page_title: 1996 Africa Cup of Nations
section_title: Qualified teams
hierarchical_section_title: 1996 Africa Cup of Nations / Qualified teams
caption_attribution_description: Countries positions in the African Cup of Nations &#160;&#160; 1st &#160;&#160; 2nd &#160;&#160; 3rd &#160;&#160; 4th &#160;&#160; 5th-8th &#160;&#160; 9th-15th &#160;&#160; Qualified but withdrew Football denotes host nation Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. You are free: to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work to remix – to adapt the work Under the following conditions: attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. share alike – If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same or compatible license as the original. This licensing tag was added to this file as part of the GFDL licensing update.
context_page_description: The 1996 Africa Cup of Nations was the 20th edition of the Africa Cup of Nations, the soccer championship of Africa. It was hosted by South Africa, who replaced original hosts Kenya. The field expanded for the first time to 16 teams, split into four groups of four; the top two teams in each group advancing to the quarterfinals. However, Nigeria withdrew from the tournament at the final moment under pressure from then-dictator Sani Abacha, reducing the field to 15. South Africa won its first championship, beating Tunisia in the final 2–0.
context_section_description:  Algeria
   Angola
   Burkina Faso
   Cameroon
   Ivory Coast
   Egypt
   Gabon
   Ghana
   Liberia
   Mozambique
   Nigeria (holders)*
   Sierra Leone
   South Africa (hosts)
   Tunisia
   Zaire
   Zambia
  * Nigeria withdrew prior to the start of the finals. Guinea, as the best side to not qualify, was offered Nigeria's spot in the finals, but declined due to a lack of preparation time.
caption: Participating nations
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