Jabeur makes African history with Wimbledon final spot against Rybakina — Inquirer Sports

African News Review, North AfricaLeave a comment

Tunisia’s Ons Jabeur returns the ball against Germany’s Tat­jana Maria dur­ing their women’s sin­gles semi final ten­nis match on the eleventh day of the 2022 Wim­ble­don Cham­pi­onships at The All Eng­land Ten­nis Club in Wim­ble­don, south­west Lon­don, on July 7, 2022. (AFP)
LONDON – Ons Jabeur became the first African woman in the Open era to reach a Grand Slam sin­gles final on Thurs­day when she defeat­ed close friend Tat­jana Maria in the Wim­ble­don semi-finals.
The 27-year-old world num­ber two from Tunisia tri­umphed 6–2, 3–6, 6–1 and will face Ele­na Rybak­i­na in Saturday’s cham­pi­onship match.
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Russ­ian-born Rybak­i­na, rep­re­sent­ing Kaza­khstan, knocked out 2019 cham­pi­on Simona Halep 6–3, 6–3.
“I’m a proud Tunisian woman stand­ing here,” said Jabeur, who was the first Arab play­er to make a Slam semi-final.FEATURED STORIES
Before Thurs­day, South Africans Irene Bow­der Pea­cock, at the 1927 French Open, and Renee Schu­ur­man, in the 1959 Aus­tralian Open, were the only African women to have reached a Slam sin­gles final.
“It’s a dream come true from years of work and sac­ri­fice. I’m hap­py that’s paid off and I’ll con­tin­ue for one more match,” said Jabeur.
“Phys­i­cal­ly, Tat­jana is a beast, she doesn’t give up — I thought she would give up — her touch, her serve and every­thing on the court is impres­sive. I hope she con­tin­ues this way. Let’s not play again, I’m good for now.
“I know in Tunisia they are going crazy right now. I want to see more Arab and African play­ers on the tour. I love the game and I want to share the expe­ri­ence with them.”
Jabeur coast­ed through the first set against moth­er-of-two Maria with breaks in the third and sev­enth games.
The Tunisian fired 15 win­ners to her opponent’s six in the first set while not fac­ing a sin­gle break point.
How­ev­er, Maria, described by Jabeur as her “bar­be­cue bud­dy”, did man­age to final­ly break through for 3–1 in the sec­ond set off the back of a series of del­i­cate slices.
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Jabeur’s 17 unforced errors in the sec­ond set com­pared to the six of the more accu­rate Ger­man, who lev­elled the contest.
But there was to be no upset win as the 103rd-ranked Maria’s chal­lenge was quashed.
Jabeur secured a dou­ble break for a 5–0 advan­tage before secur­ing her place in his­to­ry on a sec­ond match point.
‘Amaz­ing match’
Rybak­i­na over­pow­ered for­mer cham­pi­on Halep, break­ing the Roman­ian four times in a dom­i­nant dis­play on Cen­tre Court.
“It was real­ly good — today I was men­tal­ly pre­pared and did every­thing I could and it was an amaz­ing match,” said the 23-year-old.
“I think it’s going to be a great match (against Jabeur). She’s a great play­er, very tricky play­er. It’s not going to be easy to play against her drop shots and volleys.”
For­mer world num­ber one Halep had not lost a set com­ing into Thursday’s match but was imme­di­ate­ly under pres­sure against the big-serv­ing 17th seed.
Rybak­i­na, who stands six feet (1.84 metres) tall, raced into a 3–0 lead with an ear­ly break of serve and had break points in all of Halep’s ser­vice games in the first set.
Halep, seed­ed one place above her oppo­nent, did well to stay in touch but failed to carve out any break points of her own in the first set.
Rybak­i­na, the first woman rep­re­sent­ing Kaza­khstan to reach a Grand Slam semi-final, showed no mer­cy at the start of the sec­ond set, break­ing again to estab­lish an iron grip. 

Halep broke to love in the fourth game to estab­lish a foothold but a dou­ble fault in the fol­low­ing game hand­ed the ini­tia­tive back to her opponent.
Rybak­i­na, the ace leader in the women’s tour­na­ment, sealed an impres­sive win on her first match point with a back­hand win­ner down the line to break Halep again, wrap­ping up the match in 76 minutes.
The 23-year-old switched her nation­al­i­ty to Kaza­khstan in 2018 to take advan­tage of greater finan­cial help.
Russ­ian and Belaru­sian play­ers were banned from this year’s Wim­ble­don fol­low­ing the inva­sion of Ukraine.

