Confederation of African Football chief Ahmad Ahmad made a surprise visit on Tuesday to Cameroon, the troubled host of the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations. Ahmad Ahmad reportedly told the world that his meeting with President Biya was organized by Cameroonian football legend, Samuel Eto’o.

The Madagascan met the 85 year-old Paul Biya, whose government is working to convince CAF it will be ready to host the continental festival of football despite doubts over the readiness and capacity of its stadiums.

Ahmad’s visit is expected to delay a planned election campaign visit by Biya to the town of Buea, which has been on the frontline of separatist violence by English-speaking fighters.

Officials had earlier suggested that he could travel to Buea as soon as Tuesday, but a presidency source said the trip was “unconfirmed”.

There are daily clashes between separatists and the army in the anglophone northwest and southwest regions, and security has been a major campaign issue ahead of Sunday’s presidential polls. Members of the nascent insurgency have threatened to disrupt the elections.

Towns in the anglophone regions were subject to a curfew ahead of the first anniversary of the separatists’ symbolic declaration of independence on Monday. On Sunday eight candidates will face off against Biya, 85, who is seeking a seventh term in power.

Camcordnews with files from AFP

A top Cameroon football official told AFP on Sunday his nation “will be ready” to host next year’s Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON), even though the final decision has been delayed.

Cameroon’s hosting of African football’s showpiece event has been in jeopardy for months since the decision to increase the tournament from 16 to 24 teams.

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) had been expected to confirm Cameroon as host on Friday at their meeting in Sharm el Sheikh, but instead postponed a vote until the end of November.

It said there had been a “big delay in the building of infrastructure” in Cameroon. But Dieudonne Happi, the interim head of the west African country’s crisis-hit football federation, said: “In the current state of things, I can tell you bluntly and without any risk of being wrong that Cameroon will be ready.

“The delay will be made up,” said Happi, the chairman of the Cameroonian federation’s normalisation committee, adding that the country will be ready “no later than December 31”, the deadline set by CAF in March.

An inspection committee from CAF and world football’s governing body FIFA will visit Cameroon in October to assess preparations.

The Cameroonian league is currently suspended because of funding issues and the federation is without a president.

Morocco, which unsuccessfully bid to host the 2026 World Cup, has lobbied to replace Cameroon as hosts.

“We are obviously ready to organise a major African event,” said Hamza El Hajoui, the president of the Moroccan football federation, adding that his country was “respectful” of both the CAF process and “the candidacy of a friendly country that is Cameroon.”

Ahmad Ahmad, the CAF president, denied that his organisation had already decided to take the tournament away from Cameroon.

“CAF has not yet taken any decision to the contrary… that the Cup of Nations will be origanized in Cameroon,” he told a press conference.

The tournament will take place on June 15-July 13. The tournament used to be in January, forcing European clubs to release their players in the middle of the season.

AFP

Fighting between separatists and government forces, along with concerns its stadiums won’t be ready, have left Cameroon facing the possibility Saturday of being stripped of its hosting of next year’s African Cup of Nations soccer tournament.

Tournament organizer the Confederation of African Football declined to back the country as host after a two-day meeting of its executive committee in Egypt. Instead, CAF said it was delaying a decision on Cameroon’s staging of the continent’s top soccer event until the end of November, and after two more inspection visits.

That will be just over six months before the African Cup kicks off. Morocco is a possible replacement host for the tournament in June and July if Cameroon, which was chosen in 2014, is dropped. The first inspection visit next month will be by a joint CAF-FIFA delegation to assess the security situation in the western part of Cameroon, where bloody fighting between the government and English-speaking separatists started in late 2016 and has escalated this year.

That visit by CAF and security experts from world body FIFA will come after Cameroon’s Oct. 7 presidential election, when the violence could come to a head.

“We have to wait (to see) what is going to happen with the elections,” CAF deputy secretary general Anthony Baffoe said in an interview with the BBC. “That is why also we said after the elections we do the next inspection visit.

“Then I think you can have a bit more feeling about the political situation and what is going on.”

There has been “horrific escalation of violence” in Cameroon’s southwest and northwest, Amnesty International said this month, citing a graphic video of a beheaded security officer.

Two cities due to host African Cup games, Limbe and Bafoussam, are deep in those regions where the fighting is.

Claiming they are being marginalized in the largely French-speaking country, the English-speaking, or Anglophone, separatists have vowed to disrupt the presidential election and also the African Cup if it goes ahead in Cameroon next summer.

In a thinly-veiled threat, they said soccer players, officials and fans may not be safe.

“We shall not be able to guarantee the security of football players, technical staffs, members of official delegations and thousands of soccer lovers from across the world,” some separatist groups said in a letter they claim to have sent to CAF in August.

If Cameroon is retained as host, it’s possible that some of Africa’s biggest soccer stars who feature for top European clubs would decline to go and play in a region where people are being shot and killed, bridges are being blown up and buildings torched. Up to 400 civilians have died in the violence, Amnesty said, and the killing, looting and burning has sent nearly 200,000 fleeing.

