The Confederation of African Football (CAF) have announced that the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) tournament will be hosted by Gabon.

The 2017 competition was originally scheduled to take place in Libya, but political turmoil in the country forced a change to the host nation, and at the ongoing CAF General Assembly meeting the decision was taken to hand the hosting responsibility to Gabon.

The country previously co-hosted the 2012 edition of the competition along with Equatorial Guinea, and they have now been given the opportunity to organise the tournament on their own.

The next Nations Cup will take place in January and February, 2017, and the qualification campaign to decide the teams that will take part is set to commence in June this year.

The three countries that remained in the bidding to host the 2017 AFCON ahead of this executive meeting were Ghana, Gabon and Algeria, and all of the delegations were in Cairo to present to CAF, with the Gabonese eventually given the hosting honour.

Gabon will now have just under two years to prepare itself to welcome the best national teams that the continent has to offer, ensuring that the facilities and infrastructure are in place to host the tournament.

The previous AFCON ended on two months ago, and was held in Equatorial Guinea. Cote D’Ivoire defeated Ghana in a tense final which ended in favour of the Elephants by virtue of a penalty shootout.