Ghana and Ivory Coast will draw for either Group B or D for the 2013 Africa Cup of Nations after Caf today revealed the procedure for next Wednesday's draw in Durban.
The Black Stars are one the four top-seeded teams for next year's finals alongside hosts South Africa, title holder Zambia and Ivory Coast.
The hosts are in Group A, Zambia in Group C with Ghana and Ivory Coast set to be entered into either Group B or D for the draw on October 24.
And the first stage of the draw will be to place Ghana and Ivory Coast into their separate groups.
According to Caf, with the "exception of the host country (South Africa) and holder of the trophy (Zambia), the 14 qualified teams will be ranked based on their performances during the last three Orange Africa Cup of Nations, i.e. the 2008, 2010 and 2012 editions."
1. In conformity with the regulations of the competition, South Africa the host team shall be the top seeded team of group A and Zambia the title holder will be the top seeded team of group C.
2. South Africa and Zambia will respectively have letters A1 and C1 on the board.
3. According to their ranking in the last three editions, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire are the teams in Pot 1 and will be the top seeded teams of groups B and D.
Stage 1 of the Draw will be to do an integral draw to determine which of these two teams shall be awarded the letter B1 and which one will have the letter D1.
4. The remaining twelve teams will be categorized into three Pots (Pot 2, 3 and 4) based on their results in the last three editions of the AFCON in 2008, 2010 and 2012.
5. The Stage 2 of the Draw will be to proceed to the repartition of the 4 teams of Pot 4 (DR Congo, Togo ,Cape Verde and Ethiopia) in the four groups.
6. For this stage 2, we will seek the assistance of a designated representative at the Official Draw for the following steps.
The representative shall draw from the first jar that contains the 4 groups (AB-C-D) the letter that will determine the group where the next drawn team will play .
The first team to be drawn shall belong in that group in position 4 (i.e. A4, B4, C4 or D4). The same procedure will be repeated for the three other teams of Pot 4 .
7. The same procedure as described in point 6 above will be applied for Stage 3 of the Draw concerning 4 teams in Pot 3 (Algeria, Burkina Faso, Morocco and Niger).
The first team to be drawn shall belong in that group in position 3 (i.e. A3, B3, C3 or D3).
8. The same procedure as described in point 6 above will be applied for Stage 4 of the Draw concerning 4 teams in Pot 2(Mali, Tunisia, Angola and Nigeria).
The first team to be drawn shall belong in that group in position 2 (i.e. A2, B2, C2 or D2).
By the end of these 4 stages the sixteen qualified countries would then, be distributed within the four groups.
Teams in the same pot cannot be drawn against each other.
The tournament takes place in South Africa between 19 January and 10 February 2013.
Seedings:
Pot one: South Africa, Zambia, Ghana, Ivory Coast
Pot two: Mali, Tunisia, Angola, Nigeria
Pot three: Algeria, Burkina Faso, Morocco, Niger
Pot four: Togo, Cape Verde, DR Congo, Ethiopia.