dream come true, a team who wanted to support me to achieve my dreams,” Nirere remembers. “Now Amani is like my family. The riders are like my sisters.”
Nirere has mostly competed in gravel racing, but she’s had some success in road racing – none more so than a GC victory by almost 10 minutes at the Windhoek Tour in Namibia August. “The first thing I told myself was: ‘you can do this, you deserve this. You have the power’,” she recalls. “I knew that sometimes I could have given up, but for me I know no pain, no gain. That’s what I think every day. If I put my mind where I want to be, I have to try to face that and keep going.”
“The drop out rate is just too big”
Next year, Nirere and her teammates will be split between continents. Amani will have a base just outside of the Spanish city of Girona, from where they’ll race road and gravel across Europe, and they’ll also continue to have a home at an elevation of 2,400m in Item, Kenya – a town famous for being the home of many long-distance runners. Ethiopian Tsgabu Grmay, who rode three editions of the Tour de France, will oversee operations as head coach. The decision to have two headquarters is borne out of the lessons from the past: picking up a dozen or so athletes and plonking them in a different continent, with a different culture and a different way of living, has rarely been a recipe for across-the-board success; it’s hard to immediately thrive in new environments, so Amani, backed by a growing number of international sponsors, will pick and choose when they’re in Europe.
“That’s the great thing about Amani – they’re not just putting riders out there and saying, ‘go swim in this very deep sea’,” says Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio, one of Africa’s first trailblazers who is still competing for AG Insurance-Soudal but who will also act as a mentor to Amani’s riders. “It’s a very important factor because so many African riders have talent and maybe get signed by an international team, but those teams overlook the facts about red tape, visas, and helping them adapt to a new culture. So the drop out rate is just too big.”
Moolman-Pasio, 39, will be a crucial on-hand aid to Team Amani’s athletes. “I’m still a pro rider for AG Insurance, and that’s my first priority, but it’s going to be great to be in the peloton with these riders and pass on some advice and knowledge to them,” she says. “The Girona base is close to my home, and I want to help the girls with first hand experience, to answer their doubts, and to help the team find a way to select their race schedule and to give them insight into which races I think will be good for them.”
“It takes pioneers like Xaverine to show what’s possible”
For all the positivity of Amani’s ascendancy, there is also a sharp reality to confront. “A big cultural shift still needs to happen in Africa, especially in ethnic groups, to accept the idea that women should be able to go out there, have a proper job, ride a bike, and chase their own careers. At the moment that’s not generally accepted,” Moolman-Pasio says. “Africa tends to have the culture of if a child goes out into the world, they will give back to their family and their community. Making a life out of cycling is difficult because the results are not immediate. You have to have a bit of trust in the process, and they’re not earning the biggest salaries to begin with. These mentalities, these thought processes, have to change, and it will take time, but the more African riders go out there and be successful and earn a salary, the faster change will be. It takes pioneers like Xaverine and Tsgabu to show what’s possible. It’s why it’s so important that Amani is treated like a proper professional team, not a charity, and that its riders are paid. That, and talent and performing, will allow for a culture shift in Africa to take place.”
The other aspect, of course, is how the rest of the world views Africa. Cycling’s big bosses are forever talking about going worldwide but offer few tangible initiatives to bring about meaningful change. Amani can be the catalyst for substantial transformation. “Cycling needs to globalise,” Moolman-Pasio insists. “For too long now it’s been that you need to adapt to cycling's Euro-centric approach and culture to be a pro, but that needs to change. It’s not the only way. We need to create these kinds of set-ups like Amani which accommodate other cultures.”
Rwanda 2025, Moolman-Pasio hopes and believes, will have broadened horizons. “I definitely think the World Championships opened people’s minds,” Moolman-Pasio says. “The junior girl [Tsige Kahsay Kiros] from Ethiopia in the junior road race who was seventh; riders like Xav who put their hearts on the line, without having had access for very long to the best equipment and resources to develop their talents. I was really relieved to see that Rwanda seemed to catch people’s attention and hopefully it sparks a momentum and helps projects like Amani go from strength to strength.”
The successes of Moolman-Pasio, Biniam Girmay and more latterly Kim Le Court have laid the foundations for Africa’s rise to the cycling elite. Amani is now giving more riders the chances they deserve – with the prospect of racing the Giro, the Tour, Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders all possibilities in the forthcoming years. It’s riders such as Nirere who stand to benefit. “I think many people now see that Africa has potential,” she says. “We have shown that if we have the opportunity, if many people support us, we can do anything. The door is open for Aftrica, and it’s time for us to show what Africa can do.”
