Three jerseys, two shorts, a bike and off we go for 9,000 kilometers. At the age of 25, Victoire Becquart embarked on this crazy bet, summed up by a slogan that became the common thread of her adventure: “Brussels-Togo, alone by bike”. Leaving her native Belgium on October 26, 2025, the newly graduated journalist is just completing her journey after crossing 12 countries, mainly in West Africa.
The choice to arrive in Lomé, the Togolese capital, is not by chance. Victoire Becquart is to meet Sister Victoire de Jésus Olympio there, who created Maison Béthanie in 2000 and welcomes more than 70 orphaned or destitute children. The Catholic nun is helped there by Ria, a Belgian friend of Victoire Becquart’s family, who arrived in Togo twenty-six years ago and who has never returned to Europe since.
A prize pool for Maison Béthanie
The Togolese NGO, however, encounters difficulties. The number of children taken in continues to grow while the home does not expand due to lack of resources. In order to continue its hosting mission, Maison Béthanie must undertake costly work and meet the standards required by Unicef. In the videos of her trip published on her social networks, the cyclist promotes a fundraiser that she launched before leaving Brussels. To date, she has accumulated just over €13,000.
Through her digital logbook, Victoire Becquart also relays lessons in humanity and humility. Passionate about images and videos, the journalist retraces her journey through the extracts she shares and where she shows herself, sometimes on the saddle of her bike, sometimes able to count on the generosity of the residents she meets along the way. This is how, by chance, she is welcomed by Mobino, a Bissau-Guinean who is raising his two daughters alone and who offers her room and board. Or that she is invited to celebrate Christmas mass at the home of Edith, a French expatriate living in Agadir, Morocco.
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“I was advised not to go there”
The cyclist, Togolese flag flying on the back of her bicycle, also travels through regions known to be dangerous. In her publications, some of which exceed a million views, she strives to deconstruct the fears and prejudices, her own and those of those close to her, linked to being a woman traveling alone.
Victoire Becquart thus recounts how, on the 140th day of her adventure, she crossed Sierra Leone, one of the poorest countries in Africa which she hesitated to bypass after numerous warnings for her safety. “From the start, in Europe as in Africa, I was advised not to go there, considered hostile and unstable,” she testifies on her social networks. Before continuing: “Let me tell you that once again, I thank myself for not having listened to the hearsay, often based on ignorance and fear of the unknown. »
The young Belgian has been cultivating this audacity for years. Shortly after celebrating her 18th birthday, Victoire Becquart already took off for Southeast Asia with her backpack and her best friend as her only companions. Touched by this five-month journey which she documented on her YouTube channel, she began to dream of exploration.
A feat that she accomplished again seven years later, this time on the ocher roads of Africa. Beyond sporting performance, this 9,000 kilometer journey, carefully prepared over two years, will have allowed Victoire Becquart to discover Mauritania, Ghana, Senegal, the Moroccan Sahara and the Ivory Coast. As many landscapes crossed as “beautiful souls” met, in her words, who deeply marked her.
