The Africa-Cup, also known as Football-Africa-Championship, is organized from the African Football Association CAF and is held every two years. The Qualification Round for the Africa-Championship 2008 was held from September 2006 to September 2007. In total there were 132 qualification games whereby 46 nations were divided in twelve groups. Fifteen teams qualified for the final stage. The sixteenth’s position was assigned automatically to the host Ghana.

Ghana was chosen already in June 2004. This way the West African country is after 1963, 1978 and 2000 host for the fourth time. As venues for the three week’s tournament, the following four cities were selected: Accra, Kumasi, Sekondi-Takoradi and Tamale. The capital Accra is Ghana’s biggest city and is located at the Gulf of Guinea; therewith it is the most important commercial, manufacture and communication centre. The former British colony Ghana is also known as the Golden Coast. Ghana was the first black nation in the sub-Saharan Africa who could achieve the independence from colony rules.

The 26th Football Africa-Championship started on January 20th this year and will continue until February 10th. In October last year the sixteen qualified teams were at first drawn into four groups and will later play against each other in the final play-offs. In total 32 games will be held whereby the opening game and the Final are taking place in the capital.

The African Champion will qualify for the Confederation-Cup 2009 which will take place this time in South Africa. The Confederation-Cup is also known as Mini-World Cup which is organized by the FIFA since 1997. This Cup is contested by the Champions of the six Continental zones plus the reigning World Champion. Venue is always the host for the following World Cup. The reigning African Champion is Egypt who leads the Champion standings with five titles, followed by Ghana and Cameroon with four titles each.

Humiliatingly there appeared an instance of bribery at the actual African-Cup. Some German players had first-hand experience on this. Current Hamburg‘s defense player Collin Benjamin for example plays for the Namibian Team which was offered a six-digit amount if they would lose the last game of the group stage against Guinea. The game may not have been important for Namibia, since they occupy the last place in the group, but they did not respond to the offer and approached instead to the Association President John Muinjo who made the attempted manipulation public. "My players came directly to me and we have informed the CAF about the occurrence", said Muinjo.

Collin’s Coach Huub Stevens from Hamburg had never experienced an attempt of bribery in his whole career and is very upset: „I thought that those things do not happen anymore nowadays." This is not the first case but at least the second one at this year’s tournament. It can only be speculated if there were more attempts which were not of public domain. For the host of the World Cup 2010, South Africa, these occurrences were unfortunately everything else than successful promotion.

About the Author:

Emeli Dean is a high-ranking writer on sports for the <a  href="http://www.instantactionsports.com/uk/sports-betting.html">sports betting</a> industry.

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