Why has no African city ever hosted the Olympics? Cairo and (post-apartheid) Cape Town seem like natural choices. Now that winter and summer olympics are in different years, the schedule could be changed so that an Olympics near the equator (like Cairo) could be held during a cooler time of the year and holding them in Cape Town would be similar to Melbourne or Sydney.
I should have thought the reason is pretty obvious. Staging the Olympics costs big bucks. Most African cities (in fact, most cities globally) just couldn’t afford to stage them.
While it’s true that many other candidate cities like Nairobi or Lagos may not, Cairo and Cape Town who have entire economies based on tourism could afford the Olympics.
Speaking as a Sydneysider, may I say that - at best - the jury is still out on that one.
Cape Town was one of the top contenders for the 2004 games but lost out to Athens in the end. South Africa is hosting the World Cup in 2010, which I think will be the first time for African country. If that goes well, Cape Town will likely be one of the favoites to host the 2020 Olympic games.
South Africa may be the only country with a big enough budget for something like that. The question is… is it really worth their while?
The Barcelona Olympics and the other 500-years celebrations were a huge drain on Spanish economy; they were also an enormous and confused publicity coup (confused by Catalan politics and by “imperialism is bad but lots of Latin people happily view us as the Motherland”). A lot of the money spent went to workers and companies from other countries (I’ve spoken with bricklayers from Australia who were building the Olympic Village - what, Spain had over 30% unemployment and the builders couldn’t find local bricklayers?).
It’s not just Africa, of course, it’s the entire developing world. There have been no Olympics in South or Central America, the Caribbean, or most of Asia either.
Almost all Olympics to date have been held in Europe, North America (US/Canada), Australia, and Japan. The only exceptions have been Mexico in 1968 and South Korea in 1988. Of course, by 1988 South Korea was essentially among the developed countries; and Mexico is one of the most populous and economically well-off countries in Latin America. Other large Latin American countries like Brazil or Argentina have not hosted the Olympics. China’s hosting of the upcoming Olympics indicates its incipient developed-country status.
Hosting an Olympics is enormously expensive. Not only that, a candidate city has to convince the Olympic committee they have the resources and expertise to carry it off, and has to compete with many other cities as well. It’s difficult enough for a city in the First World to host an Olympics; the odds are even greater in the developing world.
Cairo submitted a bid for the 2008 Olympics, but didn’t make the short list. Of all the short-list bids listed on this site, very few are from outside Europe, North America, Australia, South Korea, or Japan:[ul]
[li]Beijing bid (and won) for 2008. Istanbul also bid; I suppose that it’s technically in Europe, but whether or not Turkey is a “European” country depends on what one means by “European”.[/li][li]Cape Town and Buenos Aires were short-listed for 2004. Buenos Aires was eliminated in the first round of voting; Cape Town was eliminated in the second-to-last.[/li][li]Beijing and Istanbul both bid for 2000. Beijing barely lost to Sydney in the last round; Istanbul was eliminated in the first round.[/li][li]Mexico City, as noted above, hosted the 1968 Olympics.[/li][li]Karachi (!) was short-listed for the 1960 Winter Olympics.[/li][/ul]
Just looking at what the 2010 World Cup is costing us, I’m sooooo glad we lost the 2004 bid (which I was never in favour of, anyway) - we have enough problems as a country and a continent without wasting much-needed money. Bread before circuses, is my stand.
ETA: “The Mother City” is Cape Town, FYI.
If you you have ever been to Cairo you likely know why those who decide upon host cities might be reluctant to give the games to Cairo.
Cairo is a madhouse and the logistics would be nightmarish. Sure, they have McDonald’s and traffic lights, but it’s also the kind of place where you might have re-bar sticking out of the wall in your hotel room. The hotel clerk fumigates your room with a chemical that was banned in the West 25 years ago (say). Many taxis have meters that run mechanically. Soldiers guard the lobby in the nicer hotels. You might see a two-foot high stack of goat innards on the sidewalk. And so on…
It would be a gong show.
Mexico City is not really an exception, as it’s in North America, although they don’t like to admit it.
In amongst all your other examples, I’m puzzled that you see this one as a particular sign of backwardness.
Anyway, one big reason that Cape Town wasn’t in the running for a long time, of course, was that South Africa was boycotted by many countries during the apartheid era. Remember the outcry over the “rebel cricket tour”, for instance?
A box full of gears, wheels and springs, with numbers painted on turning wheels, with nary a transistor in sight doesn’t strike you as dated?
“They” being who? Mexicans love to point it out.
Wikipedia has entries listing the selection process for host cities, including some seemingly unlikely places. There’s mention of bids from Nairobi (Kenya), Cape Town and Durban (South Africa) for 2016 that didn’t get very far. Cape Town lost out in 2004, but was encouraged by Jacques Rogge to keep trying and is listed as a likely bidder for 2020.
Lots of other interesting sites, if you poke around a bit. Almaty, Kazakhstan in 2018, anyone?
You know a Mexican who prefers to be referred to as a norteamericano? 
The Mexicans I knew were not very happy to be tagged Norteamericano and would insist this was a pejorative.
The division between continents is purely arbitrary.
In other words, Londoners are Asians but don’t like to admit it.
So true. Besides the normal logistics, imagine trying the get reasonable security for, say, the American, British and Israeli athletes. This is a city where not too long ago a bus load of tourists were machine gunned to death outside of one of the pyramid sites.
But that strictly refers to estadosunidenses, not Canadians, who are equally North American (they’re still gringos, though).
I don’t know a single Mexican who would deny Mexico’s being part of “América del Norte” or “Norteamérica.”