The Road to Paris 2024 will have another turn this week, as the Women’s African Olympic Qualification Tournament will take place in the Pavilhão Multiusos, in Angola’s capital, Luanda, between 11 and 14 October, with four teams at the start.

Hosts Angola, Cameroon, Congo and Senegal – the top four sides at the 2022 CAHB African Women’s Handball Championship – will fight for the coveted Paris 2024 Olympic Games ticket, with the first side in the round-robin competition progressing to the final tournament next summer, while the second-placed side will have a place reserved in the Olympic Qualification Tournaments, due to take place in April 2024.

All the four sides are qualified for the 2023 IHF Women’s World Championship, which will be played between 29 November and 17 December in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, with their forces measured up in this Qualification Tournament, which will yield the African representant at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

Angola will be once again the big favourites, as they are aiming for their eighth consecutive appearance at the Olympic Games, a streak which started at Atlanta 1996 and yielded six wins in 34 matches and a seventh place as their best performance in history, in their maiden appearance in the competition.

No other African team except Angola has been present at the Olympic Games since 1996, which means that the other three sides will have their work cut out, especially as Angola dominate the continent, having won 13 of the last 15 editions of the CAHB African Women’s Handball Championship, including the last four consecutive ones.

On the continental stage, they have been unbeaten in both the CAHB African Women’s Handball Championship and the African Games since 2015, winning all the last 37 matches played in these competitions, as well as the last five played in the Qualification Tournaments for Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020.

Cameroon will likely be the biggest opponent for Angola, after having finished as runners-up at the last two editions of the CAHB African Women’s Handball Championship. However, in both finals, in 2021 and 2022, Angola won by a ten-goal margin, 25:15 and 29:19 respectively, creating a huge margin between themselves and their opponents.

Congo and Senegal will be the next two sides trying to displace the Angola-Cameroon tandem, yet they will have a mountain to climb. While Congo last finished in a continental competition in second place in 2000, Senegal need a big push to better their last results, the fifth place in 2021 and the fourth place in 2022 at the CAHB African Women’s Handball Championship.

However, Senegal have plenty of experience in their roster, especially with the addition of former world champion Gnonsiane Niombla, who switched her allegiance from France to Senegal this year.

The games will be played on 11, 12 and 14 October in the Pavilhão Multiusos, in Angola’s capital, Luanda, with the head-to-head points and head-to-head goal difference being the first tiebreaker in case of a tie at points.