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Ben Abdelkader turns silver into gold to wrap up Oran 2026

26 juillet 2026

Oran, Algeria

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Tunisia’s Roua Ben Abdelkader won the individual recurve women‘s title at the Oran 2026 African Archery Championships on Sunday, beating Algeria’s Rania Hachani in a shoot-off to take the title.

“The gold medal is very very special to me. I'm very grateful to all those who supported me to get to this place,” she said.

Abdelkader, this year’s top seed, was runner-up last year at the Abidjan 2025 African Archery Championships. The 19-year-old is a student and had to fit training around her studies.

“It wasn't very easy to train regularly, but it's very good to be an African champion now.

”I'm going to do my best and so that any future participation at the international level will be honourable and actually will reflect the real level of Tunisian archery. Nothing is impossible and actually it's a matter of devotion and hard work.”

Abdelkader and Hachani had already faced each other in the mixed team competition, where again Tunisia got the better of Algeria – although Hachani had led the Algerian recurve women‘s team to a gold medal against Benin earlier in the day.

In recurve men, Algeria‘s Imadeddine Bakri upset the form book to win 6-0 against top seed Bahaaeldin Aly of Egypt and become the Algerian man to be African champion.

In front of a noisy home support, he edged every set. “The final was great. He was a good opponent. He was a good archer. I shot good. I had the advantage of the people, the Algerian people were here,” said Bakri afterwards.

“I was expecting it to go to [a] shoot-off, but it ended 6-0. I tell myself to never give up. Archery is not an easy sport. You can't see the result in one year or two years. You must do hard work every day and be patient and the result will come.”

Bakri also revealed bigger ambitions. “I hope that we can participate in the World Cup stage to prepare the qualification for the Olympic Games, and next year the World Championship in Medellin.”

In para recurve men, a battle of the top two seeds, there was a minor upset as Precious Allan Asiimwe of Uganda beat favourite Abdelkader Izri for gold in a shoot-off, at his first international competition after two years of training.

“I'm very proud to be the winner of gold today, at my first time to compete in a championship. I really appreciate the the moment I've been in Algeria for the first time,” he said.

Asiimwe, who repairs motorcycles for a living, was outspoken about the possibilities of para sport:

“People with disabilities mostly are left behind they feel like they are not included. So the message to them is only to give them encouragement so that they can also join us in sports. They can come out of the darkness, see them walking around, proud of themselves. We should also be proud of ourselves because God knows us. There's no way you can say ‘I'm left out’.”

Asiimwe gave Uganda their sole medal of the championships. Host nation Algeria topped the medal table with a suite of results in senior and junior categories, but perhaps the most remarkable national result was Namibia's haul of seven medals, including four compound golds, with just seven athletes participating.

The recurve finals concluded the competition, with many archers looking forward to the next major in Africa, the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games in November.