South Africa and Egypt submit bids to host AFCON 2019

The bids to host the African Cup of Nations (AFCON) 2019 have been submitted to the Confederation of African Football (CAF), after the organisation disqualified Cameroon from its position of host. Global management consultancy Roland Berger will now review and support the decision between South Africa and Egypt.

The road to AFCON 2019 has been a turbulent one, particularly for the CAF, which has face a range of organisational hurdles in recent times. The CAF’s advisory partner for the tournament was originally global professional services firm PwC, although the firm withrdrew its participation late last year.

PwC’s decision to withdraw was speculatively a lack of preparedness in Cameroon – the selected host nation – to organise a tournament of this scale. Following the withdrawal, the CAF invited bids from consulting firms to fill the position, and selected Roland Berger as the partner of choice.

Roland Berger was tasked with conducting a comprehensive organisational audit and an inspection of the infrastructure in Cameroon. The evaluation produced poor results for the country, not only due to a lack of capacity in terms of security and infrastructure, but also because most hotels in the country did not have English speaking staff.

The combination of factors led CAF to remove Cameroon as the host nation and invite bids from other potential hosts. Now, the CAF has confirmed that South Africa and Egypt have submitted their official bids to host the tournament, which will now be subjected to a comprehensive review process.

Both countries are relatively safe choices, given that Egypt has hosted the tournament four times while South Africa has hosted it twice. Roland Berger will now examine the bids from the two countries, which will include visits to the respective locations for inspections.

Following these evaluations, the CAF will hold an Extraordinary Executive Committee Meeting in Dakar in January to finalise the host country, following which it will make an official announcement. The much-awaited tournament will be held between June and July next year.