Africa Cup of Nations Draw 2015: Full Group List, Preview and More

The draw for the 30th edition of the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations was held in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, on Wednesday, as the 16 squads that qualified for the tournament finally found out the teams they'll be facing when proceedings start Jan. 17.    

The draw was moved back one week to accommodate new hosts Equatorial Guinea, which stepped in to replace Morocco.     

Defending champions Nigeria are one of many top squads that failed to qualify for next year's event, with Egypt and Angola also surprisingly absent. Here's how the four groups of AFCON 2015 will look:

Group A	Group B	Group C	Group D
Equatorial Guinea	Zambia	Ghana	Ivory Coast
Burkina Faso	Tunisia	Algeria	Mali
Gabon	Cape Verde	South Africa	Cameroon
Congo	DR Congo	Senegal	Guinea

Hosts Equatorial Guinea and Congo will play the tournament's opening match. Here are the locations where each group will play their magtches, via CAF's official Twitter feed:

The full list of fixtures will be updated when it's made available by the Confederation of African Football. 

South Africa booked their tickets to Equatorial Guinea by winning their qualifying group in dominant fashion, going undefeated and conceding just three goals. They'll be among the strong favourites for the title, but seeding in Pot 3 makes for a tricky draw.

Manager Ephraim Mashaba won't hear any excuses, however, as he believes his team is ready for anything following their success in a tough qualifying group, as reported by Goal's Shina Oludare:

"

When we started the campaign of the qualifiers, we were only asked to help build the national team that is why you see majority of my side made up of young players.

Now that we have qualified, we don’t want to make up the numbers because we heading there [Equatorial Guinea] to compete and we are looking forward to getting to the finals.

We played strong teams in this group,  I mean Nigeria , Sudan and Congo. They are not pushovers and having gone unbeaten, it shows my boys are ready for the Africa Cup of Nations.

"

Ghana will also be a popular pick for success, despite the Black Stars' disappointing 2014 World Cup campaign. Striker Majeed Waris sees the tournament as a chance to put the memories of Brazil behind them, via Super Sport's Gary Al-Smith:

"

This Afcon is an opportunity for some of us the players to go and correct the mistakes we made at the World Cup, make Ghana proud and make everyone know that we are still the best team in Africa. Everyone wants to be there so I believe we are going to work 100% at our clubs to be able to make the final squad.

"

They will be without star midfielder Kwadwo Asamoah, however, as BBC Africa confirmed the Juventus man will miss the tournament after undergoing surgery:

The upcoming tournament will see no debutants take to the pitches of Equatorial Guinea, although the hosts and Cape Verde will only be competing in their second edition.

The Nzalang Nacional never qualified for the tournament after it was discovered they had fielded an ineligible player in their 3-0 win over Mauritania in June, via BBC Sport.

Morocco removed their candidacy to host due to the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa, however, and with few alternatives on hand, the co-hosts of the 2012 edition stepped forward as replacements. As hosts, Equatorial Guinea were automatically handed a seed in Pot 1.