As the hosts of the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations, Cameroon will participate in the qualifiers with the team guaranteed a spot in the finals regardless of its ranking in the group. Their matches and results will count in determining the qualification of the other teams from their group.
The teams will play against each other in home-and-away round-robin format, originally between November 2019 and September 2020.[2][3]
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all matches of matchdays 3 and 4 scheduled for March 2020 had been postponed until further notice.[4] FIFA had recommended that all June 2020 international matches (matchday 5) be postponed,[5] and also postponed the September 2020 window (matchday 6) for CAF.[6]
On 30 June 2020, the CAF announced the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations final tournament had been postponed from January 2021 to January 2022, without announcing the new dates of the remaining qualifiers.[7] On 19 August 2020, the CAF announced the new dates of the remaining qualifiers, with matchdays 3 and 4 rescheduled to be played between 9–17 November 2020, and matchdays 5 and 6 rescheduled to be played between 22 and 30 March 2021.[8]