Skateboarding in Africa

[Tracer]

Biggest continent on the planet, poorest continent on the planet. SKating has never broke through the struggles of Africa, even South Africa where some people have money. I'm not going to say skating can save Africa but it sure would help, I realize most of them don't have clean water.

Never seen a tour video outta Joburg or Egypt, surely their cities are skateable but noone takes the chance, why?

[Wizard Fight]

ASIA BRO

[Theme For A Jackal]

It doesn't get a ton of coverage but there's actually a fair amount of skating that goes on there. My friend runs a skatepark in Kimberly that used to be a Maloof park before they backed out and is now run by the Kimberly government. They do the Kimberly World Cup contest there and they get a ton of big name pros out there. He's always showing me pics of dudes like Grant Taylor, Raven Tershy, Bryan Herman and a bunch of others that I can't think right now out there skating the park, sometimes in a contest and sometimes just for a tour visit. There's also a few companies out there like Funisu Skateboards which is out of Johannesburg. There's an African skate mag too that I can't recall the name of. I don't know why you never really see coverage of any of this stuff, I guess because there isn't really tons of spots out there and the parks are few and far between.

[Theme For A Jackal]

Here's a link to the Kimberly Diamond Cup website, they've got a bunch of videos and pics of the park.

http://www.kimberleydiamondcup.com/

Also here's a pretty rad video of a bunch of dudes including Evan Smith, Wes Kremer, Nyjah and some African locals.

[lk130]

People skate in Africa and Africa is not poor, the material world is poor..
Africa invented skating, don't ask just wait on it

[lk130]

If you want to see a m8 that skates in south Africa follow baked_sabbath
Also this dude yunes amrani skate all around morocco, god bless up

[White Owl]

I'm actually surprised Africa hasn't become more popular for skateboarding. Obviously there's still a lot of problems in a lot of places, and probably not the best infrastructure either, meaning roads and what not that are virtually unskateable. So I guess when I say I'm surprised by it not becoming more popular I mean I'm surprised places like Morocco haven't. Lots of people go to places like Barcelona to skate; going to Morocco isn't that much more of a journey. I remembered this Youness part when I saw this thread and remembered how sick some of the spots look.



Also, a GX1000 Marrakech edit would be beyond awesome.

'

the thing is places like barcelona and china have good spots on every corner. so the money is well spent going there because the companies get a  ton of photos/footage their. where if they spend money to go venture to a new country to skate they might come back with close to nothing.

[@thewilleasley]

Biggest continent on the planet, poorest continent on the planet. SKating has never broke through the struggles of Africa, even South Africa where some people have money. I'm not going to say skating can save Africa but it sure would help, I realize most of them don't have clean water.

Never seen a tour video outta Joburg or Egypt, surely their cities are skateable but noone takes the chance, why?

I don't think those cities would be too much of a problem but i remember reading a Nike tour article where they took like 7-8 guys including theotis & janoksi to some city in the middle east and even tho the spots were tight it was SUPER sketchy. Cant remember the name of the place but they had huge oil fields & they said no one had ever toured there before (hence the reason they wanted to go). Multiple events where they coulda been in serious danger. Filmers almost getting jumped & robbed, large groups of wild homeless people, and even the national government took them in to custody for taking pictures of the oil fields & they were detained for several hours before being released. Everybody said it was the craziest trip they'd ever been on. I'm sure the world has so many hidden gems in terms of spots but in some of these countries there's a very real possibility that you'd go there and not make it back.

[Cumshot]

Tracer go fuck yourself. I dunno how to embed but here's a few links. Stop being a stereotype bitch about africa

[Big Skatefase]

africa isn't as underdeveloped as a lot like of people think. it's just people focus on the worst of africa.







maybe the reason skating hasn't broke through is because soccer (or football) is the number 1 sport there and more african kids look up to yaya toure, didier drogba, and samuel eto'o than shane o'neill or chris cole.

[happenstance]

Next time just google "skateboarding Africa"... Teams have been going over since the 90s and there's a ton of content out there.

Here's a trailer for a video from South Africa that came out a few years ago:

http://vimeo.com/m/26485177

Sure those are a bunch of white guys and examples of the indigenous population skating are more rare, but I can still think of some stuff - The Uganda Skateboard Union, the story of Thalente, and I remember a short doc about a guy in Kenya starting a company (mighta been on Berska's site). I've done some searching around myself in the past and found tons of homey clips from all over the continent. So yeah, people skate there.

[jeremyrandall]

So Tracer is a dumbass.  But I guess we all knew that.  Asia is the largest continent, followed by North America.  And I skated in South Africa 14 years ago. 

I wonder if anyone has skated on Antarctica yet?

[Monty Burns]

Next time just google "skateboarding Africa"... Teams have been going over since the 90s and there's a ton of content out there.

Here's a trailer for a video from South Africa that came out a few years ago:

http://vimeo.com/m/26485177

Sure those are a bunch of white guys and examples of the indigenous population skating are more rare, but I can still think of some stuff - The Uganda Skateboard Union, the story of Thalente, and I remember a short doc about a guy in Kenya starting a company (mighta been on Berska's site). I've done some searching around myself in the past and found tons of homey clips from all over the continent. So yeah, people skate there.

I think thats abit unfair , white people in south Africa and many other countries in Africa have been there for generations . Same with middle eastern in morocco and Egypt and so on . Not trying to start anything happenstance , just saying

[abudabi]

nike sb representative and nice guy 2 should take notes from tracer on trolling

[SHARPSHOOTER]

So Tracer is a dumbass.  But I guess we all knew that.  Asia is the largest continent, followed by North America.  And I skated in South Africa 14 years ago. 

I wonder if anyone has skated on Antarctica yet?

Street League Antarctica "We're everywhere but the streets"

[Tracer]

I'm pretty sure volcom went to Durban filming for Chichagof, there were a lot of African kids and a mini ramp in the middle of nowhere.

The weather may not be ideal for skating, but Africa is developing quickly and trying to embrace Western traditions. Shit North Korea has a skatepark, why not Lagos?

[UL8]

Talking about Africa as if it is one homegenous place is oversimplifying way too much. Some countries are developed, some are incredibly underdeveloped. That being said, I will say that every African country I have been to has horribly reckless drivers, so that would be my biggest concern in most places. Morroco definetely has some good stuff to skate, but it is much more developed than most sub saharan countries. South Africa (again a more developed country) has spots and skaters. It's just hard to skate in a city like Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania because the roads are so shitty (sometimes they turn into dirt) even though it's city of like 5 million.

[happenstance]

I was checking out the account for Familia Skateboards (which made Bang Chong, which I posted above), and this one has some great stuff - not all SA spots it looks like, but great skating:

http://vimeo.com/channels/familiaskateboarding/70436647

A whole bunch of cool videos on that channel. The spots are pretty cool looking over there.

Anyone know of any other good local video content coming from Africa?

[tweak]

Go to Egypt and try and skate street...