The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | All is set for the official draw of the TotalEnergies CAF Africa Cup of Nations Morocco 2025 Qualifiers that will be conducted in Johannesburg, South Africa on Thursday.
48 African nations will be drawn into twelve groups of four to determine the teams that qualify for the continental tournament, which will feature 24 nations next year.
The teams have been seeded into four pots, each containing 12 teams. The Uganda Cranes find themselves in Pot II, alongside Cape Verde, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Zambia, Benin, Angola, Namibia, Mozambique, and Madagascar. Teams from the same pot cannot be drawn into the same group.
According to the tournament format, the top two teams from each group will qualify for the final tournament, which will take place in Morocco from December 21, 2025, to January 18, 2026.
The Confederation of African Football-CAF has announced that Ivorian legend Emerse Faé and Moroccan legend Marouane Chamakh will preside over the event, marking the 35th edition of CAF’s flagship competition.
At this qualification, Uganda Cranes are hoping to secure a favourable group as they aim to return to the continental tournament, where they last appeared in 2019 under French coach Sébastien Desabre.
Last year, the Uganda Cranes narrowly missed out on qualification for the second consecutive time, when they finished third in the group, just one point behind Tanzania, who qualified as group runners-up. Algeria topped the group with 16 points.
Meanwhile, as Morocco sets the stage for the continent’s premier football event, the much anticipated 2027 East African Pamoja AFCON also draws close. Each of the three East African countries involved has ramped up preparations for the event, which will be hosted in East Africa for the first time.
In Uganda particularly, the government has signed a contract with M/S SUMMA, a Turkish company, to begin construction on a 20,000-seater multipurpose stadium in Hoima, one of the venues to be used for AFCON.
This was done just a few days after the National Council of Sports signed a memorandum of understanding with Kyambogo University to develop its stadium into a modern facility that will be used for training during AFCON.
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