Football Kenya Federation (FKF) President Hussein Mohammed has said hosting the 2024 African Nations Championships (Chan) has been a learning experience for the Federation and the country.
Speaking during the Fixing the Nation show on NTV on Monday, Mr Mohammed said his team has learned key lessons from hosting the tournament.
"There are things that we did not know before hosting Chan; we are now learning them the hard way," Hussein said.
Fixing The Nation show streams on weekdays from 6am to 10am across all Nation Media Group platforms.
Mr Mohammed also noted the challenges that the country has experienced while hosting Chan emanate from the country not having hosted a major tournament in 38 years.
Fans fill Tom Mboya Street in Nairobi on August 17, 2025, rallying behind the Harambee Stars as they face Zambia at Kasarani Stadium, in a spirited event hosted by Nairobi City County.
Photo credit: Dennis Onsongo| Nation Media Group
Kenya hosted the All Africa Games in 1987, and Mr Mohammed stated that the lack of sufficient institutional memory meant that the country was starting from scratch when hosting Chan 2024.
"To bridge that gap in knowledge, I insisted on sending some of our personnel to the 2025 Women's African Cup of Nations hosted in Morocco. The team participated in the organisation of that tournament and gained knowledge and experience that we have applied at Chan 2024," Hussein said.
"I have also put a programme in place to ensure that we have more personnel being involved in the organisation of upcoming major tournaments like Afcon 2025 and the 2026 Fifa World Cup so that we gain more experience and knowledge to enrich our plans of organising Afcon in 2027," Hussein said.
Bit by the bug of hosting tournaments, the FKF President also revealed that the federation hopes to continue building on that capacity by bidding for the hosting rights of a major football tournament in 2028.
"After Afcon 2027, we want Kenya to host another big football competition in 2028," Hussein said without revealing the name of the tournament. However, chances are that it is the 2028 Women's African Cup of Nations which is scheduled to take place in that year.
He also addressed the issues that have plagued the organisation of the tournament, resulting from the high demand for tickets for Harambee Stars matches.
"We did not anticipate such hype," Hussein said, noting that attendance at matches in Tanzania and Uganda had initially discouraged them from setting up fan zones in the group matches.
Fans fill Tom Mboya Street in Nairobi on August 17, 2025, rallying behind the Harambee Stars as they face Zambia at Kasarani Stadium, in a spirited event hosted by Nairobi City County.
Photo credit: Dennis Onsongo| Nation Media Group
"However, after the Morocco game, we decided to bring the plan to set up fan zones forward. The plan was to have them after the quarterfinal stage because that is when we had anticipated the hype to have peaked with matches approaching the final."
On ticketing, Hussein said that Kenyans are visiting the ticketing purchase portal in large numbers and buying tickets at the rate of 200 tickets per minute.
"We have had 200,000 people trying to buy tickets to Harambee Stars," Hussein said.
