Eight teams from the CECAFA Zone have been drawn to play in the FIFA U-17 Women\u2019s World Cup 2026 African qualifiers.<\/p>\n
The Kenya Junior Starlets who played in the FIFA U-17 Women\u2019s World Cup 2024 in the Dominican Republic will face Namibia in the first round.<\/p>\n
A total of 31 teams will be involved in the qualifiers which kick-off in April, 2026. The qualifiers will be played in three knockout rounds, and the best four teams will qualify for the FIFA U-17 Women\u2019s World Cup Finals in Morocco.<\/p>\n
The draw was conducted on Saturday in Rabat, Morocco where TotalEnergies CAF Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) is currently taking place. Jacqueline Shipanga, the technical Director of the Namibia Football Federation, CAF Elite Instructor was the draw assistant.<\/p>\n
In-case the Kenya Junior Starlets qualifies for the second round they will meet the winner between Zimbabwe and Uganda. Interestingly CECAFA tams Kenya and Tanzania could meet in the final third round hurdle if they managed to sail through their first and second round matches.<\/p>\n
Rwanda have been placed against Zambia, while Djibouti take on DR Congo in other first round matches. It will be an all CECAFA affair when South Sudan take on Ethiopia.<\/p>\n
While the first round maches take center stage April 10-19th, the \u00a0second round matches of the qualifiers will take place between May 22-31st, and the final third round takes place between July 3-12th, 2026<\/p>\n
First round<\/p>\n
Niger vs Guinea<\/p>\n
Burkina Faso vs Benin<\/p>\n
Sierra Leone vs Core d\u2019Ivoire<\/p>\n
Tunisia vs Senegal<\/p>\n
Algeria vs Cameroon<\/p>\n
Togo vs Ghana<\/p>\n
Libya vs Liberia<\/p>\n
Rwanda vs Zambia<\/p>\n
DR Congo vs Djibouti<\/p>\n
South Sudan vs Ethiopia<\/p>\n
Malawi vs Burundi<\/p>\n
Botswana vs Tanzania<\/p>\n
Central African Republic vs South Africa<\/p>\n
Zimbabwe vs Uganda<\/p>\n
Namibia vs Kenya<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eight teams from the CECAFA Zone have been drawn to play in the FIFA U-17 Women\u2019s World Cup…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[80],"class_list":{"0":"post-17158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kenya","8":"tag-kenya"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/africa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}