The Council for East and Central Africa Football Associations (Cecafa) has called off the 2018 Senior Challenge Cup for lack of a host nation.
Kenya in August pulled out of hosting the tourney for lack of funds with the regional football body now forced to cancel the event.
Kenya had been handed the hosting rights after they beat Zanzibar on penalties to win last year’s trophy.
Cecafa secretary general Nicholas Musonye however said the decision was reached to allow the body to align regional tournaments to the FIFA calendar.
“We are now aligning our regional competition calendar and we will adopt dates picked by FIFA. It will mean we reshuffle some of the competition including the Kagame Cup and Senior Challenge Cup, which will now be played in June,” Musonye said.
Cecafa has been grappling with issues of finance and have on several occasions been bailed host nations.
Musonye said talks are underway with the Confederations of Africa Football (CAF) to sponsor some of the competitions, which are critical in raising the standards of the sports in the region.
FIFA has given out one million U.S. dollars to go towards football development in the East Africa region and Musonye said they are putting in place structures to utilize the funds and grow talent.
“It is important that every year we organize the tournaments. They are critical in the development of players. We start off with the Under-20 Championships in Uganda this December,” he said.
