Draw for the second round of African qualifying took place on Tuesday 21 January
40 teams in contention, including 14 sides who progressed from first round
Event was live streamed on FIFA.com and FIFA TV’s YouTube Channel
A total of 54 African nations will take part in the qualifying phase of the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™, but only five of them will get to represent their continent at the next edition of football’s flagship event. After the first round of fixtures, which were streamed live on FIFA.com last September, 40 selections are still in the running to represent the Mother Continent in Qatar.
On 21 January 2020, the draw for the second round of CAF’s qualifying competition was held in Cairo. Once again, FIFA.com users were able to follow everything with our live streaming on FIFA.com.
The draw in brief
When: 21 January 2020, 7:00 p.m. (local time) / 6:00 p.m. (CET)
Where: Cairo, Egypt
Live video streaming available on FIFA.com and FIFA TV’s YouTube channel
Please note: The live broadcast was not available in Algeria, Bahrain, Belarus, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, IR Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
Procedure
The 14 first-round winners join the top 26 African teams (based on the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking of December 2019) in the second round.
These 40 teams were divided into 10 groups of four.
In each group, the teams will play each other home and away in a mini-league format.
The ten group winners will progress to the third and final round, which will feature five two-legged play-off ties.
The five winners of these play-offs qualify for Qatar 2022.
Draw details
Ahead of the draw, the 40 teams were divided into four pots.
The pots were based on the teams’ World Ranking as of December 2019. The top 10 ranked teams went into Pot 1, the next 10 in Pot 2, and so on.
Each group consisted of one team from each pot.
In each group, the Pot 1 team occupied the first position, the Pot 2 team the second, and so on.
Composition of pots
Pot 1: Senegal, Tunisia, Nigeria, Algeria, Morocco, Ghana, Egypt, Cameroon, Mali, Congo DR
Pot 2: Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, South Africa, Guinea, Uganda, Cape Verde, Gabon, Benin, Zambia, Congo
Pot 3: Madagascar, Mauritania, Libya, Mozambique, Kenya, Central African Republic, Zimbabwe, Niger, Namibia, Guinea-Bissau
Pot 4: Malawi, Angola, Togo, Sudan, Rwanda, Tanzania, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Liberia, Djibouti
Did you know…?
Thirteeen African teams have already taken part in the World Cup, and they are all still in the running to grace the 2022 edition: South Africa, Algeria, Angola, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Morocco, Nigeria, Congo DR, Senegal, Tunisia and Togo.
The first appearance by an African nation at the World Cup was in 1934, when Egypt participated in that edition hosted by Italy.
Cameroon are the CAF team with the most appearances in the competition (7), ahead of Nigeria (6), and Morocco and Tunisia (5). In terms of games won, Nigeria lead the way with six wins from 21 matches, ahead of Ghana (4/12), Cameroon (4/23), Senegal (3/8) and Algeria (3/13).
The furthest any African team has gone at the World Cup is the quarter-finals. Cameroon were the first to do so in 1990, before Senegal (2002) and Ghana (2010) emulated the feat.
Africa's top scorers at the World Cup are Ghana's Asamoah Gyan (6), Cameroon's Roger Milla (5) and Nigeria's Ahmed Musa (4).
At the most recent edition in 2018, Africa was represented by Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal and Tunisia.
