Sports
Shakira and Uganda’s Ghetto Kids to headline football’s biggest final
The Ghetto Kids, once street dancers in Kampala before turning a social media sensation, will join the anthem queen of the World Cup at the tournament’s first Super Bowl‑style halftime show.
The kids, whose moves have earned them millions of followers on social media, will bring their energy to the FIFA World Cup Final at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement
A group of children from Kampala will stand at the centre of MetLife Stadium on July 19, and the woman beside them will look entirely at home. That image, equal parts improbable and inevitable, tells you almost everything about Shakira. When the 2026 World Cup final stages the first Super Bowl-style halftime show in the tournament’s history, she will headline it, and she will not arrive alone. She has invited Uganda’s Ghetto Kids to dance with her before the largest audience football can summon. The children have already appeared in the video for her song ‘Dai Dai’, the official anthem of the 2026 tournament.
No artiste is more bound to the sound of the World Cup than Shakira, and the bond was forged in a single summer. In 2010, ‘Waka Waka (This Time for Africa)’ became the actual pulse of a tournament, a chant that travelled from Johannesburg stadiums into living rooms where nobody spoke Spanish and everybody knew the words. It is still among the best-selling World Cup songs ever recorded. What gave it weight was the grace of the gesture. She built it on an African melody, performed it with the South African band Freshly ground, and handed the moment back to the place that lent it.
Singer Shakira performs during the opening ceremony of the World Cup | Photo Credit: AP
Consider the symmetry of what comes next. The Ghetto Kids were founded by Dauda Kavuma on the streets of Katwe, one of Kampala’s poorest quarters, and they turned scarcity into something joyful and ungovernable. Over a decade they danced into a French Montana music video and onto the stages of Britain’s Got Talent and America’s Got Talent. Now Shakira is pulling them onto her stage. The woman who once gave Africa its World Cup anthem is handing a group of African children the spotlight, and the circle she opened in 2010 quietly closes. This is the throughline I keep returning to with her: she is forever enlarging the moment to make room for others in it.
To understand why that instinct feels so natural, it helps to remember where she comes from. Born in Barranquilla in 1977 to a Colombian mother and a father of Lebanese descent, she turned that inheritance into the music itself. The hip movement the whole world now imitates began as an Arabic dance she learned as a child. The crossover that followed produced numbers that are difficult to overstate. She is the best-selling Latin female artiste of all time, the first Colombian to win a Grammy, and the holder of four Grammys and fifteen Latin Grammys. ‘Laundry Service’ made her a global name without asking her to abandon the strangeness that made her interesting, and in 2020 she stood beside Jennifer Lopez at the Super Bowl and reminded sixty thousand people that two Latina women could own the biggest stage in American television. Through ‘Hips don’t lie’, ‘She wolf’, and that voice which trembles and refuses to behave, she never asked the world to meet her halfway. She assumed it would come along.
There is another side of her that rarely gets highlighted but explains the rest. Long before the Ghetto Kids, Shakira built the Pies Descalzos Foundation, named after one of her own albums, to fund schools and nutrition for children in the poorest corners of Colombia. Philanthropy for her has never been a press release. It is the same impulse as the music: a platform is only worth having if you can pull others onto it.
Her most recent chapter is also her most exposed. After a public separation and a few hard years, she returned with Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, an album that turned heartbreak into something closer to resolve and won Best Latin Pop Album at the 2025 Grammys. The moments people remember from the tour that followed are rarely the pyrotechnics. They are the nights her sons, Milan and Sasha, walked out beside her in matching suits and sang their own small solos while she watched with undisguised pride. She folds her children into her work the way she folds in everything, openly and without apology.
That instinct is the real subject here. When she stands in that stadium this summer, the song will belong to the kids from Katwe finding their footing in front of a billion people, and to everyone watching them realise they were invited. That has always been the trick of her music: she makes the biggest possible stage feel like it has room for one more.
The Hindu
By Seyi Balogun, Lagos
Big Brother Naija winner, Ijeoma Otabor, aka Phyna, has celebrated the fourth anniversary of her reality TV success with another victory, making history as the winner of Nigeria’s first female celebrity boxing bout.
