The fifth African Nations Championship (officially English 2018 African Nations Championship ) was from 13 January to 4 February 2018 in Morocco held. It took place for the fourth time with 16 teams. It was played in a group stage with four groups of four teams and then in the knockout system .
The African Football Association had originally chosen Kenya as the host, but then - due to the lack of progress in preparation - awarded the tournament to Morocco in October 2017. Kenya also lost the right to participate, and Rwanda moved up to replace Morocco, which had already qualified.
Of the 54 member associations of the CAF , 48 took part in the qualification. The teams were divided into six zones according to their regional associations. The zones had previously been allocated a certain quota of qualifying places. Two teams should qualify from the north, central-east and west zone A and three teams from the other zones. The draw for the matches took place on February 3, 2017 in Libreville .
One to three qualifying rounds with a return leg were played within the zones . The winners of the last round qualified for the final round. For Equatorial Guinea and Namibia , it is the first appearance at the finals. Due to the disqualification of Kenya and the determination of Morocco as host, Egypt was initially offered the vacated space, but they refused. In the central-east zone, a successor was determined between the two losers in the third round in two play-off games.
draw
The group draw took place on November 17, 2017 in the Moroccan capital Rabat . The teams were divided into four pots according to their results in the last four events and drawn into four groups of four teams each. Host Morocco was already set as the group head of Group A.
Lottery pot 1 : Morocco, Libya, Ivory Coast, Angola
Lottery pot 2 : Nigeria, Guinea, Cameroon, Zambia
Lottery pot 3 : Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, Congo
Lottery pot 4 : Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Namibia, Equatorial Guinea
The draw resulted in the following group allocation: