African riders to watch at the Rwanda World Championships

The 2025 UCI Road World Championships in Kigali will be a unique event in the history of the sport. Cycling’s first Road World Championships ever to be held in Africa opens up opportunity to a continent where the sport is growing rapidly in parts.

Cycling is a sport with hundreds of narratives playing out at any one moment. The likes of Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) and Demi Vollering (FDJ-SUEZ) will grab the headlines during this World Championships, but there will be so many more stories to tell of African riders competing in the biggest race of their lives.

Here, Cyclingnews highlights eight African riders to look out for during the Kigali Worlds, from favourites and outsiders, to future prospects and those with remarkable stories.

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Kim Le Court-Pienaar (Mauritius)

Coming into these World Championships, Kim Le Court-Pienaar is undoubtedly Africa’s biggest rainbow-band hope. The AG Insurance-Soudal rider has had quite a remarkable year; becoming Africa’s first Monument winner at Liège-Bastogne-Liège in April, before winning a stage at the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift and holding the yellow jersey for four days. Now, her focus is on winning the women’s elite road race in Kigali on a course that will suit her.

Le Court-Pienaar has truly joined the elite echelons of the women’s peloton this season, but her route to the top couldn’t be much more different to many of those she is now competing against. Born in Mauritius, Le Court-Pienaar moved to South Africa as a child. With financial help from her family, she first made the leap to race in Europe as a teenager in 2015, but had to return to South Africa the following year after struggling to make ends meet, despite competing in some of the biggest races in the world.

After years racing mountain bike, the now-28-year-old made it back to Europe for the 2024 season, with AG Insurance-Soudal taking a chance on her. She’s known to be a determined and mentally strong figure. She puts that down to the fight that she has had to get to where she is.

"Coming from so far and coming from a country with very, very little opportunities has put me in a different headspace than I think most girls in that bunch," she told Cyclingnews last year. "I think I want it a lot more."

After the year that she has had, Le Court-Pienaar will start the women’s elite road race among the favourites.

Natnael Tesfatsion (Eritrea)

With Tadej Pogačar and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) firm favourites for the men’s elite road race, it’s difficult to see how any African riders will be able to compete for top honours over the brutal 267km elite road race course.

Movistar’s Natnael Tesfatsion will likely be among the strongest African riders in the men’s race and with Biniam Girmay saying that he will ride in a support role, Tesfatsion could be Eritrea’s leader. Tesfatsion was sixth overall at the Tour de Wallonie in July, finished as runner up at the Cadel Evans Road Race last year, and recently finished third at the Memorial Marco Pantani. He is also a two-time winner of the Tour du Rwanda, so he knows these roads well. He has a reputation as a solid climber with an extremely fast finish, but will need to put in the performance of his life in Kigali to secure a result.

Tesfatsion was given his big break in Europe with the Qhubeka development team in 2019 after the team spotted him racing well in China for an Eritrean club team, Eritel. After two years, the team wanted Tesfatsion to remain with the development squad for another season, but he was keen to push on, securing a move to Androni Giocattoli-Sidermec before moving on to Lidl-Trek and then Movistar.

Charles Kagimu (Uganda)

Ugandan Charles Kagimu will be hoping to put in an impressive ride during the hilly 40.6km men’s elite time trial on the opening day of the championships.

Kagimu is a double African time-trial champion, winning his first title in 2023 on Luke Rowe’s 2022 Ineos Grenadiers TT bike after training with the team in their January training camp that year as part of a development programme that Ineos supported at that time in Kenya.

The 26-year-old, who rides on the road for Team Amani, gained further notoriety by being the final finisher of a tough edition of the Olympic Games road race in Paris, having spent the first 190km in the breakaway and fought off flu just to get to the start-line. "It was really mind-blowing to see such crowds," Kagimu told Cyclingnews after the finish. "They just gave me a lot of motivation to finish the race."

Jazilla Mwamikazi (Rwanda)

Over the past three years, the UCI World Cycling Centre has been scouting and developing young talent across the African continent, giving the cream of the crop the opportunity to race and be part of training camps in Brittany as part of an initiative they have called ‘Africa 2025’. Dozens of riders have moved through this project, which aimed to enable African riders to be competitive at the Kigali Worlds.

