Kenya is perhaps more famous for it’s Olympic marathon and long distance medals than for competitive gaming.

However, the competitive gaming community in Kenya is alive and kicking. Last year KTN interviewed Nathan who was pushing Kenya’s efforts in the World Cyber Games. The Grand Finals (think World Cup) of which was being held in China.

The local gaming community organized itself to hold knock out championships and select a team to represent the finals. Here below is a video taken from one of the gaming events last year at the Village Market here in Nairobi.

Serious gamers carry their rigs for a showdown at one of Nairobi’s largest malls, the Village Market, to crush each other at Warcraft, Starcraft, Fifa 09, Grid and the all important Call of Duty 4.

Here are some shots of ‘Team Kenya’ representing at WCG 2009:

This year the community is gearing up for the WCG Finals being held in Los Angeles later in the year. Preparations have began early this time around. The community has a Facebook group that you can join to keep up with their activities.

According to a message sent out from the group admins:

Beginning this February we will be having ranking tournaments in selected WCG titles(you can send me your vote on what you would like that title to be).

These will be monthly one day ranking matches whereby the top players will receive points. These points will be cumulative and will decide those that will battle it out in June for the National Finals.

The top players at the NF will be chosen to form the team that will represent Kenya at the GF in September.

The preliminary title options games are , warcraft, starcraft and Fifa 09. I would like to add a fighting game(either street fighter or tekken 6) and a racing game(i’m open to suggestions).

These games will be competed on PC and Xbox 360.

We’ll be sure to post the tournament calendar up as soon as it’s out. Be sure to go out and support the local gaming community if you can.