Ramla Ali is featured on the recently released list of TIME’s 2019 Next Generation Leaders. The Somali born boxer is the only African alongside Egyptian artist Dina el Wedidi who made it to the prestigious list that was released last week.
Ramla is currently the African Zone Featherweight Champion and was last year named an exclusive global Athlete for Nike, joining the likes of Tennis ace Serena Williams, Simon Biles and Mo Farah.
She has several awards under her belt including the 2015 Novice national championships in England, the 2016 England Boxing Elite Championships and The Great Britain Championship.
In 2018, she made history by becoming the first boxer and Muslim woman to represent Somalia in the Women’s World Championships that were held in New Delhi, India. She set up the Somali Boxing Federation in Mogadishu to provide young Somali athletes to get a chance to develop their sports and is inspiring African and Muslim women to join the sport.
Born in Somalia, Ramla was forced to flee from her country during the 1980s Somali Civil War after her 12 year-old brother was killed by a stray motor while playing on their compound. The family instantly made the decision to leave with her father vowing not to lose another child to the war. They left all their belongings behind and hopped on an overcrowded sail boat that took them to Nairobi. However, during the nine-day journey, several passengers died due to starvation. They were lucky to survive. They stayed in Kenya for a few months before finally making it to England as refugees.
As a teenager in school, Ramla was bullied for being overweight and no one wanted to be with her, so she decided to do something about it. She went to a nearby local fitness center where she found boxcersise classes. Intrigued, she signed up for them. While training, her fitness coach discovered something about her and started persuading her to give the sport a try and compete.
“I never thought about competing.” She tells The Guardian. “It was for fun, fitness, confidence, making friends.”
But eventually, she listened to her fitness coach. This marked the start of her living a double life as she knew her family would never approve of the sport because of fear of community shame.
Boxing became her best kept secret with Ramla often sneaking out her boxing kit to go compete for national boxing championships while her family kept thinking she was just boxing for fitness, and would wear sunglasses and a cap back home to hide injuries she got in the boxing ring.
“I remember I competed in the national finals,” Ramla tells BBC Sports. “My parents live in Bethnal Green [in London] and the finals were taking place in nearby York Hall.
“I remember giving my kit bag to my coach and saying: ‘I will meet you there later’. I said: ‘Mum, mum, I’m going out for a run, I’ll see you soon’ – and all the while, I was going to compete nationally. Those are the lengths I had to go to.”
However, she ran out of luck in 2014. While carelessly flipping through the TV channels, one of her brothers accidentally saw her competing live on TV. Shocked, he called their mother to come and see what he had just discovered. She was furious. A family meeting was called.
“I thought: ‘What’s going on here? We never sit down as a family’ and they were like: ‘Look, you need to stop. Why are you showing skin? A Muslim girl shouldn’t be doing this, it’s a man’s sport – what’s the community going to think?’ She tells BBC Sports.
“It just broke my heart when they said that.”
Seeing her mother hurt, she put a halt to boxing and started working at a Law firm in London but 6 months later, she had a change of mind.
“I didn’t want to get to 50 years old and think: ‘I could have done it,’” she says.
But after setting up the Somalia Boxing Federation, her uncle who was proud of her accomplishments and couldn’t stand watching her do what she loves in secrecy anymore, offered to talk to her mother and open her eyes to the positive impact she was creating in Somalia using boxing and the pride she was bringing the community instead of shame. Following the long call, her mother came round and gave her seal of approval but on one condition. She always wears a scarf on the boxing ring so people can know she is a “good Muslim girl”.
Ramla Ali is currently preparing to represent Somalia at the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.
‘It’s about showing other Somali girls, other girls in Africa, that it’s all possible, if you set your mind to it”.
She is also raising funds to fly the Botswana boxing team to UK for a week of training ahead of the All Africa Games as a way of offering solution to the challenge African boxers who train in their home nations face of non-adequate representation.
Ramla is additionally using her boxing talent to teach a group of Muslim women between 20 and 40 years in South London free weekly self-defense classes.
Her mother is now her greatest fan and has promised to purchase a ticket to watch her compete at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo if she goes through.
Source: TIME, BBC Sports and The Guardian.
