Thank you. I like the part of being back home because Tanzania occupies a very special place in our hearts in East Africa and in the continent. And that's why today is a very important visit, a very important day in the history of football in East Africa, in the history of football in Tanzania and in the history of football in Africa.
The main purpose for my visit is to emphasize the deep commitment from CAF, the 54 member associations and on the African continent that represents 54 African countries as well as to emphasize my personal deep commitment. I'm very thankful that I've got my vice president here from Ghana, second vice president of CAF who came all the way from Ghana to emphasize and re-emphasize the importance of this competition to African football. The most important competition, in fact the most important sporting event, the AFCON next year that's going to take place in Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda is the biggest sporting event on the African continent. I'm also grateful that my fifth vice president from Mozambique is with us to also on behalf of CAF and to emphasize with my vice presidents and with the secretary general of CAF and all of the staff from CAF and everybody else and I really want to express my deep personal gratitude to my brother Wallace because he phones me and says, 'President, I don't sleep enough. I'm working very hard to make sure that Tanzania is ready and to have this historic event.' I did not know that the last AFCON, I knew that the last AFCON took place in East Africa more than 50 years. So, they said, 'No, no, no.' But it's actually not more than 50 years because it's the first time that Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda are involved in this very important sporting event on the African continent.
My deep gratitude to our deputy minister. Thank you so much deputy minister and we had a good discussion with the minister who's out of the country and my deep gratitudes and I speak on behalf of the 54 CAF member associations who represent 54 African countries to express our deep gratitude to the prime minister of Tanzania, the president of Tanzania, Madame Samia and the people of Tanzania. So that we can work together and make the AFCON which is less than 9 months from now an enormous success. My the chairman of the LOC, thank you so much. Thank you so much. And my brother, thank you so much. The leadership of football, I see our chairman of African club association. Very proud of you. The good work that you're doing. I'm proud of the work that Wallace is doing for football and I'm very proud of the work that you're doing. And I know that our teams from Tanzania, Yanga and Simba and all the others will do well and make us proud.
And of course thank you to the media and what we will be doing. I arrived this morning and will be meeting with the leadership and we will be making further announcements. I've received several briefings this morning and later this evening I'll be going to Kenya for a meeting with President Ruto and the government of Kenya and the football leadership in Kenya. I was supposed, it was planned for me to go to Uganda tomorrow night to meet with President Museveni and the football leadership. But I did not know that there's a restriction that has been imposed that if you visit Uganda, you have to spend 21 days before you can go into America. So, I'll be going to the United Nations General Assembly next week. I've got meetings with about 13 heads of states and so I'll be, we've got people on the ground and I'll be tomorrow in contact with President Museveni and when I come back I'll make a special visit to Uganda.
This is as I said the most important sporting event. I was explaining earlier that 3.2 billion people all over the world were watching the AFCON in Morocco on TV live. We had about 6.5 billion digital views which means that 6.5 billion interventions engagements with the AFCON. AFCON Morocco took place during the AFCON and afterwards and 3.2 billion were watching it on TV and other broadcasting platforms. So AFCON is very important. Of course, it's about football and we love football and football is very very important to us. It's a very powerful tool that brings our people together. When the national team of Tanzania plays it's not about you come from Simba, you come from Yanga or you come from any other team. We are all Tanzanians and you represent the best from our country and you make us proud and it's a moment of special togetherness and pride for our people. The same applies when the Black Stars play in Ghana, the national team of Ghana and the national team of Mozambique and all the other national teams.
So I'm here to emphasize the deep commitment as I said of CAF, myself as president of CAF, the leadership of CAF to work together with the local organizing committee with our brother Wallace and our ministers and government, prime minister, our head of state Madame Samia. Despite all the challenges you will have seen in the media that there are challenges and we always deal with any undertaking in an honest and forthright manner including identifying areas on our side and I can talk for CAF where there are weaknesses and deficiencies so that we can correct them and improve them. So there's been a 21 person expert delegation that came to Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. They spent a lot of time here and we've got people in Kenya in Tanzania from CAF who are based permanently and I want to thank you for the good work you've been doing as our representative here. And the most important thing is to work together and including identifying those areas where there's a need for improvement and areas where we are falling behind and whether infrastructure development or stadiums or football pitches or the suites for our special guests and we're expecting a number of heads of state who will be visiting will be part of the AFCON next year.
