The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has announced that the date for the fifth edition of the African Nations Championship will be conducted on Friday, November 17, in Rabat, Morocco, the host nation.
The hosting rights were withdrawn from Kenya, which was supposed to host the event, due to the political situation in the country.
The competition is scheduled to hold from Jan. 12 to Feb. 4, 2018 in the Morrocan cities of Agadir, Casablanca, Marrakech and Tangier.
The 16 teams that qualified for the tournament will be zoned into four groups of four teams each. The draw procedure will be confirmed by CAF, while hosts Morocco will be seeded in Group A.
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are the champions of the previous edition in played Rwanda but they will be missing out after being dumped by Congo-Brazzaville in the qualifiers.
Despite CHAN matches only featuring locally-based footballers, the games have full international status and count toward the monthly FIFA rankings.
Qualified teams for CHAN: Morocco, Angola, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea Conakry, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, Sudan, Uganda, Zambia.
