Round One Draw for Africa

We will get to see how worthy South Africa are of hosting the World Cup by their results in the first round of qualifying against mighty Nigeria. Three of the top four African seeds (Cameroon, Nigeria, Morocco) are looking to validate their rankings by qualifying for the World Cup finals after missing out in 2006. Togo and Angola are looking to prove that they were no flukes last qualification cycle by marching into South Africa 2010. A * denotes a Germany 2006 participant. A # signifies a Ghana 2008 qualifier. The numbers are the teams' current ELO ratings.

Group A:
34 Cameroon #
131 Cape Verde
120 Tanzania
159 Mauritius

Group B:
55 Guinea #
90 Zimbabwe
139 Namibia #
118 Kenya

Group C:
72 Angola *#
113 Benin #
102 Uganda
128 Niger

Group D:
30 Nigeria #
82 South Africa #
143 Equatorial Guinea
142 Sierra Leone

Group E:
27 Ghana *#
89 Libya
97 Gabon
170 Lesotho

Group F:
57 Sénégal #
103 Algeria
147 Liberia
119 Gambia

Group G:
21 Côte d'Ivoire *#
116 Mozambique
130 Botswana
145 Madagascar

Group H:
40 Morocco #
121 Ethiopia
131 Rwanda
147 Mauritania

Group I:
48 Tunisia *#
115 Burkina Faso
140 Burundi
176 Seychelles

Group J:
59 Mali #
100 Congo
99 Sudan #
138 Chad

Group K:
101 Togo *
63 Zambia #
161 Eritrea
168 Swaziland

Group L:
41 Egypt #
91 Democratic Republic of the Congo
134 Malawi
208 Djibouti

For the group winners, I have Cameroon, Guinea, Angola, Nigeria, Ghana, Sénégal, Côte d'Ivoire, Morocco, Tunisia, Mali, Zambia, and Egypt. I think that Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Benin, South Africa, Libya, Algeria, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Sudan, Togo, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo will take second place. Eight of the twelve second-place finishers will advance to CAF round two.