Katie Sadleir, chief executive of the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF), told insidethegames that a study will begin in 2024 in a bid to assess the potential of bringing the multi-sport event to Africa for the first time.

South Africa was set to become the first African country to stage the Games in 2022 only for Durban to be stripped of the hosting rights in 2017 for failing to sign the Host City Contract and meet a series of financial deadlines.

Sadleir insisted that there was a strong desire to hold the Games in Africa and welcomed the possibility of having the event staged across several countries to ensure the continent makes its dream a reality.

"When we went to the Sports Ministers' conference in the lead-up to the Commonwealth Games [in 2022], there was significant interest from Africa," Sadleir told insidethegames.

"Several of the Ministers came up to say 'when is it our opportunity to host the Games?'.

"We made a commitment to sit down and do a feasibility study for Africa to say 'what would an African Commonwealth Games look like?'

"Would it just be hosted by one country or would there be an opportunity to bring two or three countries together to look at bringing the Games to Africa so it is not unlike what you see from some of the International Federations when staging their World Championships.

"For instance, the Women’s FIFA World Cup will be spread across New Zealand and Australia.

"So how could you do that from a Games perspective?

"That’s what we are really excited about from the Victoria 2026 model because that is a decentralised programme with distance between the various hubs.

"That gives us the opportunity to say if you can do it like that, could you take that model and put that in place in terms of two or three countries coming together where the task might be too big for one country on its own in some of the regions that haven’t had the ability to host the Games."

A CGF delegation, led by President Dame Louise Martin, was in Africa in April when they held a regional meeting in Zambia.

The gathering was the first of four that took take place around the world before the CGF launched its new long-term strategic plan yesterday (June 14).

Representatives from 19 Commonwealth Games Associations (CGA) across Africa attended the meeting in Zambian city Livingstone.

"We have just done a series of regional meetings with CGAs for the first time since COVID to bring them up to speed on a variety of things that we are doing but also to listen to see what challenges they are facing," added Sadleir.

"We were in Zambia with the regional meeting which was absolutely fascinating.

"We started to talk to them about [the possibility of staging the Commonwealth Games in Africa].

"It is about getting the right people in the room to see how that might work but we are really committed to doing a feasibility study on that basis to see what is possible.

"Our strategic plan has got a 10-year horizon, and this is what we are going to do in the short-term, medium-term and long-term.

"It’s something that we have got in our plan for year two to do a feasibility study on that and there are so many people that are interested in it.

"I can imagine that there will be some really good options to consider how this could happen."