Meet Abigail, Ghana’s First Female Boxing World Champion Who Defied The Odds

"My aunts and siblings didn’t like it when I started boxing. They would come here to beg my coach not to let me become a boxer,” said Abigail Kwartekaa Quartey, at the Jamestown neighborhood's Black Panthers Gym where she has been training since her teenage years.

Ever since she was a child, it was Abigail's dream  to become a professional boxer, which was considered a very unusual choice for a young woman in the neighborhood of Ghana's capital of Accra, which is why her family always kept begging her to stop training.

Jamestown has always been known for boxing. It is based around the fishing industry but also known for being home to many boxing stars. However, like most sports in Ghana (and in the world), boxing has often been considered as a sport for men only, and women are usually discouraged from taking part in it.

How Quartey's Victory Changed Everything

Last November, Quartey defeated British boxer Sangeeta Birdi in Jamestown’s main boxing area and bagged the WIBF World Super Bantamweight title. Crowds of her friends and supporters from the neighborhood celebrated with joy, apparently forgetting all about the prejudice that they had against female boxers. 

Last year, at age 27, Quartey became Ghana’s first female world boxing champion and the first woman to travel the world as a member of the West African nation's national team. Ghanaian media took no time in pronouncing her win as 'history,' but Quartey pointed out that she is by no means the first female boxer in Ghana.

“There were women in boxing before I ventured into boxing,” she said. She also said that many women weren't allowed to travel outside Ghana, because of which they remain unrecognised.

Punching Through Challenges

Quartey’s difficult journey to this spectacular victory underlines the several challenges that the female athletes in African countries have to face in their careers. She grew up in Jamestown and, as a young girl, she used to sell rice with her aunt to help the family scrape a living. The only people who supported her throughout her journey were her brother, a fellow boxer, and her coach.  In 2017, she had to stop boxing to earn money. It took a lot of convincing from her coach to get her back into the ring in 2021. 

Praise For Quartey 

Sarah Lotus Asare, a boxing coach and the project lead for the Girls Box Tournament, said, "Even for the male boxers, when they fight with non-Africans, it’s very difficult for them to win, because they have a lot more facilities and equipment than we do."

Quartey’s title is “a big deal for her, the gym, the community, Ghana, Africa and the world at large,” said her coach. However, Quartey believes that the kind of impact she has on young women from her neighborhood is very important. She wants to encourage more women to become professional athletes and sportswomen. “I am a world title holder and that confirms that what a man can do, a woman can also do,” she said.