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Rwanda drops Tour du Rwanda WorldTour plan for more races
Jean Hubert Nkurayija, who took over FERWACY in May 2026, has ended the plan to promote the Tour du Rwanda towards WorldTour status. That included a step to ProSeries level planned for 2027.
What this means
The Tour du Rwanda is no longer being steered towards ProSeries in 2027, and FERWACY's 2027 plans now centre on a women's Tour du Rwanda, a junior stage race and UCI one-day races.
Nkurayija succeeded Samson Ndayishimiwe, and the plan to promote the Tour du Rwanda towards WorldTour status was already under way when he took office. «When I came in, we had a long discussion about it. For me, I said we don't need a WorldTour [race],» he told Escape Collective. The replacement is a 2027 programme: a women's Tour du Rwanda, a UCI stage race for juniors, a strengthened Tour du Rwanda and a series of UCI one-day races over the coming seasons. The case sits in the numbers: the population of African cyclists in the men's and women's WorldTours has been cut by two-thirds over the last decade, and six Africans are set to race in the WorldTour next season.
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