Although it is just the end of March and we have only had one of the eight Africa Tour UCI races, African men and women have been racing for a good 4-6 weeks so we thought we would take a look at the early ‘Africa Tour’ league tables so far. We will do the same at the end of June, and then at the end of the season in mid October to show the performance over the season of these riders.
We have had to manually create the tables below from ProCyclingStats and UCI data as the ‘2026 Season’ league tables on the UCI website are misleading. They are not in fact ‘2026 season’ but a rolling ’52 previous weeks’ table so really don’t tell the true ‘this season’ story. We would love it if Biniam Girmay had won 1761 points by this point this year, but sadly not!
If the points numbers below look high for the end of March, remember that, bizarrely, the 2025 African Continental Road Championships took place in November (outside of the UCI 2025 season), so the points won at that event actually count for the 2026 season. We are yet to hear the plans for the timing of the African Conti Champs which will take place later this year…
Africa Tour – Men
Lets take a look at the men first. Unsurprisingly, Biniam Girmay (NSN Cycling Team) is top of the charts so far. His big win in the Clasica de Almeria in February brought in a big 250 points to boost his numbers nicely. Natnael Tesfatsion (Movistar) had a great start to the season on tour in Australia with his team, and brought home 270 points from races there.
Eritrea make up four of the top five riders, with Merhawi Kudus (Burgos Burpellet BH) benefitting from 250 points for his win at the African Conti Champs, and Awet Aman (Istanbul Team) who came second in that race. Awet is the first rider on the table from a Continental team, and first U23 also so kudos to him. South Africa’s Stefan de Bod (Modern Adventure Pro Cycling) rounds out the top five and is having a great to start the season for his new team. Full Top 10 table below:
You will notice that all the top ten are professional riders on UCI teams now, which has not always been the case. As we get into the season and the Africa Tour 2.2 tours begin to take place with more National Teams, we can expect to see some riders without a pro team appear in the UCI points table. Whether a rider without a team will make the points top ten with the strong numbers above, and 90 other African men out there on UCI teams, remains to be seen.
To see the full list of UCI Africa Tour and UCI points races taking place across Africa in 2026, check out our exclusive schedule here.
Africa Tour – Women
Let us now take a look at the top African women. This data is exclusive to Africa Rising Cycling as it does not exist anywhere else in the true ‘points won this season’ format for 2026.
As you would expect, Africa’s top female rider of the last few years – Kim Le Court Pienaar (AG Insurance – Soudal Team) – leads the way, taking 300 points at the recent UAE Women’s Tour. Hayley Preen (South Africa) is sitting in second place, based on winning the African Conti Champs women’s road race, and sixth in the South Africa National Championships road race in January. And rounding out the top three is
Birikti Fessehaye (Eritrea) whose second in the Africa Champs women’s road race won her 200 points.
We extended the women’s league table to the top 15 riders to show those with 75 points or more for context, and some of the South African and Namibian riders have benefitted from their National Championships being very early in the year. This will balance itself out as we get into 2026. Our Africa race calendar (mentioned above) lists out all the National Championships scheduled so far in 2026.
We hope you found this initial look at the UCI points tables for African male and female riders useful. We will publish another update on/around 2 July after a few more months of races and with many of the African nations’ National Championships scheduled for the end of June.