CAF World Cup 2022 First Round & AFCON U-23 Qualifiers: Everything You Need To Know

We’re in the first CAF international week since AFCON 2019. With a couple of different major tournament qualification games and international friendlies this week, Futaa offers you the information guide.

FIFA 2022 World Cup first stage Qualifiers

• Who participates?

The first stage of the qualification phase involves CAF’s 28 lowest-ranked teams nations that compete in 14 home & away leg ties.

Seeding

• Pot 1: Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Namibia, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Malawi, Togo, Sudan, Rwanda, Tanzania, Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Lesotho.
• Pot 2: Comoros, Botswana, Burundi, Ethiopia, Liberia, Mauritius,Gambia, South Sudan, Chad, São Tomé and Príncipe, Seychelles, Djibouti, Somalia, Eritrea.

AFCON U23 Qualifiers
AFCON U-23 Cup qualification is the competition that decides the best eight U23 African teams to participate in the upcoming 2019 Africa U-23 Cup of Nations in Egypt in November 2019.

The top four teams that will emerge at the finals in Egypt will qualify for the prestigious 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics men's football tournament in Japan.

• Who participates?

43 CAF nations, with the 13 best countries at the 2015 AFCON U-23 getting a bye to the second round qualifiers:

• Bye to second round: Algeria, Congo, Gabon, Ivory Coast, Mali, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone (Disqualified), South Africa, Tunisia, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
• First round: Angola, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, DR Congo (Disqualified), Equatorial Guinea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gambia (Withdrew), Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Libya, Malawi, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia (Withdrew), Niger, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, Seychelles, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda.

This week's World Cup 2022 Qualifiers and the 2019 AFCON U-23 qualifiers take place from Wednesday to Sunday.

Meanwhile, the higher-ranked CAF nations will compete in various international friendly across the continent.