The national football team (Amavubi) is scheduled to play three international friendly matches, against South Africa, Congo Brazzaville, and the Democratic Republic of Congo in July and August, Times Sport has established.

Amavubi stars will play Bafana Bafana on July 25 in Johannesburg. They will follow this with a game against Congo on August 27 in Brazzaville before taking on DR Congo two days later in Kinshasa.

But before the games against Congo Brazzaville and DRC, Johnny McKinstry’s team will have a special two-week training camp in Scotland from August 2-19. According to the president of Rwanda Football Federation, Vincent Nzamwita, the training camp and friendly matches are aimed at preparing the team ahead of Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers as well as 2016 African Championship (CHAN) which will be staged in Kigali from January 16-February 7.

"We are doing this because we need to have a strong and well prepared team ahead of the upcoming competitions,” Nzamwita told Times Sport.

Rwanda will host AFCON 2017 qualifiers Group H opponents, Ghana on September 5 at Amahoro stadium while Mozambique will play away to Mauritius. Amavubi are second in the group, level on three points with Ghana, who beat Mauritius 7-1 while Amavubi won 1-0 away to Mozambique.

However, Mckinstry will be without APR players, who will be competing in this year’s CECAFA Kagame Cup in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania from July 11-25.

This will be the second time that Rwanda face Congo Brazzaville.

Last year, under head coach Stephen Constantine, in AFCON 2014 qualifiers, Rwanda lost to Congo Brazzaville 2-0 before Amavubi won the second leg 2-0 and went on to win on penalty shootout.

However, Rwanda was disqualified by AFCON organising committee after Congo appealed to CAF that Rwanda had used an inellegible player, Daddy Birori also as known as Tady Etekiema in the first leg match in Point Noir.

editorial@newtimes.co.rw