Five Candidates Confirmed For CAF Presidential Elections

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has confirmed it has received five candidatures for the presidential elections in March.

Among the five, two candidates were cleared with the two others deemed admissible and are now set to undergo further additional checks.

Outgoing President Ahmad Ahmad was declared ineligible due to his 5-year suspension. His ineligibility comes despite his appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

The governance committee has stated that it has cleared former Ivory Coast football federation president Jacques Anouma and current Senegal FA president Augustin Senghor.

Senghor is the mayor of Goree, an island off the coast of the Senegalese capital Dakar, and president of top-flight side US Goree.

The politician has been a member of Confederation of African Football  Executive Committee since 2019.

For Anouma, he is an honorary president of the Ivorian federation, which he ran between 2002 and 2011, and was a member of FIFA’s Executive Committee, now the FIFA Council, between 2007 and 2015.

This is the second time he has declared his presidential ambitions, with his previous bid having ended before it began after CAF changed it statutes six months before the March 2013 elections.

Meanwhile, the duo of Mauritania FA president Ahmed Yahya and Patrice Motsepe, the South African who owns Mamelodi Sundowns, will undergo further checks before final decisions are made.

“Their candidatures were deemed admissible. However, the committee considered that further checks are necessary before a final decision. To this end, a hearing of these candidates will be organised in Cairo on 28 January 2021,” read part of the statement addressing Yahya and Motsepe.

CAF will elect Ahmad’s successor as well as a new executive committee at the 43rd Elective Ordinary General Assembly on March 12 in Rabat, Morocco.