(Reuters) - The African Nations Championship (CHAN) has been postponed just weeks before it was due to kick off in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, the Confederation of African Football said on Tuesday.
The 19-team tournament is for national teams made up of home-based players only and was due to kick off on Feb. 1 but will now take place in August because facilities are not ready.
The three East African countries are due to host the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations finals and the CHAN is supposed to serve as a test event.
“Good progress has been made in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda with the construction and upgrading of stadiums, training fields, hotels, hospitals and other infrastructure and facilities for the hosting of a successful CHAN,” said a statement on Tuesday.
“However, the CAF technical and infrastructure experts have advised that more time is required to ensure that the infrastructure and facilities are at the levels necessary for hosting a successful CHAN."
The delay comes just weeks after CAF president Patrice Motsepe travelled to Kenya for a meeting with the country’s president William Ruto to try and speed up the process.
CAF will go ahead with the finals draw, scheduled for Nairobi on Wednesday, it added, and said the exact dates in August for the tournament would be announced “in due course”.
CHAN was first launched in 2007 to give more opportunity to home-based players as the number of foreign-based players in African national teams increased dramatically.
But the tournament, of which there have been seven editions, has attracted sparse interest over the years and CAF had recently considered culling it from its calendar.
Some major African countries like Algeria, Egypt, South Africa and Tunisia did not enter the qualifiers, which concluded last month.
(Writing by Mark Gleeson in Cape Town; Editing by Christian Radnedge)
