2015 AFCON: Nations brace up for final showdown

All 16 qualified teams are in camp fine-tuning preparations for the competition.

With less than eleven days to go to the kick off of the 2015 edition of the Africa Cup of Nations in Equatorial Guinea, all the 16 teams qualified for the tournament have stepped up preparations. All of them are in camp, training and playing warm up matches. Some countries have even published the final list of 23 players to take part in the competition.

Tunisia for example went into camp since January 2nd and have scheduled warm up matches against Algeria and Mali. Burkina Faso travelled to South Africa which gave them good luck during the last edition of the tournament, from where they will leave directly for Equatorial Guinea.

The Azingo National of Gabon are in Morocco where they are scheduled to play a friendly match against Senegal who are equally engaged in the competition. The Democratic Republic of Congo is also going to play a friendly against Cape Verde on January 10th in Senegal.

After a fifteen-year drought, the Republic of Congo is making its comeback to the continental stage after winning the trophy in 1972. Ghana is training in Spain with 26 players. Cameroon will also play a friendly against the Democratic Republic of Congo at the Mfandena sports complex tomorrow. It is worthy to note that most of the teams qualified are playing friendly matches among themselves as if to test themselves before the tournament.

While teams prepare on the pitch for the tournament, organizers are equally busy putting finishing torches on the preparation. Besides renovating and upgrading the sport infrastructure, the transport and telecommunication infrastructure have been improved to ease the movement of the over 100.000 people expected to visit the country for the tournament. Given the ebola scare which made Morocco to shy away from hosting the competition, the local organizing committee has outlined measures to combat the disease before and during the competition.

As such, visitors arriving at Malabo international airport from abroad will have their temperature checked. Passengers will be photographed and their fingerprints taken. They will also be expected to fill in medical history forms and show yellow fever certificates.

Fans at stadiums will be provided with hand sanitizer at the turnstiles. Some 30 Cuban doctors, who are specialists in epidemiology, have been drafted in to help fight the disease