Sport as therapy or as the thing that keeps you off the streets, out of trouble and - sometimes - alive. This episode of Afrimaxx follows athletes who are playing for stakes far higher than a trophy.
The Iron Fist
In Nairobi, a two-time WBC world champion has turned her gym into something more urgent. Fatuma Zarika grew up in the ghetto. She knows what women in her city are up against. More than 500 were killed in femicide in Nairobi alone between 2016 and 2024. What she decided to do about it, is what this story is really about.
Two wheels in Lagos
BMX is still finding its feet in Nigeria. Damilare Olawuyi is one of the people pushing it forward: through traffic, skepticism and the occasional shakedown on the street. Now he trains at an Olympic-standard park. And he has already pulled at least one person away from a very different path.
Balls with a second life
In Cape Town, a paddle player looked at the mountain of used balls piling up in her garage and asked a simple question: now what? Lesley Waterkeyn's answer involves furniture, student designers, and eventually AstroTurf pitches for schools that currently play on sand and clay. Forty million balls are discarded globally every year. She is starting with South Africa.
Habesha kemis and skateboards
In Addis Ababa, a group of young women are skating through the city in traditional dress and turning heads. Sosina Challa founded the Ethiopian Girl Skaters in 2019, when she was practically the only woman on a board in the country. Getting girls to show up was harder than any trick. Getting their families on board, harder still.
The Queen of Smoke
Johannesburg, a pink-wrapped car and Stacey-Lee May, who learned to spin before she learned to drive legally. She has been winning titles ever since. Car spinning was popularized by South African gangsters in the 1990s. It is still overwhelmingly male. Stacey-Lee competes in the same category as the men, because there are not enough women yet for a category of their own. She is working on that too.