By Amanga Collins
Saturday December 9, 2023
One of the teams on the CAF African Schools Football Championship qualifiers. PHOTO/CECAFA
The Council of East and Central African Football Associations (CECAFA) Competitions Director Yussuf Mossi has disclosed that the upcoming CAF African Schools Football Championship qualifiers in the Zone C region will adopt a league format.
This change aims to provide teams in the U-15 category for both boys and girls with more playing opportunities.
African Schools Football
Scheduled to occur from December 10 to 13, 2023, at the Kasarani Annex Stadium in Nairobi, Kenya, the competition will see six boys' teams and five girls' teams participating. After the league phase, the top two teams from each category will advance to the finals.
Mossi emphasized that the decision to use a league format was made to ensure that participating teams could engage in a greater number of matches.
Teams from Uganda and Burundi arrived on Friday, with the boys' team from Somalia joining them on the following day.
The teams from Rwanda and Tanzania are expected to arrive on Sunday, and training sessions are planned for the same day, leading up to the commencement of matches on Monday.
Nations participatingThe six nations competing in the Zonal qualifiers are Kenya, Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Somalia.
The winners in each category will earn the opportunity to represent the Zone at the CAF African Schools Championship slated for April of the following year.
In the previous edition, Tanzania's Fountain Gate Dodoma Secondary School and Uganda's Royal Giant High School emerged as winners in the girls' and boys' categories, respectively, during the Zonal qualifiers in Dar es Salaam.
Fountain Gate Dodoma Secondary School went on to clinch the Girls category at the CAF African Schools Championship in Durban, South Africa, held in April of the current year.