Rwanda’s football governing body (Ferwafa) president Alphonse Munyantwari has urged the national team to take CECAFA senior Challenge Cup seriously to be able to end their trophy drought.

The CECAFA 2024 edition will be held in Zanzibar from June 29 to July 14 and it will potentially feature countries beyond the CECAFA region, with non-members set to be invited.

Ferwafa confirmed that Rwanda’s Amavubi will take part in the tournament and Munyatwari hopes the team will put up a better performance compared to the previous seditions.

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"Don't worry, the national team will participate in CECAFA. We are going to take the tournament seriously and our team will do better,” Munyantwari said.

"We have to focus on these games. It is a good competition for our players. We'll be taking the tournament very seriously and we must prepare well so that we can do better,” he added

Amavubi haven’t participated in the competition since the 2017 edition in Kenya, when they were eliminated from the group stages.

The last CECAFA edition was held in 2019 in Uganda, but Rwanda did not participate. The competition did not take place in 2020, 2021 and 2022 due to the Covid19 pandemic, according to organisers.

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Rwanda won CECAFA Senior Challenge Cup once from their last nine appearances in the tournament. Their only trophy was in 1999 when they beat Kenya 3-1 in the final held at Amahoro Stadium.