South Africa have been drawn to play against Botswana in their opening qualifier for the African Nations Championship (CHAN) which will be hosted by Kenya in 2018.

The draw‚ which took place in Libreville on Friday‚ pitted South Africa against their northern neighbour for a clash that will take place over two legs in July.

The first will be in Botswana on the weekend of July 15-16 and the return match will be in South Africa one week later.

The CHAN tournament is for home-based players only and the qualifiers are arranged regionally.

There are three places in the 16-team finals tournament for southern African countries and in order to qualify the winner of the Botswana-South Africa tie will meet Swaziland or Zambia in the last qualifying game in September.

Zimbabwe were given a relatively easy draw‚ needing to get past two of the Comoros Islands‚ Lesotho or Namibia‚ while the other spot is likely to go to either Angola or Mozambique.

The Confederation of African Football announced a record 49 entries for CHAN-2018‚ with only Tunisia among the major nations not participating.

They said they are to undergo a massive overhaul of their league structures and could not afford time on the calendar for the CHAN qualifiers.

Egypt‚ who have ignored the CHAN tournament up to now‚ have entered for the first time and must play Morocco for a place in the finals.

Hosts Kenya face an inspection from CAF in the coming months to see whether they are capable of hosting the tournament‚ otherwise it will be taken from them.

Two weeks ago CAF stripped Madagascar of the right go host the Under-17 Championship after they failed to upgrade any venues and on Friday announced that Gabon would step in as substitute hosts.

Gabon could also replace Kenya as CHAN-2018 hosts.

TMG Digital/TMG Sport