The teams played against each other in home-and-away round-robin format, originally scheduled 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 were postponed until further notice.[4] FIFA 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]
Nigeria and Sierra Leone, the group winners and runners-up respectively, qualified for the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations.
^Sierra Leone played their home match against Lesotho without spectators because of an incident from the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualification encounter between Sierra Leone and Liberia.[9][10]
^The Sierra Leone vs Benin match was originally scheduled for 30 March 2021, but was called off after Benin refused to play in protest of several of their players allegedly returning positive COVID-19 tests shortly before kickoff.[11] The following day, the CAF Organising Committee for the Africa Cup of Nations decided to postpone the match to the next FIFA international window in June.[12] The match was then scheduled for 14 June and finally rescheduled again for 15 June.[13]
