The 2026 cycling season will also open for the Amani team, which this year will compete with both a men's and women's team. An adventure that began in 2024 with just 7 athletes - six boys and one girl - and today sees the dream of racing in Europe become a reality.

The team captain of the women's team is Ethiopian Fkadu Brhan Abrha and with her will be 8 other girls who have always dreamed of crossing Africa and flying across the sea to see and race in those countries where women have been cycling for several years.

The youngest in the group is Muntumba Ditona Martiny, who is just 18 years old and comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, then there are Hadush Merhawit Asgodom and Sendel Hafte Tewele, who like Brhan Abrha come from Ethiopia, and then the two Rwandan girls Xaverine Nirere, who was the first woman to join this team, and Claudette Nyirarukundo, who last year came third in the African Championships. There are also the Ugandan national champion Mary Aleper and the Kenyan Grace Wairimu, who before road racing competed in gravel.

"We had started racing on dirt, but soon we realized that if we want to give the image of a continent or a region with talent and wanting to showcase it, the project necessarily had to move to the road - said team manager Tsgabu Grmay - Imagine a world that doesn't exist. We thought about what we wanted to do. The key people of this project gathered around a table and began to reconsider our goals. And I believe the only thing we focused on was an entire East African team that goes out and races at the Tour de France."

A working group began to focus on this and today the Amani Team's men's squad has 12 boys on the team between 18 and 23 years old, who come from Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

"We are on the right track to have a large team and we are on the right track to face a new challenge. We want to be part of building a system that will bring Africa's integration and participation in world cycling forever - said the women's sector manager Hanifa Said - This is precisely why it is very important for African cyclists to show their talent."

The most important message, Team Amani brings during the Tour of Rwanda, the race from Africa that takes place in February and has reached Europe.

Mikel Delagrange is one of the team's founders, a white human rights lawyer, who saw cycling as a bridge capable of transporting African values to the world.

"I always tell the boys not to be afraid and to always be themselves and not change. We are completely different from other teams because we come from different countries, a different culture, a different background, and we have different languages. By putting all these things together, we become a unique combination of extraordinary elements, and it is thanks to all this that we can aim for victory."

Rwanda hosted the first World Cycling Championships in Africa last September, an extraordinary event that wrote an important page in the history of this continent. There is also Biniam Girmay, the first African to win a Classic and conquer three stages and the green jersey at the Tour de France. Many steps have been taken in the men's field, but now with Team Amani, women will also have a strong voice in cycling.

"This sport serves to look at women differently, this is all we need - continues Hanifa Said - We are trying to understand who could become the next champion, who could be the first or second road cyclist capable of winning major races. It is not easy for a continent like Africa, and it is even more difficult to establish oneself as an East African team and allows riders from across the continent to have more hope". The boys and girls of Team Amani dream of their path and for Muntumba, Ditoma, Claudette, and all the others, in June they will realize part of their dream: they will take a plane that will take them to Spain and thus for the first time they will race in Europe. For them, this journey will already be a victory and when they descend on the roads of the Volta Ciclista a Catalunya Femenina, they will do so as African athletes, who when they ride a bike are equal to all the other girls in the world who have decided to race in their lives."