{"id":25035,"date":"2016-05-02T02:14:21","date_gmt":"2016-05-02T02:14:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/ghanaian-crowned-first-miss-africa\/"},"modified":"2016-05-02T02:13:45","modified_gmt":"2016-05-02T02:13:45","slug":"ghanaian-crowned-first-miss-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/ghanaian-crowned-first-miss-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghanaian crowned first Miss Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{The 24-year-old dental hygienist beat 11 finalists drawn from an original list of 40 contestants.}<\/p>\n<p>Barefoot, wearing traditional costumes including animal hide skirts and elaborately beaded headdresses, the contestants strutted the stage before Ghanaian Rebecca Asamoah was crowned the first Miss Africa Continent.<\/p>\n<p>The 24-year-old dental hygienist beat 11 finalists drawn from an original list of 40 contestants from across the continent in the inaugural pageant at Johannesburg\u2019s Gold Reef City casino on Saturday night.<\/p>\n<p>Runner-up was Michelo Malambo of Zambia, while South Africa\u2019s Jemimah Kandimiri was placed third.<\/p>\n<p>The swimsuit contest was also a departure from the beauty contest norm, with contestants wearing black t-shirts and tight shorts while dancing barefoot to music such as \u201cAfrica\u201d by Mali\u2019s legendary afro-pop musician Salif Keita.<\/p>\n<p>The pageant is the brainchild of South African film producer Neo Mashishi, who says it aims to empower young African women.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is the first ever Miss Africa Continent,\u201d said Mashishi, adding that it had been five years in the making. \u201cThis is about Africa, we are selling Africa to the world, and we are proud to be Africa\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe way everything was done was African, we didn\u2019t emulate anything from Miss Universe, or Miss World,\u201d he said. Asamoah, who wore braids, entered the stage in a traditional Ghanaian Ashanti gold-coloured beaded crown and then returned in a evening dress made from the country\u2019s trademark kente cloth.<\/p>\n<p>She walked away with a grant to study business management at Monash university in Johannesburg.<\/p>\n<p>Runner up in the 2015 Miss Ghana competition, Asamoah said she wanted to see young people help uplift the continent.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-12051 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/beauty.jpg\" alt=\"Miss Ghana, Rebecca Asamoah (centre), reacts as she is crowned the first ever Miss Africa on April 30, 2016 in Johannesburg, South Africa.\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{The 24-year-old dental hygienist beat 11 finalists drawn from an original list of 40 contestants.} Barefoot, wearing traditional costumes including animal hide skirts and elaborately beaded headdresses, the contestants strutted the stage before Ghanaian Rebecca Asamoah was crowned the first Miss Africa Continent. The 24-year-old dental hygienist beat 11 finalists drawn from an original list [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[100],"byline":[2461],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-25035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-africa","byline-daily-nation"],"bylines":[{"id":2461,"name":"Daily Nation","slug":"daily-nation","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2461,"name":"Daily Nation","slug":"daily-nation","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25035"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=25035"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=25035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}