mwanasoka bora afrika

BBC audiences vote for African Footballer of the Year 2007

Football lovers across Africa can now start voting to decide which player should be crowned African Footballer of the Year 2007. For the first time a short list of five players has been drawn up by football experts from every country in Africa and fans have up until 17.00 GMT on Friday 4 January 2008 to vote.

The shortlist includes Arsenal's Emmanuel Adebayor from Togo, Chelsea's Didier Drogba from the Ivory Coast and Michael Essien from Ghana, Barcelona's Samuel Etoo from Cameroon and Sevilla's Frederic Kanoute from Mali.

The judges selected them for their individuality, technical ability, teamwork, consistency and fair play and the winner will be announced in a special ceremony in the Ghanaian capital Accra on Friday, 1 February 2008. The ceremony takes place after the group stages of the Africa Cup of Nations tournament.

Audiences can vote online at www.bbc.co.uk/africanfootball and send a text with the word vote followed by the surname of their favourite player to +44 77 86 20 20 25.

Fans wanting to discuss the pros and cons of their favourite players can take part in the BBC's sports programme Fast Track every Monday and Friday at 16.00 GMT.

Its presenter Farayi Mungazi said: "The final award will be voted for exclusively by the fans, which is always fantastic and they have a hard job as all five short-listed players are wonderfully gifted.

I also want the fans to tune into Fast Track and debate with others right across the continent who should win; maybe they feel someone very important has been left out or they just want to tell the rest of us what they think. Whatever their opinion, we want to hear from them."

Over 12,000 football fans voted in the competition last year crowning this year's nominee, Michael Essien, the winner for 2006.

Other previous winners include Egyptian Mohamed Barakat, Senegal's El-Hadji Diouf, Ghana's Sammy Kuffour and Nigeria's Jay Jay Okocha.
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