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You realize how much money the IOC expects a host city to "invest" for a summer games? Unless you get an already built infrastructure like London has its at least $3-4B. Such quality infrastructure shortage would be enormous, you would have to see probably triple that when you include private investment for things like hotel rooms and other tourist services. Investments which would not be made because who will build a 5 star hotel for 3 weeks of use? What would the countries do with expensive athlete villages? How would say a Nairobi or a Cairo use a 90,000 seat stadium once the games passed? Sydney and Athens are loaded with wasted facilities and even Beijing has let many of its eye-catching facilities pretty much go to waste.
And we haven't even discussed the issues of TV value and what kind of ticket sales you could see. The World Cup barely worked in South Africa, much of it due to smaller stadiums hosting a lot of matches. Spread it out to more events and just one general city as the host and it would be a tough situation for a South Africa city to make it work.
Willy702, you have good points but we can dream right? There are plenty of 5 star hotels in the continent, So Africa especially BTW. Not sure what most places do with their Olympic Villages once the event is over? A problem for most I think. Not sure why the stadiums aren't re-used for the same event every 4 years instead of it being moved around every couple of years.
In Vancouver, we sold the Olympic Village to people as condos to live in, as we had planned to do from the start.
As for the stadiums themselves, we use them for hosting all kinds of sporting events and concerts, as one would expect to use a stadium.
Africa will not host an Olympic games any time soon, there's just too much competition from regions with more developed cities that have the infrastructure to do it, but I wouldn't say "never". Look at how well South Africa pulled off the world cup! It was a good first step, hopefully Africa will be able to host other games and develop economically to a point where it will be able to host a games eventually. Who would have thought such undeveloped nations as South Korea and China would one day host the Olympics in 1950? Things change.
Cairo doesn't have the infrastructure? What about Lagos? I thought they both had sufficient facilities or could build them like other cities. It does seem like it would be a burden on the cities after the games were over.
Neither of those cities has the infrastructure now and, with the political/social problems in both countries right now, it seems doubtful to me that they would even be considered. Turkey will probably be the first Muslim country to host the Olympics and then possibly Malaysia down the road. As for Africa, only South Africa stands a chance right now but, as the previous poster said, things change.
Africa is a continent with hundreds of languages and scores of countries, it's kinda like "should europe host the olympics?". The Olympics are hosted by a country, not a continent.
Cairo doesn't have the infrastructure? What about Lagos? I thought they both had sufficient facilities or could build them like other cities. It does seem like it would be a burden on the cities after the games were over.
Those two cities do not even have a fraction of the infrastructure needed. They do not have the current infrastructure to support things they have now, let alone a major event like the Olympics.
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