Cameroon stripped of rights to host next year’s Afcon finals
West African country Cameroon has been stripped of rights to host the African Nations Cup finals scheduled for next year by the continent’s football governing body- CAF.
The decision was announced on Friday following a CAF executive committee meeting held in Accra Ghana.
In a statement, the continent’s football governing body said that after significant debate and several visits for over 18 months, a number of compliance conditions had not met by Cameroon and thus warranted the need to scrap the tournament’s hosting rights from them.
“After having heard from representatives of the governmental and sports authorities of Cameroon and reviewed the latest progress on preparations, CAF notes the gap between the requirements of hosting AFCON and realities on ground,” said the continent’s football governing body.
“After hearing the conclusions of the CAF security inspection team during their most recent visit to, CAF concludes that the African Cup of Nations could not be exposed to any issues that could impact on the success of the most prestigious African competition.”
It is said that there was a delay is construction of some of the stadiums to be used for next year’s tournament whereas there was political instability in the English south-west and north-west parts of the country that are seeking to separate from Cameroon and these forced CAF to strip the country of the rights to host Afcon over insecurity concerns.
In their statement, CAF said they had thought of postponing the tournament to give Cameroon a chance of a benefit of doubt but noted that due to “contractual commitments” and importance of maintaining the competition calendar, they opted for stripping the West African country of the hosting rights.
CAF said in the statement they had opened up bids for countries that can host the continent’s most prestigious tournament next year.
Morocco, which lost their joint bid with USA and Canada to host the 2026 World Cup tournament are favorites to host the upcoming Afcon finals.
Cameroon won the previous Afcon tournament held in Gabon in 2017.
