[9] The conception of this tournament came on 11 September 2007 during a CAF Executive Committee in Johannesburg, South Africa, with the aim being to give homegrown players opportunities to represent their nations and promote their home leagues globally.

In Group B, Ghana and DR Congo qualified for the knockout stages with Zimbabwe and Libya eliminated.

In the semi-finals, Ghana defeated Senegal on penalties whereas DR Congo beat Zambia to advance to the final.

Zambia nonetheless finished their inaugural CHAN campaign on a high after defeating Senegal in the third-place match.

DR Congo defeated Ghana 2–0 in the final at the same stadium that opened the tournament to became the inaugural champions, thus in the process ending a 35-year wait for an international trophy win of any sort.

Cameroon and South Africa won all their group stage matches, but ended up losing to Angola and Algeria respectively in the quarter-finals.

The second tournament editions hosts Sudan thus finished their campaign off on a high with third place and bronze medals after beating Algeria 1–0.

After 6 penalties per side, Libya won their inaugural CHAN title and their first continental title in its history, which at the time was more than impressive given than they won a single match in the group stage against Ethiopia and went undefeated through consecutive draws and penalty shoot-out wins.

[17] One of the main reasons why Morocco applied to be an organizer is because it was looking to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup, so the tournament represented one of the country's last chances to show itself as a strong candidate.

The final pitted hosts Morocco and Nigeria; both teams were undefeated throughout that edition of the tournament and only had a draw to their credit in their respective group stages.

Eighteen teams were supposed to be contesting in this edition, which would have been an increase of 2 teams from the previous edition in 2020;[23][24][25] but defending champions Morocco were unable to defend their title due to political tensions with Algerian authorities which began with Algeria's unilaterally decision in 2021 to close its airspace to Moroccan flights, including and especially its official carrier Royal Air Maroc.

On 21 July 2016, French energy and petroleum giant TotalEnergies secured an 8-year sponsorship package from CAF to sponsor its competitions.