2018 FIFA World Cup qualification (CAF)

The African section of the 2018 FIFA World Cup qualification acted as qualifiers for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, held in Russia, for national teams which were members of the Confederation of African Football. A total of five slots in the final tournament were available for CAF teams.
The CAF Executive Committee approved the format for the qualifiers of the 2018 FIFA World Cup on 14 January 2015, with three preliminary rounds before a final group stage featuring 20 teams. The number of preliminary rounds was reduced to two, based on information provided by FIFA in early July 2015.

Format

The qualification structure was as follows:

First round: 26 teams, ranked 28–53, played home-and-away over two legs. The 13 winners advanced to the second round.
Second round: 40 teams, ranked 1–27 and 13 first round winners, played home-and-away over two legs. The 20 winners advanced to the third round.
Third round: 20 teams which had advanced from the second round were divided into five groups of four teams to play home-and-away round-robin matches. The winners of each group qualified for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.

Entrants

All 54 FIFA-affiliated football associations from CAF entered qualification. However, Zimbabwe were expelled from the competition on 12 March 2015 due to their failure to pay former coach José Claudinei a severance fee, a decision that the Zimbabwe Football Association unsuccessfully appealed.
The July 2015 FIFA Rankings were used to seed the teams for the first two rounds, both of which were drawn in Russia on 25 July 2015.

Bye to second round	Competing in first round

Note: Niger had to enter the first round as they had fewer FIFA ranking points than Benin and Libya. In the FIFA World Rankings, teams share the same ranking if their ranking points round to the same whole number.

Schedule

The schedule of the competition was as follows.

First round

The draw for the first round was held as part of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Preliminary Draw on 25 July 2015, starting 18:00 MSK, at the Konstantinovsky Palace in Strelna, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Second round

The draw for the second round was held as part of the 2018 FIFA World Cup Preliminary Draw on 25 July 2015, starting 18:00 MSK, at the Konstantinovsky Palace in Strelna, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Third round

The draw for the third round was held on 24 June 2016, 17:00 EET, at the CAF headquarters in Cairo, Egypt.

Qualified teams

The following five teams qualified for the final tournament.

Team	Qualified as	Qualified on	Previous appearances in FIFA World Cup¹
			4
			5
			4
			1
			2

Top goalscorers

Below are full goalscorer lists for each round:

First round
Second round
Third round

Fan behaviour

After Morocco qualified for the tournament with a 2–0 victory over Ivory Coast, the celebrations by the Moroccan community in Brussels turned into a riot with cars burnt, shops looted by some 300 rioters and 20 police officers injured. Firefighters sent to put out the fires were also attacked by the rioters.