September 9, 2023: Top news events to look out for today

Here is what you need to know in order to get up to speed with today’s happenings.

Sugar Sector Stakeholders Conference

Leaders from all the counties in the Lake region will today meet for day two of the Sugar Sector Stakeholders Conference that is being held at Masinde Muliro University.

The conference seeks to unlock challenges facing the sugar industry with the main focus being on the revival of five State-owned millers in the region.

It is a beehive of activity in the entire sugar belt that stretches from Kericho all the way to Busia as members of the National Assembly’s Finance and Planning committee together with their Agriculture committee counterparts have been camping in the region for stakeholder engagements.

Afcon qualifiers

Eight matches will be played today in the qualification round for the African Cup of Nations (AFCON) finals.

At the end of this qualifying round to be played this week, 24 nations will qualify for the Africa Cup of Nations tournament to be held in the Ivory Coast from January 13 to February 11, 2024.

Ghana, Angola and Tanzania have already qualified for January’s African Cup of Nations finals when they finished in the top two of their respective groups on Thursday, leaving only six more places to be decided in the next days for the 24-team tournament in the Ivory Coast.

Ghana and Angola finished one-two in Group E, while Tanzania forced an unlikely goalless draw away in Algeria to also go through.

All countries in Africa with the exception of Kenya and Zimbabwe have been competing in the AFCON qualifiers.

Kenya and Zimbabwe were booted out of AFCON qualifiers after failing to have their FIFA suspensions set aside before the qualifiers kicked off.

The football associations of both countries had been suspended for “political interference” and were only included in the draw for the qualifiers on the proviso they would be cleared by FIFA to compete.

Kenya had been included in Group C along with Cameroon, Namibia and Burundi. They had been scheduled to travel to Yaounde on June 4 for their pool opener.

Zimbabwe were in Group K with Morocco, South Africa and Liberia.

Euro qualifiers

Seven matches will be played today in the qualification round for the UEFA European Championship (Euro).

The European qualifiers for UEFA EURO 2024 run from March to November 2023, with the play-offs for the remaining finals places taking place on March 21 and March 26, 2024.

At the end of this qualifying round, 24 nations will qualify for the UEFA EURO 2024 to be held in Germany from June 14 to July 14, 2024.

Germany automatically qualified being the tournament’s host while Russia were kicked out of the qualifiers for invading Ukraine.