Great news coming in from Sanya, China where the Miss World 2018 Beauty pageant is being held, tells of a promising future for our very own Quinn Abenakyo 22, who is Miss Uganda and has bagged a position in the finals amongst 29 other contestants around the world.
Despite being a feat seldom achieved by African contestants, given the various circumstances that hinder third world countries it’s not entirely unheard since many a black girl have gone on to claim pageant titles around the world.
The re-vamp and re-direction of the Miss Uganda competitions caused quite a stir earlier this year as new figures such as Zari Hassan and Fabiola were enlisted, as well as the judges who mainly comprised of former Miss Uganda winners. The show also came under heavy scrutiny from the public when a video surfaced online depicting the judges berating the contestants.
Nonetheless, it seems former queens who also served as judges knew what they were doing and may have been able to unlock the true secret to being the world’s best beauty pageant queen contrary to what critics had to say. “Quinn is a very passionate young lady. She will do extremely well. My team and I wish her nothing but the best.” said Stella Nantumbwe, a judge and former Miss Uganda 2013.
The reigning African beauty who faced off against Argentina’s Victoria Soto won the hearts of the judges and the guests when she shared her dreams to fight girl-child pregnancies amongst the youths. Abenakyo stated that 1 in every 4 girls from the ages 14-19 is often pregnant or with child and hopes to change these statistics through her initiative, the ‘Beauty with a purpose project.’
“There is a certain story of a Daisy. Daisy was molested by her father at 12 years old. The father passed away and she had to go live with her grandfather, and the grandfather did the same thing. Now this girl gave birth – imagine giving birth to your grandfather’s child! And this is happening a lot in Uganda,” said the Ugandan representative, who managed to deliver her oratory under two minutes-the time allocated to each contestant to talk to the audience on the issues raised.
The last time a Ugandan made it beyond the first round in The Miss World contest was in 2001 when the title holder, Miss Victoria Nabunya made it to the semi-finals with 19 other girls out of 96 contestants. Miss Abenakyo’s progress in securing a place among the 30 finalists at the pageant was a win for all Ugandans but most especially for those behind the annual Miss Uganda competitions.
Despite taking a two year hiatus due to internal conflict, the Miss Uganda pageant returned with a bang after it was taken up by the Uganda People’s Defence Forces under the patronage of none other than Gen. Salim Saleh himself. The chief executive officer of the Miss Uganda foundation has also come out to caution Ugandans about ‘bogus websites’ being used to vote for Miss Quinn Abenakyo saying that this could forfeit their win and the official website for the Miss World voting are www.missworldvote.com/ and https://missworld.com/#/