Botswana, Zambia and the Sasol-sponsored Banyana Banyana will be the three representatives of the COSAFA region at the upcoming TotalEnergies CAF Women’s Africa Cup of Nations (WAFCON) which kicks off in Morocco from 5-26 July 2025.
South Africa are the defending champions, a title they won in 2022 in where Zambia reached the semi-finals while Botswana were quarterfinalists.
The three countries have clubbed together to play in a Tri-Nations tournament – helping each other to fine-tune their WAFCON preparations – which implies that it is not going to be easy going for the trio, who have previously played against each other.
South Africa is the highest ranked in this tournament on continent, occupying the second position (54 in the world) after Nigeria, while Zambia is fourth (64th) and Botswana 32nd (153rd).
The first match will see Banyana locking horns with Botswana on Wednesday (28 May 2025).
This will be followed by the clash between Zambia and Botswana’s Mares on Saturday (31 May 2025), with the Copper Queens and the African Champions rounding off the tournament on Tuesday (3 June 2025).
All the games will be held at the Lucas Moripe Stadium in Atteridgeville, near Pretoria and kick off is at 3pm for the fixtures.
The three coaches – Desiree Ellis of South Africa, Nora Hauptle from Zambia and Botswana’s Alex Matete – faced the media to talk about the Tri-Nations tournament.
Here’s what they had to say:
Nora Hauptle:
Head Coach – Zambia Senior Women’s National team
“It’s a pleasure to be here, coming out of a challenging time. Two weeks ago, we had elections at our FA, and we have a new president, and I had positive talks with our new president unfortunately today our FA got locked in and this is locked by protests, so operational wise it’s not easy to act at the moment but we just managed to get the team on the flight. For me when we look on the sporting side and we’re looking forward to face South Africa and Botswana I think it’s a great tournament. We have all qualified for the WAFCON. We have with us the current champion, so for us it’s of course to continue our “Copper to Gold Mission” – that’s what we call it. It’s the first time that we have all the international players together in, so for me it’s quite a pleasure to go on the pitch to work with our top players to prepare the team and to have good challenges against Botswana in South Africa.”
Alex Malete:
Head Coach – Botswana Senior Women’s National Team
“I think the tournament is very close, not far – maybe six weeks from today so it’s all about refining the details. But we’ve had a short camp before these two games so we’re just waiting on team tactics and then after the games we’ll have to revisit the videos, reflect and then work on final small details and some principles of the game. I think the two games will really tell us where we are, and how far we are in terms of peak performance before the tournament starts. So, the two games come at the time when we really need them against one of the two best teams in Africa.”
Desiree Ellis:
Head Coach – South Africa Senior Women’s National Team:
“I won’t say weeks, I’ll say hours because we measure it in terms of training sessions which is actually around the corner and it’s that not many training sessions left. But it’s an opportunity especially for our players coming back from injury to test where they are at, the senior group, the more experienced group but there’s also to look at what we still need to work on. We are working on a few different things because we’ve learned from 2016 to 2018 to 2022, we played differently and to have more options in the way we play and in certain tactics so this will help us to see what we still need to work on. As I said the ever-improving Botswana and Zambia being to back-to-back Olympics, so they’ve got that experience as well and as coach knows the under 17s qualifying for back-to-back World Cups it does bring that little bit of experience as well. So, we will have to test where we at and what we still need to work on and it’s going to be a real test for us especially having some of the players back from injury to see where they’re at. The next camp is just refining everything and seeing what we can add to our team.”
By Matlhomola Morake