The security concern has now overtaken serious delays with stadiums and related tournament infrastructure as Cameroon’s No. 1 problem.

The readiness of the country’s six stadiums had already been a major headache for CAF before the upsurge in deadly violence.

Cameroon’s team is the African champion and was hoping to defend its title at home.

The country’s tournament preparations were also complicated when CAF expanded the tournament from 16 to 24 teams after the country was chosen as host. That increased pressure on the struggling infrastructure, requiring six stadiums and not just four like the previous two versions of the African Cup in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.

“Definitely six venues is not easy in Africa,” Baffoe said in the BBC interview.

CAF said its most recent report on Cameroon’s preparations “revealed a significant delay as far as the delivery of infrastructures is concerned.”

The Cup of Nations is Africa’s showcase soccer tournament — probably its biggest sports event — but it’s also been highly problematic for CAF in recent years.

South Africa took on the 2013 version after war-torn Libya admitted it couldn’t host. Morocco was stripped as the 2015 host because of plans it was proposing to stop fans traveling from regions affected by that year’s Ebola outbreak. Libya again withdrew as host two years ago, sending the African Cup back to Gabon for the second time in five years.

Held every two years, the African Cup in Ivory Coast in 2021 is also already a cause for concern, CAF said Saturday.

“Of the six stadiums required for the competition, four are to be built and two are undergoing major renovations,” CAF said. “For accommodation, three out of five cities do not have the required infrastructure.”

Source: Fox News

The President of the Confederation of African Football, Ahmad Ahmad has said that CAF will take a decision on Cameroon’s hosting rights for the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations at the end of the month, confirming speculation that Morocco is still on the waiting list.

The African football new strongman revisited the controversial topic during a recent trip to the Republic of Niger. Ahmad Ahmad was quoted as saying that the African football governing body has no vested interest to withdraw the competition from Cameroon but the onus is on Yaoundé to speed up preparations or back out, reported Journal du Cameroun.

The CAF boss told Radio France International in Niger that “CAF will meet in an extraordinary assembly at the end of the month and we will inform you of decisions taken. We will take a decision or issue an ultimatum, but I don’t think we can be talking about this now.”

Ahmad further opined during the RFI interview that “I want to make it clear that CAF does not withdraw the hosting rights of the Africa Cup of Nations from a country. It’s either the country is not ready and backs out. CAF only sets the tasks to be accomplished and if you can meet the deadlines, you host, if not it means you have backed out. The blame should go to the country and not CAF.”

By Sama Ernest

The head of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) has questioned whether Cameroon is ready to host Africa’s biggest football event next year. Ahmad Ahmad has questioned Cameroon’s ability to host in 2019.

Ahmad Ahmad also opened the door of speculations that the location of the Africa Cup of Nations might be changed. “I am not sure Cameroon is ready to host the AFCON,” Ahmad told KweséESPN on Monday, August 27.

He added that “there are many things which are still wanting and yet there is little time left.” In 2017, Ahmad had asked the African country to make more efforts to convince the confederation that they were able to host CAN 2019.

Ahmad also said CAF now sends experts to inspect the host country selected as the host of the competition. CAF’s experts were sent in August 2017, but it is unclear what their decision has been.

The experts, however, do not seem to be satisfied with what Cameroon has offered so far. “It would be dangerous to risk African players, especially the professionals plying their trade in Europe and other continents, to play under difficult conditions and facilities,” Ahmad said in his recent statement to KweséESPN.

There were speculations that Morocco was interested in hosting the tournament. Head of Morocco’s Royal Football Federation (FRMF) and the Ministry of Youth and Sports both denied the rumors, emphasizing that Cameroon would host the tournament, and Morocco had not thought about replacing it.

The CAF president also said in an interview with Cameroon outlet Camfoot published August 9 that the competition “will be held in Cameroon … until proven otherwise.”

CAN 2019 will boast the participation of 24 national teams, up from the usual 16. For the qualifier games, Morocco will play against Malawi September 8 in Casablanca, Comoros on October 10, and Cameroon on November 17.

Despite its difficulties preparing for the continental tournament, Cameroonian presidential candidate Joshua Osih wants his country to present its candidature as a potential host for the 2030 World Cup.

Source: Morocco World News

Former Egypt goalkeeper Ahmed Shobeir has said Cameroon would be stripped of the hosting rights for the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations with Morocco already lined up as replacement.

Widespread media reports in Egypt on Monday suggested that severe delays in the progress of work has resulted in the decision to strip Cameroon of the right to host the competition.

According to reports in Egypt, a final decision is expected to by taken during the CAF Congress in September with an inspection mission in Cameroon in the month of August unlikely to take place.

Ahmad refused to answer questions on the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations in Cameroon on Monday on Egyptian television, saying it would be discussed at CAF’s extraordinary congress in September to be held in Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt.

Authorities in Cameroon have maintained the country is ready to host the tournament which has been expanded to 24 teams for the first time.

The Prime Minister and Head of Government Philemon Yang was in one of the host cities, Douala to assess the level of works. He has also been to other construction sites around the country.

