Africa's national teams now know their route to the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022™ following the draw for the second round of the qualifying competition on Tuesday 21 January.
The ceremony was held at The Nile Ritz-Carlton in Cairo, Egypt and saw the 14 first-round winners and the 26 highest-ranked African nations in the FIFA/Coca-Cola World Ranking drawn into ten groups of four.
Draw results:
Group A: Algeria, Burkina Faso, Niger, Djibouti Group B: Tunisia, Zambia, Mauritania, Equatorial Guinea Group C: Nigeria, Cape Verde Islands, Central African Republic, Liberia Group D: Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Mozambique, Malawi Group E: Mali, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda Group F: Egypt, Gabon, Libya, Angola Group G: Ghana, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia Group H: Senegal, Congo, Namibia, Togo Group I: Morocco, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Sudan Group J: Congo DR, Benin, Madagascar, Tanzania
The second round is scheduled to begin in October 2020, when 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.
Some of the standout fixtures include Cameroon v Côte d'Ivoire, two teams with World Cup finals pedigree, South Africa v Zimbabwe and Egypt v Gabon, the last of which will see elite English Premier League forwards Mohamed Salah and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang headlining their sides.