ITF World Spring 2022 33
African tennis is looking up. With
a woman from one end of this
vast continent in the world's
top 10 (Ons Jabeur), and a man
from the other end knocking on
the door of the top 30 (Lloyd
Harris), it is no longer a shock to
see African players at the highest
levels of the game. The lion may
not yet be roaring, but tennis's
forgotten continent is at least
scratching the earth with its paw.
"It's proven that people from Africa
can make it," says Amine Ben
Makhlouf, the ITF's Development
Officer for West and North Africa.
"It's even proven for West Africa
– Serena and Venus Williams's
forebears are from Ghana, Felix
Auger-Aliassime's father is from
Togo, while Frances Tiafoe's
parents are from Sierra Leone."
The day may not be far away when
West Africa generates its first home-
grown champion, especially with
the expansion of coaching facilities
in several countries, notably Togo
and Senegal. Yet the development of
tennis in Africa as a whole remains
a slow process, simply because of
how much further behind Europe,
the Americas and Australasia most
African countries are in their tennis
culture and infrastructure. Against
that background the achievements
of recent years are immense.
Africa was where tennis's conscious
efforts to promote the sport's
development began in the 1970s.
After being elected the first
professional President of the ITF,
Philippe Chatrier sent the tennis
coach and film-maker Gil de
Kermadec on a fact-finding tour of
20 African countries. De Kermadec
later recalled: "My mission was to
see what was holding Africa back.
My report concluded there was no
reason why an African shouldn't
be a top player, but there were
no coaches, few facilities, and
above all no competitions."
The first result of De Kermadec's
report was the setting up of the
African junior championships, which
were held for the first time in Lomé
(Togo) in 1977, and continue to
this day. The championships' roll
of honour includes several names
who have gone on to significant
achievements on the world stage,
like Yahiya Doumbia of Senegal,
Byron Black from Zimbabwe,
and the Moroccan Karim Alami.
Many of those players received
assistance through what is now
known as the Grand Slam Player
Development Programme. One of
them was Younes el Aynaoui, who
recalls, "For a Moroccan player like
me, it was a tremendous help. When
you're 17 and someone offers to
pay your costs, it had a very strong
impact on the rest of my tennis
career. My parents had nothing to
support me with. Today, there are
some parents who spoil their kids
like there's no tomorrow, they don't
have to take one dollar out of their
own pocket, but my parents didn't
have a dollar, so it made a massive
difference to me. I was so proud
to wear the ITF jersey. It was clear
they had put confidence in me,
and I didn't want to disappoint
my parents or the ITF."
By 1992, Africa had its own ITF junior
tennis centre, then located in South
Africa, and catering for up to a dozen
of the continent's most promising
players. It was basically to give them
a fair chance. In the 2000s, a second
centre opened in Ivory Coast, but it
had to close due to civil insurrection.
In 2009, it reopened in Senegal
where there was a crop of promising
African juniors, but when that group
dried up, the centre was moved
to Morocco where it focused as
much on educating coaches as
on high-performance youngsters.
That centre closed last September,
with a new location due to be
announced shortly.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle to the
growth of tennis in Africa was shown
up when Yannick Noah became the
closest Africa has had to a Grand
Slam singles champion. The son of
a Cameroon footballer who was
playing in France when Yannick was
born, Noah won the French Open
under the French flag in 1983 amid
ecstatic scenes in Paris. Though he
was feted as a hero in Cameroon,
there were too few people playing
tennis there for his victory to offer
DEVELOPMENT