Phyna won the seventh season of Big Brother Naija,
Level Up, on October 2, 2022. Four years later, the reality star marked the anniversary with a boxing victory over Nollywood actress Nkechi Blessing by knockout.
Reflecting on the two milestones in a post shared on Friday, Phyna wrote:
“October 2nd will forever be a special date in my life.
“Today marks the anniversary of the day I won BBN, and now, years later, I’m celebrating another historic victory becoming the first female boxer to step into this ring and win this fight. ”
The victory came during Balmoral Promotions’ Chaos in the Ring event at the Federal Palace Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos, on Thursday.
The former reality star sees her transition from reality television to boxing as part of her determination to challenge herself and break barriers. She wrote:
“From reality TV to the boxing ring, I’ve always been willing to challenge myself, break barriers, and prove that there is so much more to Phyna than what people see.
“This one is for every woman who has ever been told she couldn’t. We can. We will. And we absolutely should.”
Phyna thanked Balmoral Promotions and Bet9ja for the opportunity, describing October 2 as “a date of victory, courage and new beginnings.”
She also received ₦50m as the winner of the historic bout and said she intends to pursue professional boxing, suggesting her victory over Nkechi could mark the start of a longer career in the sport.
Following the fight, Phyna named Nollywood actress Etinosa Idemudia as her next potential opponent, accusing her of disturbing her through direct messages.
“I came in, and I kept my cool and did the thing. Now I would like to fight Etinosa. I think it is time I teach her a lesson,” Phyna said after the bout.
Etinosa, who watched the fight from ringside, accepted the challenge, saying, “I have been advising you to carry the Edo name with pride. We do not run from any fight. I accept the challenge fully.”
Phyna’s victory came on the same night skit maker Carter Efe defeated musician Speed Darlington by technical knockout in their four-round celebrity bout.
Sports
Nigerian Diplomat, Akpenpuun, Appointed CAF’s Coordinator for 2026 WAFU-B U-17 AFCON Qualifiers
By Son Tertsea, Abuja
The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has appointed a retired Nigerian elite football referee and diplomat, Mr. Robert Terlumun Akpenpuun, as the Assistant General Coordinator for the 2026 West African Football Union (WAFU) Zone B U-17 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) qualifiers in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
The tournament which is scheduled to run from October 10 to 23, 2026, is aimed at bringing together the region’s top young football talents to compete for qualification to the U-17 AFCON.
Akpenpuun’s appointment by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) was confirmed in a letter of September 30, 2026, signed by the Executive Director of WAFU Zone B, Philip Tchere. It partly read:
“We have the pleasure to inform you that you have been designated as Assistant General Coordinator for the WAFU-B U-17 AFCON Qualifiers 2026, to be held from October 10th to 23rd in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.”
Akpenpuun, an Assistant Comptroller of Immigration, is a prominent figure in Nigerian football administration. He previously served as a protocol officer and a member of the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) Protocol Committee. Since 2023, he has been deployed on a strategic foreign mission, serving as the Immigration Attaché at the Nigerian Embassy in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.
This appointment marks another recognition of his extensive experience and ongoing contributions to football administration and competition organisation within the African football community.
In his role as Assistant General Coordinator, he will work closely with CAF and WAFU-B officials to ensure the seamless coordination and successful delivery of the qualifying tournament in Ouagadougou.
Foreign
Spain’s Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) Pioneers Egg-freezing and In-vitro Fertilization (IVF) for Female Soccer Players and Referees.
By Son Tertsegha, Abuja
Spain’s Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) has introduced bearing the full costs for Egg-freezing and In-vitro Fertilization (IVF) for Female Soccer Players and Referees. The policy covers international players who have received at least two national team call-ups.
The programme runs through an official partnership with the Tambre fertility clinic and is secured through 2029.
Beyond egg vitrification, the agreement provides access to various family planning treatments and complements existing rules allowing players to have children nearby during training camps and tournaments.
The policy takes bearing from the advocacy efforts of star players like Alexia Putellas and Patri Guijarro who heavily campaigned for the initiative, noting that an elite athlete’s peak biological fertility years directly overlap with their peak professional playing years.
According to reports, the goal is to achieve Work-Life Balance designed to ensure that female athletes do not feel forced to choose between starting a family and pursuing a professional career at the highest level.
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