Alibaba Powers First Youth Olympic Games in Africa with Cloud, AI for Dakar 2026

Alibaba Group will power the first-ever Olympic event on African soil with its cloud and artificial intelligence technology, as the Summer Youth Olympic Games Dakar 2026 opens in Senegal.

The Chinese tech giant, a Worldwide Olympic Partner of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), announced on November 2, 2026, that it will deploy dedicated cloud infrastructure and AI capabilities to run operations for the Dakar 2026 Games.

The Games, holding from October 31 to November 13, 2026 across Dakar, Diamniadio and Saly, will bring together 2,700 athletes aged 17 and under to compete in 35 sports.

IOC President, Kirsty Coventry, said the partnership will help deliver the historic milestone.

“Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games are the first Olympic event taking place on African soil. I’m delighted that our Worldwide Olympic Partner, Alibaba, is helping bring this historic moment to life. Through its cloud and AI technology, Alibaba is helping the Games run more smoothly and bringing fans around the world closer to the action,” Coventry said.

According to the organisers, the Dakar 2026 Organising Committee (YOGOC) will deploy a private cloud built on Alibaba Cloud’s Apsara Stack as the Games’ digital backbone.

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The platform will host critical operations including ticketing and e-visa processing, handling over one million tickets across seven venues and the official Festival Site.

President of the Dakar 2026 Organising Committee, Mamadou Diagna Ndiaye, said technology would help make the Games “ambitious, welcoming and unmistakably Senegalese.

“Crucially, after the Games, the private cloud infrastructure will be handed over to the Senegalese government to serve as a national cloud platform, supporting the country’s long-term digital transformation.

“Upon completion of the Games, the private cloud infrastructure will be handed over to Senegal to serve as a national cloud platform, supporting the country’s long-term digital transformation and leaving a lasting technological legacy,” Alibaba said.

Post-Games, Senegalese businesses and developers will have access to Alibaba’s full-stack AI capabilities, including its Qwen open-weight models, which support over 200 languages including Wolof and Kongo.

At the Opening Ceremony, organisers unveiled an AI-powered drum performance created using Alibaba’s WAN video generation model, featuring 100 participants from the Dakar 2026 Learning Academy.

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Throughout the Games, visitors at the official Festival Site can generate short videos of themselves playing the Senegalese Sabar Drum using AI kiosks, while an Alibaba-powered AI agent answers questions about the Games.

Toby Xu, Chief Financial Officer of Alibaba Group, said: “Sport is now a truly digital experience. Cloud and AI capabilities are helping the industry respond by making services easier to scale and adapt.”

Beyond technology, Alibaba Philanthropy has expanded its Panda Pack Project to Senegal, providing sports equipment to 350,000 children across 850 schools under the Jeunesse en Jeux programme.

Its Alibaba Cloud Tech Academy is also providing free cloud computing training for Senegalese youth under 35, with over 10,000 registrations already recorded.

Alibaba’s role at Dakar 2026 builds on its previous support for Tokyo 2020, Beijing 2022, Paris 2024 and Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics.

For Nigeria, which is bidding to host future Youth Games, the Senegal model — where private cloud built for Games becomes national infrastructure — offers a template for digital legacy beyond stadiums.

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