For the CHAN qualifiers, 42 teams are engaged for the draw to be conducted, according to zonal distributions of the national associations affiliated to CAF.
They engaged teams are:
Northern Zone (2 spots) – Libya, Morocco, Tunisia
Zone West A (2 spots) – Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal, Sierra Leone
Zone West B (3 spots) – Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria, Togo
Central Zone (3 spots) – Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, Chad, DR Congo, Gabon
Central-East Zone (3 including hosts) – Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda
Southern Zone (3 spots) – Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Mauritius, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
There will be two rounds each for the qualifiers, except for the Northern Zone, where the three teams will play each other on a round-robin basis with the top two qualifying for the final tournament.
The qualifiers will start from the weekend of 19-21 June 2015 through to 28-30 August 2015, where 15 teams will emerge to join hosts Rwanda for the final tournament from 16 January to 7 February 2016.
Previous winners of the CHAN, a tournament designed exclusively for footballers playing in their domestic leagues, are DR Congo (2009), Tunisia (2011) and Libya (2014).