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.”
