Pierre Emerick Aubameyang has ended Yaya Toure's four-year reign as African Player of the Year by winning the 2015 award after a prolific year with Borussia Dortmund. Aubameyang got 143 points ahead of Manchester City and Ivory Coast star Yaya Toure, who scored 136 points and was bidding for a fifth successive 'African Player of the Year' award. Toure won the African Nations Cup with Ivory Coast in 2015.
Aubameyang became the first winner of the award from Gabon.
Ghana forward Andre Ayew was third in the vote. The result was announced Thursday.
Aubameyang is the leading scorer in the Bundesliga with 18 goals from 17 games.
He has also had his best start to a season since arriving from Saint-Etienne in 2013, scoring 18 goals in 17 Bundesliga games and 27 in all competitions.
That kind of form has seen him linked with a winter transfer window move away from the Bundesliga with Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United all linked with him.
Frenchman Herve Renard, who led the Ivory Coast to the 2015 African Cup of Nations, was named Coach of the Year.
This was his second such award after the 47-year-old also led Zambia to upset favourites Ivory Coast to lift a first-ever Nations Cup trophy in 2012.
Compatriot Bruno Metsu has also clinched two Coach of the Year Awards when he was in charge of Senegal in 2001 and 2002.
Ivory Coast were named Team of the Year.
Other award winners included Cameroon's Gaell Enganamouit (Women's Player of the Year), TP Mazembe (Club of the Year), Nigeria Under-23 midfielder Oghenekaro Etebo (Most Promising Talent) and Nigeria's Under-17 star Victor Osimhen (Youth Player of the Year).
Charles Kumi Gyamfi (Ghana) and Samuel Mbappe Leppe (Cameroon) were recognised as African Legends.
Gabon president Ali Bongo Ondimba paid tribute to Aubameyang who will be key to the country's hopes of lifting the African Cup of Nations on home soil in 2017.
"The epitome of commitment and success at the highest level, this exceptional Gabonese demonstrated dazzling intuition and an attack of unparalleled velocity," said the Gabon president in a statement.
Africa Team