Samuel Kuffour, Samuel Eto'o and El Hadj Diouf have all confirmed they will attend the African Footballer of the Year awards on April 16.

Bayern Munich's Ghana defender Kuffour, Real Mallorca's Cameroon striker Eto'o and Len's Senegal midfielder Diouf have all been nominated for this year's award and have confirmed they will all be present after problems last year. The second Confederation of African Football's awards night is set to be held in South Africa later this month, but concerns were raised about the presence of this year's nominees after last year's winner Patrick Mboma failed to attend.

Club duties in Italy forced Mboma to give the ceremony a miss, however, Aubrey Tau - from the organisers TV Africa - has confirmed that all three nominees have accepted their invitations to this year's event.

Kuffour, who helped Bayern win the European Champions League, the German league title and the Inter Continental trophy last year, is expected to fly to Johannesburg after his sides Champions League second-leg quarter-final clash with Real Madrid.

This year's show comes less than two months before the World Cup but Tau has promised that the event will be a colourful event that he hopes will far out do last year's.

He said: "We will be spending 3 million Rands (about ?210,000) and we expect the show to be better than last years."

Along with the decoration of the continent's best player, Senegal's French coach Bruno Metsu will be awarded Coach of the Year after steering the Lions of Teranga to World Cup qualification.

He will succeed Cameroon's Jean Paul Akono who won the prize last year for guiding the Indomitable Lions to Olympic triumph in Sydney, Australia.