How Kenya can aim for medals in archery at global events

We have two training centres and two African titles. Build the structures, and the government and corporate Kenya must pay for them.

On Monday this week, Kenyatta University opened its gates to the Anoca Zone V Youth Games, the first time Kenya has staged the continental youth showcase. 11 countries. More than 300 teenagers. Seven sports disciplines: athletics, swimming, 3x3 basketball, judo, cycling, tennis and beach volleyball.

Count those sports again. Seven. A rehearsal for the Youth Olympic Games, on a Kenyan campus, in a week when a Kenyan holds an African archery title, and not one arrow will be loosed on Thika Road.

The galling part is that Kenyatta already has the only thing archery needs: flat open ground, acres of it. A range could be pegged out there between now and the closing ceremony, and nobody has thought to do it.

Kenya must wake up. This is the cheapest medal opportunity available to us anywhere in world sport, and it is going begging while the government builds stadiums and corporate Kenya queues up behind football. Build the ranges. Fund the coaches.

What the sport actually is

Archery is not the rustic pastime the word suggests. World Archery governs more than 160 national federations and counts roughly half a million registered competitors, a figure up about 37 per cent in a decade. Counting recreational shooters, it reckons 30 million people worldwide draw a bow. The sport has been an Olympic sport without a break since 1972, and it is one of the most technologically advanced in the movement.

Consider South Korea. Hyundai has backed the national association since 1985, with the Chung family holding its presidency for most of those 40 years and reported support running past 50 billion won, around 36 million dollars. The money bought 3D-printed bow grips to fit one archer's hand. A machine that tests every arrow and throws out the ones that fly untrue. A robot that shoots back and never misses. Before Paris Olympics in 2024, Hyundai built a copy of the Les Invalides field at Jincheon so the squad had shot the venue hundreds of times before they landed in France. Korea has won 23 Olympic archery golds.

Hyundai also sponsors World Archery directly, under a deal that runs through 2028 and provides broadcast reach in more than 80 countries. Now set that against Africa, where registered archers are among the smallest anywhere, and no country has ever won an Olympic archery medal. World Archery knows there is a hole in its map, and it is paying to fill it.

Two ranges, 50m people

Kenya's competitive archery infrastructure can be summed up in one sentence. A permanent range at Strathmore University, which also hosts the national federation and runs open sessions and a temporary setup at the Aga Khan Sports Club in Parklands. The team-building outfits on the Naivasha road will put a bow in your hands somewhere between the zipline and the paintball, but nobody has ever come off one of those afternoons and gone on to shoot for Kenya.

On that foundation, we have produced three Olympians and two African champions, shot at Atlanta in 1996, Sydney in 2000, and Rio in 2016. Shehzana Anwar, known in the sport as Kuki, won the African title in Windhoek in 2016, took the Olympic slot that came with it and carried the flag into Rio. Last November in Abidjan, Gloria Kitali posted a barebow qualification score 43 points clear of the field and gave Kenya its first continental title in nine years.

The distance between those results and the system behind them is the whole story. Anwar managed 600 to 700 arrows a week while her rivals shot 2,000 to 2,500, full time, on corporate and government money. She worked part time for three years to afford a competitive bow and paid her own way to the championship she went on to win. Then we arrived at the 2019 African Games unprepared and lost every route to Tokyo.

The numbers favour us, for now

For the Dakar Youth Olympic Games in October, the first Olympic event ever staged on African soil, World Archery allocated 64 quota places and African nations took 14 of them. The qualifying bar is deliberately lower here too: 554 for boys and 545 for girls, compared with 615 and 605 globally. Los Angeles 2028 adds a sixth medal event as compound archery finally arrives at the Games, with qualifying routes running through the continental championships.

Namibia has already worked this out. They sent seven athletes to Oran, Algeria in July, and all seven went home with medals, four of them compound golds, second on the table behind the hosts. Their federation makes no secret of the plan. They want a place in Los Angeles, and they have grasped that medals are what loosen the purse strings at home.

Build the structures

Ranges cost almost nothing. 70m of flat ground, a backstop and a row of target butts is the entire specification: nothing to floodlight, nothing to drain, no turf to keep alive. Ten ranges in five years, across Nairobi, Mombasa, Kisumu, Eldoret, Nakuru, Meru, Machakos, Kakamega, Nyeri and Garissa, would cost less than resurfacing one football pitch.

Then there is the schools calendar, which is where this actually gets fixed. Rugby has a place on it. So does hockey; so does swimming. Archery has never had one, and that gap explains more about why we are stuck at two ranges than any lack of money does. Get it into the term games as a demonstration sport in 2027, make it a full medal sport two years after that, and the talent starts to find itself.

Start people on barebow, which uses no sights, stabilisers, or release aid. It is the cheapest style to equip and the one discipline where Kenya already leads the continent. Let archers move up into recurve and compound when the money allows.

Money for equipment is where most of this falls apart in practice. By the time shipping and duty land on top, a decent recurve setup runs into several hundred thousand shillings, and none of it is made here. Federations should hold a pool of loaner bows at every range, so a 15-year-old can find out she loves the sport before her family has to buy anything. And someone needs to fight for duty relief on kit that registered federations bring in.

We also need coaches, and we have almost none. Kenya has had about three World Archery Level 1 coaches for nearly a decade. Courses run across the continent every year through World Archery Africa and Olympic Solidarity. Kenya should bid to host one annually.

Who pays

Treasury has proposed Sh25.2 billion for the Sports, Arts and Social Development Fund in 2026/27, close to double the previous year, and the Fund exists in part to take Kenya beyond the disciplines we already dominate. Ten ranges, 20 coaches, a loaner bow pool, and two international trips a year would not add up to Sh100m.

Corporate Kenya should look harder too. Hyundai began in 1985, when it was nothing like its present size, and now underwrites a national sporting identity. A bank, an insurer or a telco could put its name on Kenyan archery for less than one football club costs, and own a whole sport rather than rent a corner of a crowded one.

The Games at Kenyatta University close on Friday. That flat ground will still be there on Saturday. With two ranges, three coaches and athletes buying their own arrows, Kenya has produced three Olympians and two continental champions. Picture what 20 ranges would produce.