The main headquarters of CAF was first situated within the offices of the Sudanese Football Association in Khartoum until it experienced a fire outbreak and then moved to a town near Cairo, Egypt until 2002.

Youssef Mohamad was the first general secretary and Abdel Aziz Abdallah Salem, the first president.

[6][7] CAF launched a competition for all African composers to create its anthem without lyrics to reflect the cultural patrimony and the music of Africa on 18 September 2007.

Some African states with limited or no international recognition have official national teams, but none have been considered for CAF membership.

Shortly after formation, CAF organized the Africa Cup of Nations (abbreviated AFCON) in 1957 and it has since become its flagship competition.

Faced with undisclosed decline in popularity of local competitions and the mass exodus of homegrown footballers to Europe, Asia and the Americas in the 1990s and early 2000s, CAF launched the African Nations Championship (alternatively, though not widely used, the Championship of African Nations (CHAN)) on 11 September 2007 and began organization two years later, to address this issue.

CAF also organizes qualification matches for "promising future female footballers" at both the Under-20 and Under-17 levels, launched in 2002 and 2008 respectively, both of which crowns no champions but instead qualifies 2 teams to compete at the FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup and the FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup respectively.

First held in 1964 as the African Cup of Champions Clubs (simply known sometimes as the African Cup) and rebranded in 1997 as the CAF Champions League, this "prestigious" football club competition currently features the champions of top-division leagues of CAF member associations and the runners-up teams of the league classifications of member associations the top 12 ranked national associations as documented by the CAF 5-year ranking system.

The Afro-Asian Club Championship was an annual football match jointly organized between CAF and the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) between the winners of the CAF Champions League and the winners of the AFC Champions League between 1987 and 1999.

[17] On 21 July 2016, French energy and petroleum giant, Total S.A., replaced Orange as the main sponsor with an 8-year sponsorship package from CAF for a value of €950 million[18] to support its competitions.