The African section of the

2022 FIFA World Cup qualification The 2022 FIFA World Cup qualification was the FIFA World Cup qualification, qualifying process which decided the 31 teams that would join hosts Qatar national football team, Qatar, who received an automatic spot, at the 2022 FIFA World Cup. Par ...

acted as qualifiers for the

2022 FIFA World Cup The 2022 FIFA World Cup was the 22nd FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial world championship for national football teams organized by FIFA. It took place in Qatar from 20 November to 18 December 2022, after the country was awarded the hosting ri ...

, to be held in Qatar, for national teams which are members of the

Confederation of African Football The Confederation of African Football (CAF) is the administrative and controlling body for association football, beach soccer, and futsal in Africa. It was established on 8 February 1957 at the ''Grand Hotel'' in Khartoum, Sudan. At the FIFA Co ...

(CAF). A total of five slots in the final tournament were available for CAF teams.

Format

A previous proposal to merge the qualification rounds for the

2021 Africa Cup of Nations The 2021 Africa Cup of Nations (also referred to as AFCON 2021 or CAN 2021), known as the TotalEnergies 2021 Africa Cup of Nations for sponsorship reasons, was the 33rd edition of the Africa Cup of Nations, the biennial international men's ass ...

with those for the World Cup was turned down after a CAF meeting on 11 June 2018. CAF reverted to the format used for the

2014 FIFA World Cup qualification The 2014 FIFA World Cup qualification was a series of tournaments organised by the six FIFA#Structure, FIFA confederations. The 2014 FIFA World Cup featured 32 teams, with one place reserved for the host nation, Brazil national football team, Bra ...

competition. *First round: 28 teams (ranked 27–54) played home-and-away over two legs. The 14 winners advanced to the second round. *Second round: 40 teams (ranked 1–26 and 14 first round winners) were divided into ten groups of four teams to play home-and-away round-robin matches. The ten group winners advanced to the third round. *Third round: Ten second round group winners played home-and-away over two legs. The five winners qualified for the World Cup.

Entrants

All 54 FIFA-affiliated football associations from CAF entered qualification. The FIFA World Rankings of July 2019 were used to determine which nations would compete in the first round. For seeding in the second and third round draws, the most recent FIFA Rankings prior to those draws were used.

Libya Libya, officially the State of Libya, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the north, Egypt to Egypt–Libya border, the east, Sudan to Libya–Sudan border, the southeast, Chad to Chad–L ...

was threatened with exclusion from the qualifiers if it failed to pay debts to their former coach

Javier Clemente Javier Clemente Lázaro (; born 12 March 1950) is a Spanish football manager and former player who played as a midfielder. Forced to retire from playing in his early 20s through injury, he embarked on a coaching career with his first managerial ...

. However, Libya complied after

FIFA The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (), more commonly known by its acronym FIFA ( ), is the international self-regulatory governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal. It was founded on 21 May 1904 to o ...

gave them a new deadline.

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered to the southeast by Liberia and by Guinea to the north. Sierra Leone's land area is . It has a tropical climate and envi ...

also faced possible exclusion from the qualifiers due to the suspension of their football association. However, the suspension was lifted by the

FIFA Council The FIFA Council (formerly the FIFA Executive Committee) is an institution of FIFA (the governing body of association football, futsal and beach football). It is the main decision-making body of the organization in the intervals of FIFA Congress ...

on 3 June 2019.

Schedule

Below is the schedule of the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifying campaign, according to the

FIFA International Match Calendar The FIFA International Match Calendar (sometimes abbreviated as the FIFA Calendar) is an outline agreement between FIFA, the six continental football confederations, the European Club Association, and FIFPro, which sets out which dates can be us ...

. After the rescheduling of the

final tournament from June/July to January/February, the dates of the matchdays 1–2 of the second round were also rescheduled. Because of the interruption of the competition due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, the schedule of the second and third round was revised again and on 19 August 2020 CAF announced the new dates for the aforementioned rounds.

First round

The draw for the first round was held on 29 July 2019 at 12:00 EST (

UTC+2 UTC+02:00 is an identifier for a time offset from UTC of +02:00. In ISO 8601, the associated time would be written as 2020-11-08T23:41:45+02:00. As standard time (year-round) Principal cities: Pretoria, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban, Por ...

), at the CAF headquarters in

Cairo Cairo ( ; , ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Egypt and the Cairo Governorate, being home to more than 10 million people. It is also part of the List of urban agglomerations in Africa, largest urban agglomeration in Africa, L ...

, Egypt.

Second round

The draw for the second round was held on 21 January 2020, 19:00

CAT The cat (''Felis catus''), also referred to as the domestic cat or house cat, is a small domesticated carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species of the family Felidae. Advances in archaeology and genetics have shown that the ...

(

), at the

Ritz-Carlton The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, LLC is an American multinational company that operates the luxury hotel chain known as The Ritz-Carlton. The company has 108 luxury hotels and resorts in 30 countries and territories with 29,158 rooms, in addit ...

hotel in

, Egypt.

Group A

Group B

Group C

Group D

Group E

Group F

Group G

Group H

Group I

Group J

Third round

The ten group winners from the

second round The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of Un ...

were drawn into five ties, with the teams seeded based on FIFA World Rankings. The draw was held on 22 January 2022 in

Douala Douala is the largest city in Cameroon and its economic capital. It is also the capital of Cameroon's Littoral Region (Cameroon), Littoral Region. It was home to Central Africa's largest port, now being replaced by Kribi port. It has the country ...

, Cameroon. The lower ranked team played the first leg at home. The winners of each fixture qualified for the

Qualified teams

The following five teams from CAF qualified for the final tournament.

Top goalscorers

Below are full goalscorer lists for each round: *

First round First most commonly refers to: * First, the ordinal form of the number 1 First or 1st may also refer to: Acronyms * Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty-Centimeters, an astronomical survey carried out by the Very Large Array * Far Infrared a ...

Second round The second (symbol: s) is a unit of time derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes, and finally to 60 seconds each (24 × 60 × 60 = 86400). The current and formal definition in the International System of Un ...

Third round Third or 3rd may refer to: Numbers * 3rd, the ordinal form of the cardinal number 3 * , a fraction of one third * 1⁄60 of a ''second'', i.e., the third in a series of fractional parts in a sexagesimal number system Places * 3rd Street (di ...

References

External links

*
Qualifiers – Africa
FIFA.com {{2022 FIFA World Cup qualifiers

Caf CAF or caf may refer to: Armed forces *Canadian Armed Forces (Canadian Forces), the Canadian Air Force, Army, and Navy *Canadian Air Force, now the Royal Canadian Air Force *Republic of China Air Force, the air force of the Republic of China (Tai ...

FIFA World Cup qualification (CAF) 2019 in African football 2021 in African football 2022 in African football