ALEXANDRIA/DAKAR (Egypt/Senegal) - Côte d'Ivoire and Mali emerged victorious in Window 2 of the 2027 FIBA Basketball World Cup African Qualifiers, which took place in Alexandria, Egypt, and Dakar, Senegal.
On Sunday, the Elephants of Côte d'Ivoire secured a 99-74 victory over Madagascar, concluding the first round of Group B with an unblemished 3-0 record.
They opened their World Cup qualifying campaign with a 90–80 win over hosts Senegal, before outclassing the Democratic Republic of the Congo 96–59.
Meanwhile, Mali continued their rise in the African basketball rankings with victories against hosts Egypt (86–77) and Uganda (84–73), and then stunningly defeating the reigning African champions, Angola, 80–79 on the last day.
Now that all 12 nations have played their first three games in the race for the five spots for African teams at the 2027 Qatar World Cup, three teams — Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea and Mali — remain undefeated, while Libya, Madagascar, Rwanda and Uganda have not won any of their three games.
The second round of Groups A, B, C and D will take place in July during the third window of the qualifiers, when twelve teams will advance to the second round, which will be split into Groups E and F. Teams finishing in Groups A, B, C and D will be eliminated from the World Cup qualifiers.
This is what the four groups look like after Windows 1 and 2.
FIBA