As tickets go on sale in Nigeria

Rwanda’s football governing body, Ferwafa is yet to receive its allocation of tickets for the 2010 World Cup. The tickets are supposed to be distributed by Match Hospitality, Fifa’s exclusive hospitality rights holder for the Fifa 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Ferwafa Chief Executive Officer Jules Kalisa confirmed yesterday that they are still waiting for their portion.

"We requested for the tickets and we’re still waiting for the response from Fifa, but I think we shall get the feed back as early as next week,” Kalisa said.

Rwanda is expected to receive at least 200 World Cup tickets from the world football governing body.

Though Rwanda is waiting for her allocation, March Hospitality has announced the start of sales of tickets in Nigeria for the Confederations Cup in June and the 2010 World Cup across the various stadiums in South Africa. Each Fifa member association is allowed an allocation of World Cup tickets.

Fifa are concerned with the potential damage that may arise from the global economic crisis, despite tickets for the showpiece event selling well.

The 2010 Fifa World Cup will be the 19th Fifa World Cup, which is scheduled to take place between June 11 and July 11 2010 in South Africa.

Africa was chosen as the host for the 2010 World Cup as part of a new policy to rotate the event between football confederations (which was later abandoned in October 2007).

Five African nations including Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Egypt and South Africa placed bids to host the 2010 World Cup.

Following the decision of the Fifa Executive Committee not to allow co-hosted tournaments, Tunisia withdrew from the bidding process.

The committee also decided not to consider Libya’s solo bid as it no longer met all the stipulations laid down in the official list of requirements.

After one round of voting, the winning bid was announced by Fifa president Sepp Blatter at a media conference on 15 May 2004 in Zurich.

South Africa was awarded the rights to host the tournament, defeating Morocco and Egypt.

As the host nation, South Africa qualifies automatically for the tournament. However, South Africa is the first host since 1934 to participate in World Cup qualifiers.

This is because the Caf qualifiers also serve as the qualifying tournament for the 2010 African Cup of Nations, for which South Africa had to qualify separately. Like the previous tournament, the defending champions Italy do not qualify automatically.

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