Kenya will this year be taking part in the E-sports category of the Commonwealth Games in the United Kingdom, which will be the first ever tournament held in the international games.

According to the eSports Kenya Federation, fourteen eSports athletes will be representing the country after it secured funding from Scope Markets, and they will be travelling to Birmingham to battle it out with Nigeria, Ghana, Mauritius, Namibia and Malawi in the African Countries category.

Kenya has four automatic slots with two for each gender – in eFootball series and qualifying places in DOTA 2 (five gamers and one reserve player) and Rocket League (three gamers and one reserve player).

Before then ,a national qualifiers tournament will held on Saturday, June 11 to select those who will represent the country in the virtual games, and will be organized by Index G eSports.

The eSports Kenya Federation CEO Bavon Ojwang’ thanked Scope Markets for choosing to sponsor the players and he expressed hope that the national tournament will be a platform to showcase the skills of Kenyan players to prove that they are quality players who can compete at international level.

“Scope Markets responded really quickly to our call for partnership and came through to help us in this particular journey. My plan is not just to show up in Birmingham and indeed I’m looking at the medal brackets,” Ojwang stated.

The Commonwealth Esports Championships will take place from August 6 to August 7 in Birmingham during the Commonwealth Games which run from July 28 to August 8.

The Championships will be held in partnership with the Global Esports Federation (GEF) and will have separate branding and medals.

This comes after the recognition of Kenyan gamer, 23-year-old Silvia Gathoni, popularly known as Queen Arrow in this year's Forbes Magazine annual issue as a leading trailblazer in the sport.

She is the first female professional gamer from Kenya, and the only woman in Tekken 254 Circuit, which largely involves professional gamers in Kenya.