For the fourth time, a four-round qualification tournament, through which two teams qualified for the Olympic Games, served as qualification for the women's tournament at the 2016 Olympic Summer Games for the teams from the CAF . The tournament was marked by the cancellation of several teams, partly due to the Ebola epidemic , partly due to administrative or financial problems. Since two teams withdrew in the first round, there were no games in the first round. For the first time, the national soccer teams of women from Ivory Coast, the Republic of the Congo and Kenya took part, which had already registered for 2004 but then withdrew. None of the African participants in the 2015 World Cup could qualify, with Cameroon only being eliminated in the fourth round due to the away goals rule against Zimbabwe, which was thus able to qualify for an intercontinental tournament for the first time. The South Africans who were already there in 2012 in London qualified as the second African team .
All games should be played back and forth, with the away goal rule applying in the event of a tie and if this did not lead to a decision, extra time followed with renewed application of the away goal rule or a penalty shoot-out . The latter was not used. Of the 18 registered teams, four teams should compete against each other in the first round, but since Guinea-Bissau and Libya withdrew, Gabon and Liberia reached the second round without a fight, like the 14 teams that had already been set for the second round. The 16 remaining teams played eight teams in the second round for the third round, with three teams withdrawing again. In the third round, the four teams of the fourth round were determined, which then determined the two African participants for the Olympic Games.
The teams marked with "*" each qualified for the next round.
The matches of the teams from Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Nigeria were brought forward to give these teams enough time to prepare for the 2015 World Cup . In the end, these games were not played because the opponents withdrew, which meant that the African World Cup participants also lacked match practice for the World Cup and only Cameroon survived the preliminary round.