Africa is heading into a major football strategy meeting with something unusual to analyse: its strongest collective performance at a FIFA World Cup.
The Confederation of African Football will bring presidents of its 54 member associations, national-team coaches, technical leaders and international experts to Sal, Cabo Verde, from 7 to 9 October for a strategy conference focused partly on extracting lessons from the 2026 World Cup.
A record 10 African teams competed at the expanded tournament. According to CAF’s review, nine reached the Round of 32, Egypt and Morocco progressed to the Round of 16 and Morocco reached the quarter-finals for a second consecutive World Cup.
From results to structures
The question facing CAF is what produced that performance and which parts can be replicated across the continent.
The conference programme includes discussions on coaching, youth development, women’s football, technical structures and preparation for the 2030 World Cup. Coaches involved in the 2026 campaign will be central to the discussions alongside football administrators and technical experts.
That matters because international tournament performance is only one measure of football development. Strong national teams can coexist with weak domestic leagues, limited youth infrastructure, unstable club finances and shortages of elite coaching opportunities.
African coaches move closer to the centre
CAF has increasingly emphasised the role of African coaches and technical leadership. The strategy meeting will include coaches who led African teams at the World Cup as the confederation considers how coaching education and local technical capacity can be strengthened.
The 2026 results provide a useful evidence base. Rather than discussing African football development entirely in the abstract, participants can compare preparation models, coaching structures, player pathways and federation systems across the teams that performed in North America.
The 2030 benchmark
The next World Cup gives CAF a clear timeline. The task is not simply to reproduce the number of teams that reached the knockout stage in 2026, but to determine whether African football can build institutions capable of producing competitive teams consistently.
That means the discussion in Cabo Verde will have to extend beyond senior national teams. Youth competitions, coaching education, women’s football, club structures and domestic development systems all shape the pool of players and technical staff available at international level.
The conference is therefore less important as a celebration of 2026 than as a test of whether CAF can translate a successful tournament into measurable technical priorities for the next cycle.
Sources: CAF — Strategy Conference dates and key issues; CAF — review of Africa’s 2026 World Cup campaign.
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