So, I want to leave here with a positive message. I was told a few weeks ago, President Motsepe, Tanzania will never be ready to host the AFCON in 2027. I have to start thinking about plan B and plan C. And many of you see these negative media reports and I think some of them are misinformation. And I want to emphasize that from a CAF perspective and for me personally as a president of CAF there is no plan B. There is no plan C. There never will be a plan B. There never will be a plan C. We are going to work very hard in Tanzania. I'm in Tanzania today and I'll take a similar message to Kenya and later give the same message to Uganda. We're going to work together. And those areas where we are falling behind, we'll correct them. We'll fix them. I'm even more confident after the extensive report I've received this morning and the reports I continue to receive on an ongoing basis. We're going to work together and there are some areas where we need to accelerate our progress and there are some areas where as I said we are falling behind. I'm absolutely confident that when I come back I'll be back in January next year to do the final assessment and after January next year when I come back to Tanzania it will be for the start, for the commencement. When I said start I don't mean that necessarily the starting match will be in Tanzania we will still be talking about that we've received proposals both Kenya and Uganda and Tanzania are keen to host the AFCON 2027.
When we started African Football League, I was insistent that the first match should take place here in Tanzania because we wanted to build on the historic love of football in Tanzania in East Africa and that's partly why also when we were not ready for the CHAN which was enormously successful, I was very clear in my mind that we had to postpone the commencement of the CHAN because it was going to serve as an important learning experience for us in preparation for this important competition that's taking place next year. So I want to conclude by saying that I am more confident than ever before and this confidence is based on realism because I've been receiving reports on an ongoing basis and that's why it was important for me to come personally and to be briefed personally by our leadership across the board and it's very clear that there are indeed areas where we have to improve. There are indeed areas where we are falling behind and there are indeed areas where there are deficiencies and I'm even more satisfied now after the discussions and that's why it's important to make sure that the criticism that is going around the same criticism that I thought would disappear with Cameroon there was you know some of my brothers and sisters in CAF when there were problems in Cameroon said to me, 'President Motsepe, the feedback we get is you want the AFCON in Cameroon more than the Cameroonians themselves.' So I and that was incorrect because I knew the Cameroonians love football. The same criticism is emerging now. President Motsepe, you want the AFCON, President Motsepe, I'm now pronouncing it in Swahili. You want the AFCON in Tanzania more than the Tanzanians themselves, it's incorrect.
And when I hear this being said by my brothers and sisters who are leaders and they say this with good intentions and it's clear also that there's some wrong information indeed there are areas where we have to improve and we will improve but I think sometimes the deficiencies are being exacerbated. The areas that requires improvement are being exacerbated and it creates a wrong perception. So I want to thank all of you and once more thank you all of our brothers and sisters and thank the government, thank the prime minister and we are very clear in our minds that we are going to remain focused we're going to work very hard and those interventions that we've identified together we will implement them as a matter of urgency and I'm confident that when I come back to visit Tanzania in January, to visit Kenya in January, to visit Uganda in January, I will then confidently say I'm confident now, but I'm even more confident that at the time because already some of the urgent work where we were falling behind, there's a record. There has already been some urgent work that has already been accelerated that has been increased. So we have to remain positive. We have to remain optimistic. This will indeed be the most successful football event, sporting event that has ever taken place in Tanzania, in Kenya and Uganda and in East Africa.
One final point, there's a company, a marketing company called Nielsen when they did an assessment of the impact on the Moroccan economy of the AFCON 2025, 2026, their assessment was that the economy of Morocco benefited to the value of 1.8 billion, $1.8 billion from the AFCON that took place in Morocco in December last year and in January this year. So for us the AFCON is about a celebration of the enormous talent that we have on the continent and to show the rest of the continent the exceptional talent in Tanzania, in Kenya and Uganda and on the African continent. But it's also about building football infrastructure, making sure that our stadiums are world-class and the stadiums will be here to serve our people many years after the AFCON. The football pitches, the hotels, the hospitals, the transport. There's already been, I was very pleased when I was told that Uganda has never experienced such an abnormal amount of tourism that they experienced because of the CHAN that took place a year or so ago. So the AFCON first is about also uniting our people, uniting East Africa and making sure that we show the best of African football but also the best of unity, economic development, economic growth, job creation, investment through football.
Okay. So I'm going to stop here and ask the minister if there's any comment he want to make. Wallace and then we'll take questions and then we've got a meeting with the prime minister at 2:00 and you know we take questions from the media and we will then proceed afterwards. Okay. So you'll guide us. Minister, you want to make a few remarks?