Rwandan Jazilla Mwamikazi has been among the riders who have made the greatest strides forward during this time. According to World Cycling Centre coaches, the 20-year-old showed ability when she started with the programme, but was technically and tactically lacking.

This year, Mwamikazi has become unrecognisable from the rider who first joined the project. She has been a dominant force in local races in Brittany, winning almost every local race she competed in this summer. "Where she started from and where she's at now, I think she's not even close to her full potential yet," says World Cycling Centre Performance Director Clint Hendricks.

Mwamikazi then went on to race the Tour de l’Avenir Femmes where she finished a solid 47th overall and became Rwandan national champion this year. Also a competent mountain biker, Mwamikazi will target the first edition of the standalone women’s under-23 road race in Kigali.

Tsige Kahsay Kiros (Ethiopia)

Tsige Kahsay Kiros was the youngest rider to compete in the 2025 edition of the Tour de l’Avenir Femmes. Riding her first UCI race in Europe and still technically a junior, having just turned 18 in April, Kahsay was able to mix it with riders way beyond her level of experience throughout the seven stages. She eventually finished 22nd on GC, unremarkable at first glance, but in reality it was a stunning result for the young Ethiopian.

Kahsay will now go into the junior women’s races at the World Championships as something of a dark horse on a course that suits her perfectly and on roads that will be much more familiar to her.

At home in Ethiopia, Kahsay has been a dominant force in both junior and elite racing over the last couple of years. She has been guided in part by former WorldTour rider Tsgabu Grmay, who told Global Peloton during the Tour de l’Avenir Femmes that "she's always giving us a surprise. Excited for what she can do in the future. But definitely she has motivation and she wants to be a WorldTour rider and she's really a fighter."

Joshua Johnson (South Africa)

After starting to race at the age of 9, Joshua Johnson has emerged as one of the most promising riders to come out of South Africa in recent years. The rider from Durban was inspired to ride by his mountain biking father. Johnson followed a similar course in his early years before turning to the road, winning national titles through the age groups, becoming junior time trial champion this season in his first year at that level.

Johnson joined Team GRENKE-Auto Eder for this season, the junior feeder team of Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, and has raced a healthy European calendar. He was 16th at the junior E3 Saxo Classic in March and has followed that up with a series of solid results.

Johnson will race the 22.6km junior men’s time trial at the World Championships and in a three-man South African team in the road race.

Yoel Habteab (Eritrea)

In 2022, Yoel Habteab became just the second Eritrean to win the African Continental junior men’s road race title, following in the footsteps of Biniam Girmay, who was the first to win it four years earlier. Habteab followed that up the same year with a solid 28th place at the World Championships in Wollongong, his first UCI race outside of Africa.

Habteab is a rider who can climb and sprint well, important traits which can be found in many young riders from Eritrea. Few get the opportunity to develop those skills in Europe, but Habteab is one of the exceptions, signing for the German Bike Aid team at the start of the 2024 season. In the last two seasons, Habteab has raced across Europe, Asia and Africa, picking up top-10s in races such as the Tour de l’Ain and several King of the Mountains competitions.

The parcours in Kigali suits Habteab to the ground and he is likely to lead the Eritrean squad in the men’s under-23 road race. With several European nations opting not to take their under-23 squads due to cost and logistical challenges, the opportunity is open for a rider like Habteab to steal a big result.

Florence Nakagwa (Uganda)

Florence Nakagwa was the first female cyclist to join the Masaka Cycling Club in Uganda. She has spoken about how the culture in the East African country holds women back from sports, but she was inspired by her father and brothers to pursue a career in cycling.

Now, she races in Europe with development team Canyon-SRAM-zondacrypto Generation, a team that exists to give opportunities to riders from non-traditional cycling backgrounds. Since Nakagwa joined the Masaka club, they have seen a wave of interest from young women wanting to join, and several club members will be racing in Kigali in their national colours.

It took almost a year for Nakagwa to secure her visa to travel to Europe, but she eventually made it at the start of this year. The 21-year-old has struggled to adjust to European racing this season, but will be motivated to do well in the under-23 road race in a World Championships that is less than 400km away from her home town.

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