Cameroon’s WAFCON Win Comes With a $2m Prize, CAF’s Biggest Ever

Cameroon collected a $2 million winners’ cheque after beating Malawi in Rabat to claim a maiden Women’s Africa Cup of Nations title, the single biggest prize money in the competition’s history and the clearest marker yet of how fast CAF has moved to reprice its flagship women’s tournament. The champions’ prize has doubled from $1 million at the last edition, itself a doubling from $500,000 the edition before that. CAF says the winners’ purse has now risen 900 per cent since the current leadership took office, from $200,000 to $2 million. Malawi’s runners-up finish is worth $750,000, a 50 per cent increase on the previous cycle. Algeria, who beat host nation Morocco on penalties in the third-place playoff, take home $550,000, up 43 per cent. Morocco finish fourth.

The overall prize fund climbed 67 per cent to $5.8 million, from $3.475 million, and every one of the tournament’s 16 teams, a field expanded for the first time in WAFCON’s history, was guaranteed $150,000 in participation funding, up from $125,000. CAF put the scale of the shift plainly in a statement: