The Confederation of African Football (CAF) have appreciated the progress made in the preparation for the 2016 African Nations Championship slated for January 16 to February 7, but challenged the Local Organizing Committee to speed up work on accommodation facilities in Huye District.

This was announced on Wednesday during a visit to Huye of the CAF delegation headed by its vice-president Almamy Kabele Camara. Also in the delegation were Prime Minister Anastase Murekezi and the Minister of Sports and Culture, Julienne Uwacu.  

The visit was aimed at assessing the preparations works for the CHAN 2016 in Huye District. They visited various infrastructures including the Huye stadium which has capacity to accommodate 10,000 people, and the Kamena ground which will serve the training.

It is the third visit by the CAF officials; the last was in June this year. The continental tournament will be hosted in three cities—City of Kigali, Huye and Rubavu Districts.

 "What they continue to request us is to speed up the construction work for the stadium, the training grounds and the hotels so that everything is available early enough so that players can do (test) training to ensure that they will be safe for the competition,” Minister Uwacu said after inspection of the facilities.

She acknowledged that accommodation remains the biggest problem in Huye District as there are still few hotels, "Mainly in Huye, aside from the stadium and the training ground, there is a need for accommodations. In Kigali (City) and Rubavu (District) there are many hotels compared to here (Huye). 

However, the minister Uwacu noted that they are hopeful the issue of accommodation will be addressed soon, "Apart from the few already existing hotels, there are others which are under construction and we are confident they will be ready before end of November.”

"Business people in the area know that this is big business. Hosting CHAN and accommodating players and the delegations is a business which will earn good money, so they are speeding up work so that the hotels will be available in time,” she explained.

On his part, CAF vice president Kabele said they are satisfied with the progress made so far, "Since we have been here (for the third inspection visit), we are satisfaction with the significant steps that has been taken on all the facilities that we have visited.”