Lambert Mbom

Confederation of African Footbal

Abidjan – The Confederation of African Football released detailed amounts of the prize money that teams participating at the ongoing African Cup of Nations in Cote D’Ivoire shall take home.

The six teams that failed to qualify for the 16 round of the competition namely Guinea Bissau, Mozambique, Gambia, Algeria, Tunisia and Tanzania each earned $500.000 while the two teams that ranked third and also did not qualify for the next round namely Ghana and Zambia got $700.000 each.

Namibia, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Egypt, Mauritania, Senegal that lost at the 16 finals and the winners between Mali versus Burkina Faso and Morocco vs South Africa shall each receive $800.000.

Each of the four teams that shall lose at the quarter finals shall receive $1.3 million while the two losers at the semifinals shall earn $2.5 million each. The team that loses at the finals shall go home with $4 million while the winner shall rake in $7 million.

In an earlier press release before the competition kicked off, Africa’s football governing body announced a 40 percent increase from 5 million to 7 million dollars that this year’s winner of the AFCON will take home. It detailed prize money just for teams that play the quarter finals through the finals. According to today’s release, each of the 24 teams has a cash prize to take home from the total 31 million dollars earmarked for the 2023 TotalEnergies African Cup of Nations in Cote D’Ivoire.

The question looming large is whether the prize money these teams take home actually helps in the development of football in the countries?