TANZANIA Mainland Premier League champions Young Africans have flown out for their pre-season tour of South Africa in preparation for the 2024/25 campaign.

The first-team squad led by head coach Miguel Gamondi travelled to South Africa on Wednesday afternoon. 

The South African trip will see Wananchi play three games, spread out across only eight days before returning to Dar es Salaam to continue with their preparations. 

On Saturday, Gamondi’s side will come up against German Bundesliga side FC Augsburg at Mbombela Stadium - one of the host stadiums of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. 

Augsburg, which was founded in 1907 and is the largest football club in Swabian Bavaria with 25,000 members, was promoted to the Bundesliga for the first time in 2011, where it has remained ever since.  

In the 2015/16 season, FCA played in the Europa League for the first time. Last season they finished 11th, three points behind a European spot. 

Next up will be a game against TS Galaxy, hosts of the Inaugural Mpumalanga Premier's International Cup, on Wednesday, July 24. 

As part of their stay in South Africa, Young Africans will engage in some community work in both Free State and Johannesburg. 

The last game of the tour sees the Tanzanian record-time winners, currently on a run of three successive Premier League titles, will come up against Nasreddine Nabi’s Kaizer Chiefs on Sunday, July 28, 2024, at 4:00 pm at the Toyota Stadium, Bloemfontein. 

The two teams met last season in a pre-season encounter last year. 

Young Africans hosted their South African counterparts in Dar es Salaam as they wound up their Wiki ya Wananchi celebrations with the clash. 

Kaizer Chiefs are one of the most successful clubs in South Africa, having won 13 league titles and over 42 cup trophies, with one African Cup triumph in 2001. 

They are fondly known as "Amakhosi" by fans, a Zulu word meaning "kings" or "chiefs". 

Their headquarters is Kaizer Chiefs Village, in Naturena, six kilometres south of Johannesburg. 

Last month Kaizer Chiefs announced former Young Africans coach Nabi as their new boss. 

The 58-year-old Tunisian coached Young Africans from 2021 to 2023 before heading to Morocco’s FAR Rabat, from where he joined Amakhosi. 

Young Africans will travel back to Tanzania on July 30, a week before facing their arch-rivals Simba in the Community Shield semi-final match at the Benjamin Mkapa Stadium.