26 countries entered the CAF qualification for Italia’90: Algeria, Angola, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Malawi, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Zaire, Zambia, Zimbabwe.
26 entries was a decline from the 1986 World Cup, where 29 teams had participated in the CAF qualification. The eight teams that had since disappeared, were Benin, Ethiopia, Gambia, Madagascar, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Tanzania (all of which, except Madagascar, had been eliminated in the preliminaries of that qualification).
Filling the gap, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Mozambique, Rwanda and Zaire entered the 1990 CAF qualification.