The initial purchase price, maintenance costs, and operating costs are prohibitive. So the motor aspect of participation and competition in sport automatically rules itself out for the majority of the African population. Also it is a sheer fact of life that this is tropical Africa, where it is extremely difficult to raise horses, an activity which is comparatively easy in many other countries around the world. But as the Sahal area creeps further South in Africa there is an animal, the camel, which is very suitable for survival in this type of arid land. Anybody can aspire to own and race a camel, in fact a good animal actually becomes a status symbol for its owner.
Camels are very simple to manage and reasonably inexpensive to husband.
Under arid conditions their basic needs are more easily met than any other animal except certain species of wildlife. They also adopt not only to extreme arid climates and high temperatures ranges but strangely enough to colder ones. So camel racing is the sport of the man on the land. The largest concentration of camels in world is found in Africa and Kenya alone is reported to have the fifth largest number of camels in Africa while Somalia has over 5.2 million. For example in Kenya camels are primarily found north of the Equator where the major camel-keeping people are the Somali, Gabra, Rendille and Turkana.