By Sedara Philip
Sports CS Ababu Namwamba had on Wednesday referred to the request to host the championships as’very string’
The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has confirmed that Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania have presented a joint bid to host the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON). The three East African nations submitted their declaration of interest along with three other countries and met the deadline the proposed deadline set by the organization.
All interested countries were given till April 20 to have submitted their expression of interests to host the biennial tournament after Namibia and Botswana pulled out from their joint declaration to be the tournament hosts.
The other countries / federations to have submitted their bids and received feedback include Algeria, Botswana and Egypt.
“At the expiry of the deadline set by the administration, CAF recorded four bids from six countries,” a statement from CAF read. “The bidding nations are; Algeria, Botswana, Egypt and Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.”
Having ticked the first box of the long process, Member Associations will now embark on ensuring that the deadline to submit their final bid is done and all documents duly signed.
The contents of the final bid will and should include; all bidding and hosting documents with the hosting agreement, host cities agreement and government guarantees, etc.
The deadline for the final submission is set on 23 May 2023.
After that, CAF will conduct inspection visits to every successful federation on 1 June-15 July 2023, where officials are expected to do spot-checks on stadia and infrastructure necessary in hosting a tournament of such magnitude.
The inspection process will then precede the final step that will see the CAF Executive Committee meet, make a decision and announce the hosts for the Africa Cup of Nations 2027.
The Kenyan Cabinet on December 6 last year approved a proposal from the Sports Ministry to host the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations as part of the process leading up to staging the 2030 World Cup on home soil.
We intend to host the 2027 AFCON jointly with Tanzania and Uganda – Ababu Namwamba
We intend to host the 2027 AFCON jointly with Tanzania and Uganda – Ababu Namwamba
With that achieved, Kenya’s Sports Cabinet Secretary Ababu Namwamba while speaking in the Senate Committee on Labour and Social Welfare confirmed that Kenya had entered into an agreement with Tanzania and Uganda in placing what he described as ‘a strong bid’ to host the AFCON in East Africa.
“We intend to bid to host the 2027 Afcon jointly with Tanzania and Uganda. I am glad to report that the process has already started,” CS Ababu Namwamba was quoted by Nation Sports on Wednesday afternoon. “We have held consultation between myself and my colleagues, the Minister of Sports in Tanzania and Uganda and we are putting together an EAC Bid to bring AFCON to East Africa.”
The recent attempt by Kenya to acquire rights for a continental tournament follows failed bids by the federation in 1996 and 2018 for the Africa Cup of Nations and African Championships (CHAN) tourneys respectively due to the lack of standard stadia in the country.
according to a CAF’s list of pre-approved stadiums for the 2022/23 inter-club football campaign that was released in August last year, Kenya, Burundi and South Sudan are the only EAC nations without at least one stadium cleared by the continental football governing body to host international matches.