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Viola Davis shines as an African general in first trailer for ‘The Woman King’

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The trail­er shows Davis as she trains up a new group of recruits to fight against the peo­ple who wish to harm and enslave her peo­ple. Direct­ed by Gina Prince-Bythe­wood, who also direct­ed “Beyond the Lights” and “The Old Guard,” the film tells the unheard true sto­ry of a group of strong Black women.Along with Davis, the movie also stars John Boye­ga, Thu­so Mbedu and Hero Fiennes Tif­fin. Prince-Bythe­wood wrote the script with Dana Stevens, and Davis is also serv­ing as a pro­duc­er on the film.

Benin Bronzes Returned to Nigeria from Germany

African News Review, Culture and Society, West AfricaLeave a comment

Two of the renowned arti­facts were giv­en back to Nige­ria on Fri­day, and Ger­many intends to give the African coun­try own­er­ship of some 1,100 more. Ger­many returned two of the price­less arti­facts known as the Benin Bronzes to Nige­ria on Fri­day, after reach­ing a polit­i­cal agree­ment that could soon see hun­dreds more return to the country…

Central African Republic president launches crypto initiative following Bitcoin adoption

African News Review, Business and Investment, Finance and EconomicsLeave a comment

Faustin-Archange Touadéra, pres­i­dent of the Cen­tral African Repub­lic, has announced the gov­ern­ment will be back­ing an ini­tia­tive cen­tered around devel­op­ing the country’s blockchain infrastructure.In a Mon­day announce­ment on Twit­ter, Touadéra said the CAR gov­ern­ment would be launch­ing San­go, a cryp­to ini­tia­tive pro­posed fol­low­ing the country’s adop­tion of Bit­coin (BTC) as legal ten­der in April. Accord­ing to Sango’s web­site, the gov­ern­ment intends to launch the pro­gram dur­ing a July 3 event in which the pres­i­dent, mem­bers of his cab­i­net and indus­try experts will dis­cuss the phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal infra­struc­ture need­ed for the CAR to enter the cryp­to space, as well as the legal frame­work for the coun­try. The San­go project’s plans include build­ing a “legal cryp­to hub” aimed at attract­ing busi­ness­es and glob­al cryp­to-enthu­si­asts, expand­ing the adop­tion of Bit­coin in the coun­try, and cre­at­ing a vir­tu­al “cryp­to island” — a spe­cial eco­nom­ic zone in the meta­verse that will seem­ing­ly have an equiv­a­lent space in the phys­i­cal world. Accord­ing to San­do, the CAR plans to have a ded­i­cat­ed legal frame­work for cryp­to in place by the end of 2022.“The ambi­tious strat­e­gy to quick­ly build a suc­cess­ful econ­o­my can only rely on new tech­nolo­gies that have tak­en the world by storm and tak­en mon­ey to anoth­er lev­el, with Bit­coin as a watch­word,” said Touadéra. With #Bit­coin as #legal­tender & inspi­ra­tion, our coun­try opens a new chap­ter in its inspir­ing jour­ney towards a brighter future via #blockchain #tech. Every­one is wel­come to wit­ness the San­go Gen­e­sis Event that will be broad­cast on the 3rd of July, on https://t.co/LIQiKGhcBS. pic.twitter.com/7u6knv5f6w— Faustin-Archange Touadéra (@FA_Touadera) June 27, 2022Related: Cryp­to users in Africa grew by 2,500% in 2021: ReportTouadéra’s and the CAR’s plans to adopt cryp­to seem to be emu­lat­ing those of El Sal­vador, whose Bit­coin Law declar­ing the dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy legal ten­der went into effect in Sep­tem­ber 2021. The Latin Amer­i­can nation also announced plans to cre­ate its town Bit­coin City fund­ed by $1 bil­lion worth of BTC bonds, placed on hold as of June amid the bear market.

Window of opportunity closing for South Sudan, on road to lasting peace

African News Review, East Africa, UN News AfricaLeave a comment

With eight months remain­ing, the win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty is clos­ing for South Sudan to meet crit­i­cal bench­marks required to com­plete its tran­si­tion away from long-run­n­ing civ­il con­flict, the Spe­cial Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for the coun­try told the Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil on Mon­day, press­ing par­ties to the Novem­ber 2018 peace deal, to imple­ment their com­mit­ments in let­ter and spirit.

