*With files from the press release “How the AIU helped Athletics Kenya build a digital integrity infrastructure with the launch of Riadha Connect.”
Kenya’s vast and highly dispersed athlete population has long posed a steep logistical hurdle for anti-doping officials. Without a centralized, verified database, locating athletes for out-of-competition testing or untangling the web of coaches, agents, and Athlete Support Personnel (ASP) surrounding them was often an exercise in frustration.
“We needed a system that would help us know the Kenyan athlete and ASP population better,” said Raphaël Roux, Out-of-Competition Testing Programme Manager for the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU). “Too often, it was difficult to locate or contact an athlete or obtain reliable information about the people working around them.”
That intelligence gap sparked the creation of Riadha Connect. Following an initial assessment alongside Athletics Kenya (AK), the AIU helped establish the project, map out its technical specifications, secure funding, and draft operational protocols. AIU personnel worked directly on site in Kenya and met regularly with software developers to ensure the platform matched the ground-truth realities of Kenyan track and field.
To build it, AK partnered with the technology firm behind PACE—the system driving the AIU’s global testing operations. Standardizing the tech stack allows Riadha Connect and PAC. What began as a simple testing database has grown into something far more ambitious: a digital backbone for Kenyan athletics.
Riadha Connect, now in use by Athletics Kenya (AK), was originally built to streamline anti-doping logistics. It has since expanded well beyond that mandate, now handling athlete and support personnel registration, meet administration, performance tracking, training camp oversight, visa facilitation and organizational governance.
For anti-doping purposes, officials say the benefits are immediate and practical. Training location data should make it easier to locate athletes for testing, while training camp records and advance notice of competition travel are expected to support smarter, better-informed test planning. Testing histories built into the system will also help assess whether athletes selected to represent Kenya have adequate coverage.
The platform tracks relationships between athletes and their support personnel — coaches, managers and others — including past associations. That, officials say, gives a clearer picture of the networks operating around athletes, information useful not just for testing but for intelligence-gathering, education and broader compliance work. Riadha Connect can also flag possible age discrepancies, a longstanding concern in Kenyan athletics.
For athletes themselves, the system is meant to cut down on red tape. Services that once required a trip to AK headquarters in Nairobi — a visa-facilitation letter, for instance — can now be requested online. Athlete-manager relationships must be confirmed within the platform as well, creating a documented record of representation and, in theory, fewer disputes down the line.
There is also talk of exporting the model. Ethiopia, which, like Kenya, manages a large and geographically dispersed athlete population, has come up as a possible candidate for a similar system. Any version built for another federation would need to be adapted to local conditions, but the core principle would carry over: better information means better athlete services and a stronger evidentiary foundation for the integrity organizations working to keep the sport clean.
