Africa's best players have assembled in Nairobi for the ITTF Africa Top 16 Cup ©ITTF

The best 32 players in Africa will converge on the Kasarani Indoor Arena at the Moi International Sports Centre in Nairobi for the 2018 International Table Tennis Federation's (ITTF) Africa Top 16 Cup.

Twenty-nine years after staging the ITTF World Cup in 1989, Kenya is hosting the three-day tournament from tomorrow which serves as one of its continental qualifiers.

Home fans will be looking to Sejal Thakkar and Brian Mutua to make an impact upon a field that includes the men's world numbers 16 and 22 - Egypt's Omar Assar and Nigeria's Aruna Quadri - as well as a seven-time Olympian in Segun Toriola of Nigeria.

Sejal, a 42 year old mother-of-two, will be using the tournament as part of her preparations for April's Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast.

Egypt's Ahmed Saleh is expected to be among the challengers at this week's ITTF Africa Top 16 Cup in Nairobi ©Getty Images
Egypt's Ahmed Saleh is expected to be among the challengers at this week's ITTF Africa Top 16 Cup in Nairobi ©Getty Images

She was a member of the Kenya team that got to the 2012 ITTF Final Olympic Qualifiers in Doha and the 2016 ITTF African Olympic Qualifiers in Khartoum.

Nineteen-year-old Mutua is a student at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.

The 16 males and 16 females have been drawn into four groups of four with the top two players advancing to the knock-out stage.

The tournament will be officially opened by Kenya's Sports Cabinet Secretary, Rashid Echesa Mohammed.

According to the President of the Kenya Table Tennis Association, Andrew Mudibo, all is prepared.

He urged Kenyans to turn out in large numbers.