Fans in Ghana will have a foretaste of the Nations Cup this weekend

Ghana host Togo, the United Arab Emirates and Benin in a mini-football tournament this weekend.

According to officials, the four-nation tournament is to test Ghana's readiness to host football's Africa Cup of Nations in January.

"This is a test run for us to see whether we are ready," Paa Kwesi Plange, spokesman for the CAN 2008 Local Organising Committee, said.

"We have co-ordinators for accommodation, protocol, transportation, media, marketing and all.

"So at all these levels we are engaging all our co-ordinators as part of arrangements for the main tournament in January."

The tournament begins on Saturday, with a match between Benin and the United Arab Emirates.

On Sunday, Ghana take on Togo.

The winners of these two fixtures will meet in the final on 21 November to determine the winner of the tournament.

The Ghana Football Association (GFA) is spending about one million dollars to stage the four-nation tournament and hopes it will provide a good platform to further prepare the national team for the CAN 2008.

"At least we are going to get our objective of getting the boys to play two strong matches within a period of four or five days.

That for us means a lot," Fred Pappoe, Vice President of the GFA, said.

"These boys haven't played in Accra for about two years.

"Some of them haven't played in Accra at all and we wouldn't want to wait until January for them to be introduced to the city on a very electric competitive platform."

Togo are playing in this weekend's tournament as the replacement for Sudan, who were originally billed to participate but withdrew a couple of weeks before it was due to start.

This weekend's tournament takes place at the Ohene Gyan Sports Stadium in Accra.

Built in the 1951, the stadium has been specially renovated for the tournament in January.

In addition two new stadia were built in Sekondi in the west and Tamale in the north.