EGYPT was placed in Group A of the 2020 African Men’s Handball Championship in Tunisia.

The championship will act as the African qualifying tournament for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo and the 2021 World Men’s Handball Championship in Egypt.

The Egyptians were drawn in Group A together with Kenya, Guinea and DR Congo. The draw took place earlier this week in Tunis by the African Handball Confederation (AHBC).

The draw represents the final phase of the African Handball Championship, to be held from 15 to 25 January 2020. The 10-day event will take place in two Tunisian cities, Hammamat and Rades.

Group B includes Libya, Nigeria, Gabon and Angola while Group C comprises Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon and hosts Tunisia.

Group D features Zambia, Senegal, Morocco, Algeria and Congo Brazzaville.

The opening match will have the hosts against Cape Verde.

Egypt, with a long history of achievements in the sport, was placed in a relatively easy group. However, while the group stage might be smooth sailing, the following knock-out stage will be difficult with tough teams like hosts Tunisia and Algeria, traditional African powerhouses in handball.

The winner of this, the 24th edition of the African championship, will go directly to the 2020 Olympics. The top seven teams will qualify for the 2021 IHF World Men’s Handball Championship in Egypt after the IHF increased the number of teams in the World Cup to 32, up from 24 in previous tournaments.

The qualification for the 2020 Men’s Olympic Handball Tournament assigned quota places to 12 teams: the hosts, the world champion, four continental champions and six teams from the World Olympic qualification tournaments respectively.

The African Olympic qualifying championship will be the first tournament, to be played in January in Tunisia, while the other continental games will be held in April 2020. Each tournament will feature four teams each, a total of 12 teams.

Egypt hopes to win the 2020 African title to automatically qualify for the Olympic Games. The Pharaohs missed a valuable opportunity to qualify after playing in the World Championship in Denmark in January this year. Egypt narrowly missed when it finished eighth in the 24-nation tournament. The top seven teams were the first to earn their tickets to Tokyo 2020 and Egypt now has no other option but to win the African Championship if it wants to embark on the same trip.

Since 1996 the Egyptians have participated several times in Olympic handball, finishing seventh at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, its best performance to date.

Egyptian handball had an emphatic 2019 with the juniors winning the world’s bronze medal and youth capturing the World Championship.

At the club level, Zamalek took the African Super Cup in April after beating arch-rivals Ahly 38-35 to claim the Super Cup for the sixth time in its history in a thrilling game in Morocco.

Zamalek proved to be the strongest handball team in Egypt and Africa when they beat another Egyptian team, this time Sporting Club of Alexandria 33-31 to win the African Champions League title last week. Zamalek received a hero’s welcome as thousands of fans received them at Cairo International Airport in the early hours of the day to celebrate their remarkable triumph.

The win gave Zamalek their 12th African handball Champions League title. Since 2015, an Egyptian team has won this tournament, with Zamalek winning in 2015, 2017 and 2018. Ahly claimed the 2016 edition. Zamalek then clinched this year’s Cup. Zamalek also holds the record of winning the final 11 times in their 12 final appearances.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 24 October, 2019 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.