Africa's dreamers learn paths on road to Qatar 2022

Draw for the second round of African qualifying for Qatar 2022

Africa’s 40 national teams now know their paths to reach 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 Premier League forwards Mohamad Salah and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang headlining their sides.

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