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Jevans Nyabiage

Meite Siaka wears many hats. By day, he is a senior tax official, a lecturer at the National School of Administration and deputy mayor of Kani in northern Ivory Coast.
But outside government, he serves as the founding president of the Ivorian Federation of Chinese Martial Arts (FIAMC), a group he established in 2008. He also works as a master and instructor, running several martial arts clubs.
Now he is a central figure in standardising the practice of kung fu, a Chinese martial art, and promoting its growth.
Siaka, who is around 60, started his journey during Abidjan’s craze over the films of martial arts legend Bruce Lee.
During the 1970s, long before Ivory Coast and China established formal diplomatic ties in 1983, dubbed Hong Kong action films flooded local cinemas, fuelling a widespread fascination with kung fu and Lee’s films.
“Bruce Lee movies played a role, but it was not the only factor,” Siaka said in Abidjan recently. “Hong Kong films and local television exposure also contributed significantly to the popularity of martial arts.”
The films have offered a model of discipline and resistance that resonates with working-class youth in Abidjan, with ripples spreading across French-speaking West Africa.

The zeal even sparked the vibrant “Ziguehi” street movement, described by anthropologist Alessandro Jedlowski as “one of the most influential in recent Ivorian history”.
It also shaped Nouchi, the country’s street language.
Jedlowski, an associate professor in political sociology and African Studies at Bordeaux Institute of Political Science (Sciences Po Bordeaux), said that in crowded, stigmatised neighbourhood cinemas, kung fu films offered young spectators both escape and instruction.
They treated these spaces as a “social laboratory”, experimenting with the gestures and moral codes viewed on screen. “The films thus helped precipitate new historical experiences, shaping the ethos of groups like the Ziguehi and influencing the broader landscape of popular culture and street politics in [Ivory Coast],” Jedlowski said.
By the 1980s, the cinematic obsession of the previous decade had given way to a wave of formalisation. This grass-roots fascination turned serious as early Ivorian practitioners began travelling abroad, even to China’s famed Shaolin Monastery, for rigorous training.
Inspired by what they learned, these pioneers returned home determined to establish a structured practice, setting the stage for future leaders like Siaka.
“Everything started in the 1980s … with former masters,” Siaka said, giving examples such as Boni Yao Alfred, an Ivorian kung fu pioneer who had trained abroad and specialised in Nanquan (“Southern Fist”) martial arts.
In recent years, several Ivorians have travelled to China to advance their skills. Max Yollando, who went to university in Abidjan, spent six years training at the Shaolin Temple, where he took the name Yanming, and later became an instructor at the Shaolin Cultural Centre in Zambia.
His classmate, Jean-Philippe N’Dri – with help from a Confucius Institute in Abidjan – also trained at the temple before returning to the city to lead local Shaolin training camps.
“When these practitioners returned to Ivory Coast around 1985, they began organising and structuring martial arts practice,” Siaka said.
In the early years, Chinese martial arts were grouped under a multi-sport federation alongside judo and karate. The movement gained independent momentum by the mid-2000s through collaborations with visiting Shaolin masters from China.
That ultimately led to the formal creation of the FIAMC to standardise training and provide institutional oversight.
In the 2000s, renowned Chinese masters were invited to the country to ensure local practice met established technical standards, Siaka said.


Today, the sport has expanded across the country. There are now about 250 officially registered clubs organised into associations and regional leagues, with five leagues in Abidjan, the country’s most populous city, and 12 outside it.
Informal associations and clubs have also emerged, and the discipline continues to expand beyond officially registered structures, Siaka added.
Jedlowski said the shift from informal, film-inspired street practices to today’s institutionalised Wushu scene mirrored broader changes in Ivorian society.
During the 1970s–1990s, youths copied movements to integrate into gang dynamics. “The moral and aesthetic appeal of kung fu remains, but it is reframed within institutional pedagogies emphasising discipline, health and sporting excellence rather than street-level confrontation,” Jedlowski said.
He added that this “afterlife” of kung fu had evolved from improvised street cosmopolitanism into state-sanctioned Wushu, reflecting modern aspirations for global belonging and self-cultivation.
Ivory Coast has become a regional hub for the sport, evident in its hosting the eighth African Wushu Kung Fu Championships in 2023. The city aims to host the event again next year.
The federation has organised training trips to China, including to Shaolin, with support from the Chinese embassy in Abidjan.
“These exchanges helped develop practitioners locally,” Siaka said, adding that the federation has built a competitive record, winning some 115 medals in African contests – including 22 in recent years – across both technical disciplines and “sanda fighting”, also known as Chinese kickboxing.


Siaka described the federation’s relationship with the Chinese embassy as collaborative but uneven.
“There has been some support from the Chinese embassy in the past, and collaboration has existed,” he said.
“However, in recent years, the relationship has changed. We now approach them when we need assistance rather than receiving consistent or direct support.”
Siaka said funding was a persistent challenge.
“Financial support is a major need. We participate in international competitions, but we often have to borrow money due to a lack of sufficient funding. We need financial assistance.”
At the Abidjan Sports Activities Centre in the upscale neighbourhood of Cocody, Toure Ounar, an assistant martial arts trainer, said the sport’s minimal infrastructure requirements drove rapid growth but that the scene remained fragmented.
“There are many practitioners because it’s a discipline that doesn’t require much infrastructure.”
The sector struggles with cohesion owing to a lack of standardisation across schools, he said, adding that “each master has their own style. That’s what makes things complicated”.
Nevertheless, across Abidjan, in the neighbourhoods of Cocody and Abobo, as well as in the Ivorian capital Yamoussoukro, formal and informal clubs continue to crop up, often led by enthusiasts.
“Some are not affiliated … they gather young people and organise themselves,” Ounar said, underscoring the grass-roots energy and the need for stronger coordination in Ivory Coast’s growing kung fu community.


An earlier version of this article mistakenly referred to anthropologist Alessandro Jedlowski as French. He is Italian.


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Films of the 1970s have offered a model of discipline that resonates with working-class youth in Abidjan, sending ripples across West Africa


Films of the 1970s have offered a model of discipline that resonates with working-class youth in Abidjan, sending ripples across West Africa.


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Africa

From Bruce Lee craze to regional hub: how China’s kung fu captured Ivory Coast

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Films of the 1970s have offered a model of discipline that resonates with working-class youth in Abidjan, sending ripples across West Africa

Films of the 1970s have offered a model of discipline that resonates with working-class youth in Abidjan, sending ripples across West Africa