Walvis Bay to host CAF African Schools Championship’s Cosafa qualifier
Football
The third staging of the CAF African Schools Football Championship’s Cosafa Qualifier 2024 will take place in Walvis Bay, Namibia, from 11-13 October as the nine boys and girls teams vie to represent the region on the continental stage.Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, hosts Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe will all be represented, with teams this year again made up of the best players from their national qualifiers, rather than single schools.
This means the best of the young school’s talent in the country is eligible and this year’s competition will no doubt add to what has been an exceptionally high standard in the last two years.
Cosafa currently has an African school’s champion after South Africa won the girls competition at the most recent continental finals held in Zanzibar in May. South Africa were runners-up in the boys competition in 2023 via their entrant Clapham High School.
The aim is now to qualify for the 2025 finals and the journey will start for the teams in Walvis Bay.
The boys’ and girls’ competitions will this year both be played on full-size pitches with 11-players-a-side, a change from the previous two years when the girls competition was 8-a-side on smaller playing areas.
The draw for both competitions will be made in Walvis Bay shortly ahead of the event, with the teams likely to be split into three pools of three teams.
It is a big step up from the inaugural event that was played in Malawi in October 2022. That competition had five girls’ sides and was won by South African school Edendale Technical.
There were six teams in the boys’ competition. Clapham High School (boys) and Edendale Technical (girls) won the Cosafa qualifiers in 2022. Both are from South Africa.
The format moved away from individual schools in 2023, but South Africa prevailed in the boys’ competition with a dramatic penalty shoot-out victory over Malawi in the decider, while the girls’ team beat Botswana to make it another double for the country.
In this year’s continental finals in Zanzibar during May, the winners of both the boys’ and girls’ competition each received USD 300 000 prize money to be utilised for development projects within schools. Hosts Tanzania won the boys’ final 1-0 against Guinea, while the South African girls overcame Morocco 1-1 (pen 5-4).
The runners-up received USD 200 000, while the bronze medalists took home USD 150 000.
– Cosafa.com