Following the stripping of Guinea’s hosting rights of the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations due to concerns over proper infrastructure and facilities, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) has set 11 November 2022 as the deadline for countries to officially declare interest in hosting the showpiece.
Zambia has however emerged as the latest country to express interest in staging the continent’s biggest football competition.
The permanent secretary at the country’s ministry of Youth, Sport and Arts Chileshe Kangwa told the Zambia Daily Mail Newspaper that the government is interested in bidding for the hosting rights of the 35th edition of the Africa cup.
“We are very much interested and I can tell you that FAZ is already working on something. The minister will soon announce how far we have gone,” Kangwa told the Zambia Daily Mail.
Some of the other countries that are also reportedly in the race for the hosting rights of the tournament include Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Algeria, Senegal, Uganda and Kenya, though they are all yet to make official declarations.
Meanwhile, CAF says it expects finalised bids, including documents, proposed host cities and government guarantees, to be submitted at their headquarters in Cairo by 16th December 2022 before their inspection teams tour bidding countries from 5 to 25 January next year.
CAF is expected to announce the successful country or co-hosts to stage the 2025 finals on 10 February 2023.
According to BBC Sport Africa, CAF wants to avoid the embarrassment of awarding the event to countries who are “unable to raise good infrastructure and hospitality to show to the rest of the world” therefore, it will carefully choose the successful bidder.
The Football Association of Zambia (FAZ) early this year also revealed that they had been given a go-ahead by the government to consider bidding for the hosting of any of the upcoming CAF tournaments.
Zambia has in the past hosted a CAF tournament before when they staged the 2017 under-20 Africa cup of Nations which they won and will look to emerge as the successful bidders for the 2025 AFCON.
