Bellahcene, Wafa are 2025 African Champions!

Daaim Shabazz May 26, 2025

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Bilel Bellahcene, Bassem Amin, Ahmed Adly

Bilel Bellahcene won the 2025 African Individual Chess Championship, edging out seven-time champion Bassem Amin. Egypt had won the last nine titles and, going back to 1998, had won 17/20 championships. The Algerian grandmaster took to social media with a heartfelt message.

After years of hard work, sacrifice and passion, I am proud to have won the title of African Champion and represent my country’s colours. A personal pride but also a special moment for my parents and family who have always supported me.

Here was a nice game by the Algerian over former champion, Adham Fawzy.

Tops-seed Shrook Wafa won her fifth title, beating the defending champion Jesse February of South Africa. Despite this loss, February, Wafa and Lina Nassr of Algeria will qualify for the FIDE Women’s World Cup. A side story was that the Wafa family (Shrook, Shahenda and Hamid) were trying to become the first trio of siblings to medal at the African tournament. Hamid was upset twice by FM Michael Simpson and Ahmed Alaa Ahmed of Egypt and was forced to win in the last round against Bellahcene to make the medal platform. That game ended in a draw.

In another development, the battle between the two Egyptian titans ended with GM Ahmed Adly winning against Amin.

In actuality, both would join Bellahcene scoring 7/9, but would come up short. Despite Bellahcene losing to Amin, he had stronger opposition. Likewise, Amin lost to Adly in the head-to-head encounter, but had stronger opposition tiebreaks. Adly lost to Algeria’s Ala Eddine Boulrens (2136) in the 3rd round before rebounding to score 5.5/6 to take bronze.

In the game against Boulrens, the game was mostly equal throughout. They went into a queen ending and for 60 moves shuffled the pieces without much change in the evaluation. However, Adly erred (presumably under time pressure) and lost a pawn. The game will still technically draw, but as it were, the four-time African champion will be on the losing side of an endgame problem.

Shrook wins 5th title!

In the women’s section, there was also drama as Shrook Wafa stayed at the top of the leaderboard with her sister Shahenda Wafa and Lina Nassr. As it turned out, both Shahenda and Nassr were upset by the under-16 upstart, Jana Mohamed Zaki. In the following game, Zaki develops a blistering attack.

This loss opened the door for Shrook who won again against South Africa’s Anzel Laubscher and would need only a draw to clinch the title. Zaki could’ve snatched a silver medal if she had scored against Zambia’s Lubuuto Bwalya Mulwale. That game was drawn, and she settled for bronze on 6.5/9. It seems like yesterday when Mona Khaled was the media darling, but Egypt may have found another.

For now, Shrook Wafa remains the queen of African chess. Despite taking a six-year break from the tournament, she has made a statement and qualify for the Women’s FIDE Cup.

There was a very nice game played on the lower boards that deserves note. This game occurred between Lucrece Wegan of Cameroon and Sarah El Barbry of Morocco.