By Our Correspondent

The Confederation of African Football ,CAF, has re-opened the bidding process for the hosting rights of the Africa Cup of Nations 2025 AFCON 2025

The search for a new host was precipitated by the withdrawal of the rights from Guinea after the country was discovered not to be ready for the competition

CAF on Wednesday sent a notice to the Member Associations to express their interest in hosting the AFCON 2025 including the process that will be followed in the selection of the host country or countries.

According to timeline for the bidding process as released by CAF, 11 November 2022 is the deadline for submitting the Declaration of Interest form by interested countries.

16 November 2022 is deadline for CAF to send the hosting documents to Member Associations that have declared their interest.

While 16 December 2022 has been set aside as deadline for Member Associations to submit their final bid, including all bidding and hosting documents (hosting agreement, host cities agreement, Government guarantees)

CAF’s delegation will embark on inspection visit to countries who have submitted bids between 5-25 January 2023

CAF’s Executive Committee will announce the host nation on February 10 February, 2023.

CAF withdrew the AFCON 2025 hosting rights from Guinea few months ago due to the infrastructure and facilities in the country not being ready to host a world class AFCON competition.

The President of CAF Dr Patrice Motsepe in a meeting with the Guinea Transition President, Colonel Mamadi Doumbouya said: “I visited Guinea today out of respect to the people of Guinea to discuss CAF’s willingness to advise and work together with the football stakeholders to construct and build football infrastructure and facilities in this country. This will enable Guinea to bid with other competing Nations for the African Nations Championships (“CHAN”) which will take place after the CHAN to be hosted by Algeria in 2023, in the light of the decision by CAF not to proceed with the TotalEnergies AFCON 2025 in Guinea.”

Despite the the assurance by the Guinean leader that all the facilities will be ready before the AFCON kickoff in 2025, the president of CAF said they are withdrawing the hosting right from the West Africa country.

Before meeting with Colonel Doumbouya, Dr Motsepe held talks with the leadership of the Fédération Guinéenne de Football (“FEGUIFOOT”), the Minister of Youth and Sports, Lansana Bea Diallo, and the Prime Minister Dr Bernard Goumou.