South Africa Hails COVID-19 Vaccine Patent Waiver

African News Review, Covid-19, UncategorizedLeave a comment

Johan­nes­burg, South Africa — 
South Africa on Sat­ur­day hailed a WTO agree­ment to allow devel­op­ing coun­tries to start pro­duc­ing their own COVID vac­cines fol­low­ing a near two-year battle.
“We secured an agree­ment. It was a strong­ly fought agree­ment,” said Min­is­ter of Trade Ebrahim Patel, who along with India and NGOs had been call­ing for an intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights waiv­er on COVID-relat­ed treatments.
The World Trade Orga­ni­za­tion (WTO) announced a relax­ation of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty restric­tions on vac­cines Wednes­day in a move aimed at a pro­vid­ing more equi­table access to shots but which many observers crit­i­cized for being lim­it­ed in time and scope.
After months of wran­gling, and talks going down to the wire this week to win over some major play­ers in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing to a com­pro­mise, the Unit­ed States and Chi­na final­ly clinched the deal by agree­ing on which coun­tries would ben­e­fit from the waiver.
Both South Africa and India had been vocal in their demands for such a move which they said was need­ed to stop “vac­cine apartheid.”
Accord­ing to the WTO, 60% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion has received two dos­es of the COVID vac­cine but there are glar­ing exam­ples of inequity with only 17% hav­ing been inoc­u­lat­ed in Libya, with the fig­ure at 8% in Nige­ria and less than 5% in Cameroon.
In a state­ment, the South African gov­ern­ment salut­ed a waiv­er designed to pro­vide local vac­cine man­u­fac­tur­ers with the right to pro­duce either vac­cines or ingre­di­ents or ele­ments that are under patents, with­out the author­i­ty of the patent hold­er, hail­ing this as a notable step for­ward — even if lim­it­ed to five years.
Pre­to­ria added that “to scale up the pro­duc­tion on the con­ti­nent, fur­ther part­ner­ships will be need­ed includ­ing access to know-how and technologies.”
The accord for the time being excludes, how­ev­er, tests and cost­ly ther­a­peu­tic treat­ments against COVID on which the WTO is to pro­nounce in the com­ing six months.
Com­mer­cial­iza­tion in Africa will be a chal­lenge, however.
Dur­ban-based South African phar­ma giant Aspen, which clinched a deal last Novem­ber with U.S.-based John­son & John­son to man­u­fac­ture a “made in Africa for Africa” Aspen-brand­ed COVID vac­cine Aspen­o­vax, said last month it could pull the plug owing to lack of orders.
“Our focus now is to ensure we address demand by per­suad­ing glob­al pro­cur­ers for vac­cines to source from African pro­duc­ers,” said Patel.
South Africa has three sites under the aegis of Aspen in Dur­ban, Afrigen in Cape Town and Bio­vac, also in Cape Town, which makes the Pfiz­er-BioN­Tech vaccine.
Afrigen’s biotech con­sor­tium makes the mes­sen­ger RNA shot based on the Mod­er­na for­mu­la, the first to be made based on a broad­ly used vac­cine that does not require the devel­op­er’s assis­tance and approval.

Vaccination rates for the vulnerable are soaring in Africa, the W.H.O. says.

African News Review, Covid-19Leave a comment

Most coun­tries in Africa have made sig­nif­i­cant gains in vac­ci­nat­ing two vul­ner­a­ble groups against Covid-19, but new infec­tions are creep­ing upward as sum­mer trav­el begins and some coun­tries ease pub­lic health mea­sures, the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion said on Thurs­day. About half of pub­lic health work­ers and peo­ple over 60 have been ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed in 31…

Odunde festival returns to Philadelphia to celebrate African heritage — WHYY

African News ReviewLeave a comment

A small crowd of paraders paused on the South Street Bridge Sun­day to offer gifts to Oshun, the riv­er god­dess in the Yoru­ba belief sys­tem of West Africa. A moment of prayer pre­ced­ed the throw­ing of offer­ings into the riv­er: whole pineap­ples, hon­ey-driz­­zled oranges, can­dy and streams of wine.  The rit­u­al is cen­tral to the Odunde…