Source: Journal du Cameroun

The Ghanaian government has decided to dissolve the country’s football association after claims, in an undercover documentary, of bribe-taking by referees and kickbacks to top officials.

Information minister Mustapha Abdul-Hamid said “the government had decided to take immediate steps to have the GFA (Ghana Football Association) dissolved” because of the “widespread nature of the apparent rot”.

The revelations, filmed over two years by an investigative journalist and first revealed on Wednesday, have sent shockwaves through Ghana, where football is the national sport.

the government had decided to take immediate steps to have the GFA (Ghana Football Association) dissolved because of the widespread nature of the apparent rot.

Abdul-Hamid said the government was “shocked and outraged” at the claims, which included referees apparently accepting bribes of at least $100 to throw matches.

He also apparently tried to profit personally from a $5 million-a-year, five-year sponsorship deal with the GFA in what the expose said was a “clear breach” of ethics.

The information minister said the documentary “exposes gross malfunctioning of the Ghana Football Association characterised by widespread fraud, corruption and bribery”.

The conduct of all GFA officials and the suspended director-general of the National Sports Authority, Robert Sarfo Mensah, was referred to police for further investigation and any “appropriate action”, he added.

Provisional measures will be put in place to run the sport in Ghana until a new body is formed.

REUTERS

“Cameroon’s ability to host the 2019 Africa football Cup of Nations depends on the availability of adapted modern infrastructure,” said Oumarou Tado, secretary general of Cameroon’s Ministry of Sports and Physical Education.

“It is regrettable that many of these new projects have led to vast deforestation – but we had to meet the strict (guidelines) of the African football confederation,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

In Yaounde, the capital, about 34 hectares of trees were cut to build the new Olembe stadium, about 13 km from the centre of the city. In Limbe, 30 hectares of forests were removed to create space for a stadium and a sport training facility.

Much more land has been cleared to build other facilities related to the 2019 competition, including roads, hotels and large new tracts of housing, environmentalists say.

Part of what has driven tree cutting, Tado said, is that specifications for Cup of Nations infrastructure improvements require the new facilities to be built in areas that are easily accessible but without traffic problems.

“These specifications were found in forested areas on the outskirts of major cities,” he said.

Cameroon’s legendary World Cup soccer player Roger Milla, a sports ambassador for the country, said forested areas had to give way to improve the country’s sporting facilities, noting that “to make omelets one has to break eggs”.

“Cameroon is a lead football nation in Africa but paradoxically without modern sports infrastructure. We have been waiting for this for a long time,” said Milla, whose foundation Coeur d’Afrique has taken part in tree planting efforts in Yaounde since 2016.

‘A BIG THREAT’

Environment experts, however, have criticised the decision to build on forested areas, saying urban trees must be protected if the country is to avoid worsening impacts of climate change, including flooding and droughts.

“Forests are very important in regulating city climate, thus their loss or degradation is a major source of emissions of carbon dioxide, which contributes to climate change and is a big threat to the livelihood of the population,” said Samuel Nguifo, executive director of the Centre for Environment and Development, a Yaounde environmental non-profit.

He said forests act as “air conditioners” for cities, cooling residents suffering increasingly hot weather.

Cameroon has in recent years seen large areas of forest cut for mining projects, new ports, hydroelectric dams and other projects under the country’s Vision 2035 project.

That economic development plan aims to slash widespread unemployment and cut Cameroon’s poverty rate from 40 percent in 2007 to less than 20 percent by 2035.

More than half of all the tree losses were in the Centre, South, East and Littoral regions where most new investment projects are concentrated, the data showed.

Adding football infrastructure has now made the pressure on Cameroon’s existing “deforestation hotspots” worse, forest experts said.

“These new sports infrastructure projects will only increase the susceptibility of these cities to the effects of climate change,” said Julius Chuezi Tieguhong, a forest researcher with the African Forest Forum.

The cities of Douala, Yaounde and Limbe have in recent years faced worsening water shortages, floods and rising temperatures – all problems likely to become worse as forest is cut, Tieguhong said.

In 2017, some roads and buildings in Cameroon’s economic hub, Douala, were submerged following days of heavy rains, while in Yaounde the sight of women and children trekking across the city to fetch scarce drinking water has become increasingly common.

REPLANTING PUSH

Cameroon’s government, however, is hopeful that teaming up with city authorities to plant more urban trees can offset some of the damage.

Jules Doret Ndongo, the country’s Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife, this month signed a deal with 15 city councils in 10 regions of the country to plant more city trees and create new parks.

The effort “is a combined forest, floods, drought and water shortage protection effort,” he said.

The government says city councils will receive over 600 million FCFA ($1 million) annually to help curb deforestation.

According to Bruno Mfou’ou Mfou’ou, director of forestry in the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife, tree planting efforts will target areas particularly suffering flooding or drought.

“Targeting vulnerable areas is critical in the fight against climate disasters,” he said. The city tree project comes on top of a 2017 government project that aims to restore 12 million hectares of deforested land in the country, Mfou’ou Mfou’ou noted.

Source: Reuters