Nigeria to send men’s, women’s and U13 teams to Nairobi championship

Nigeria will send men’s, women’s and U13 national teams to the 2026 NFL Flag Africa Continental Championship in Nairobi, putting three age and gender groups into the same continental tournament for the first time in a sign of how fast the country is building its flag football structure.

The July 9-11 event in Kenya will be the third NFL Flag continental championship in Africa, after editions in Nigeria in 2024 and Egypt in 2025. The International Federation of American Football said the competition will bring together five men’s teams, five women’s teams and five U13 co-ed teams from Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa, with each youth squad made up of 10 players.

That broader footprint matters for Nigeria because this is not just a senior-team trip. Sending an U13 side alongside the men and women gives the Nigerian Federation of American Football a chance to connect talent identification, youth development and elite national-team play in the same event. IFAF said officials will oversee the Nairobi competition, and the championship will also include a talent identification workout, giving players a path toward wider international opportunities.

Nigeria arrives with recent proof that its top teams can win on the continent. In Cairo last year, Nigeria captured both the men’s and women’s Africa flag titles, and those victories made the country the first African qualifier for the 2026 IFAF Flag Football World Championships. In the women’s final, Nigeria beat Morocco 26-12, with quarterback Anuoluwapo Bello throwing four touchdowns and saying, “This is a great achievement for us and I’m proud of every woman out here.”

The federation’s youth reach has also widened quickly. IFAF said flag football participation in Nigeria has risen 85 percent since 2023, while the federation’s outreach program has already engaged more than 13,000 young people. That growth has come as the NFL expanded its Africa program to Nigeria in 2024, after earlier work in Ghana, Kenya and South Africa.

The Nairobi championship now sits inside a larger runway that leads toward the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, where flag football will make its debut. For Nigeria, the three-team delegation is a clear bet on continuity: win at the top level, identify the next wave underneath, and make sure the country is not just joining Africa’s flag football rise but helping set its pace.