By Harry Awurumibe
The 14th edition of Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON), Morocco 2026, which also serves as African qualifiers for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup finals in Brazil, will be much tougher than the last tournament won by Nigeria’s Super Falcons after defeating the Atlas Lionesses of Morocco 3-2 in the epic final in Rabat in July 2025.
This is even as it will be a bit difficult for Nigeria to retain the WAFCON trophy the reigning African champions won at the expense of the host country Morocco to make it the 10th title for the West African nation since the tournament debuted in 1998 in Nigeria.
However, the 14th edition of the biggest women’s football competition in Africa, which is taking place in Morocco for the third consecutive time, from July 25 to August 15 2026, will feature 16 teams for the first time, expanding from 12 at the previous tournament.
Of the 16 qualified countries, nine also featured at the 2024 edition with three others, Botswana, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tunisia, who qualified in 2024, missing out this time, while Cabo Verde and Malawi will make their first appearances in the tournament.
Interestingly, as stated earlier, apart from the WAFCON trophy, teams will also be fighting for qualification tickets for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup to be hosted in Brazil.
The four semi-finalists will secure automatic qualification, while the losing quarter-finalists will enter a play-off to decide Africa’s two representatives in the inter-confederation play-offs. But this is where the cookies will crumble.
Without equivocation, the four FIFA Women’s World Cup qualification tickets will be fiercely contested, especially amongst Africa’s heavyweights like perennial FIFA Women’s World Cup campaigners Nigeria; emerging African force Morocco; former WAFCON champions South Africa, and Zambia who represented the continent in the last edition in Australia and New Zealand.
Others who have tasted the allure of FIFA Women’s World Cup finals before and would like to fight for return tickets to the mundial are Ghana’s Black Queens and the Indomitable Lionesses of Cameroon respectively.
With the likes of the West African trio of Senegal, Burkina Faso, and Mali, also in the mix, the number of teams to contest for the four automatic tickets for the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup and play-off have expanded.
This expansion should be a source of worry for Nigeria because the ongoing FIFA World Cup finals in the USA, Mexico, and Canada have clearly shown that there are no longer minors in football if a small African nation like Cape Verde could hold two former FIFA World Cup champions Spain and Uruguay to 0-0 draws as well as nearly embarrassing Argentina in the knockout stage, then the upcoming WAFCON will not be a tea party for Nigeria.
For this reason, the battle cry for Super Falcons to achieve set targets in Morocco is “all hands on deck” because any type of distractions from any quarter, including government officials undue interference, football administrators’ meddling, negative criticisms by sports journalists, protests by players/officials before and during the tournament will be counter productive for Super Falcons campaign.
Luckily, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) is not owing the Super Falcons a dime from the last WAFCON participation in Morocco as all their entitlemets were fully paid them with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s promise of 100,000 dollars per player plus houses being the only outstanding, although it has been reliably gathered that the NSC Chairman, Mallam Shehu Dikko is on top of the matter.
Perhaps, to avoid the delays in the release and disbursements of Super Falcons’ match entitlements as witnessed in the last edition in Morocco, the Commission and its agency, the NFF, in their wisdom have set up what they called Super Falcons WAFCON Welfare Committee to coordinate the welfare of the team this time around.
The setting up of the Committee may have inadvertently removed the heat of camp allowances and match bonuses for players and backroom staff from the already stretched federation overseeing 11 national teams.
They are Super Eagles, Super Falcons, Home-based Eagles, U-23 Olympic Team, Flying Eagles, Golden Eaglets, Falconets, Flamingos, Super Sand Eagles, Fustal Eagles, and Five-A-Side respectively.
Harry Awurumibe, a foremost women’s football journalist, writes from Abuja
