The Egyptians made a blistering start to their semi-final and ripped through the Moroccan defence to go 4-1 up after just nine minutes, prompting the Moroccans to take a time-out to regroup.

The time-out was ineffective, however, and Egypt eventually went into the half-time break with a 14-4 lead.

There were signs of revival for Morocco in the second half, but Egypt continued to be merciless in their approach and emerged 31-19 winners at the full-time whistle.

Nine-times champions Tunisia booked their place in the final thanks to a similarly comfortable victory over Angola in the Gabonese capital.

The 2016 silver medallists looked comfortable from the start and raced into a 16-3 half-time lead.

Angola, who have won two bronze medals in their history in the competition, improved dramatically in the second half, finding the back of the net 11 times.

However, Tunisia produced an even better display, more than doubling their goal tally from the first half to secure a 34-14 victory.

Egypt and Tunisia will now meet in the gold medal final whilst Angola and Morocco will compete for bronze.

The line-ups for the fifth to eighth-place matches were also decided today with Algeria set to take on hosts Gabon in the fifth-place final.

Algeria defeated Democratic Republic of Congo 29-24 in their semi-final whilst Gabon squeezed past Congo 31-30 in the second small semi-final.

Neighbours Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo will now face each other in the seventh-place match.

Both matches will take place prior to the main finals on Saturday.

There was a slight amount of joy for Cameroon today as they ensured they did not finish as the worst ranked team in the tournament.

That unwanted honour went to Nigeria after they lost 27-19 to their Cameroonian counterparts.

As reported by Meenat Nigeria, Nigeria coach Mgor Michael Taangahar called on those in charge of Nigerian handball to help ensure this poor result does not happen again.

"What happened at the Nations Cup is an eye opener to handball stakeholders and not only the Handball Federation of Nigeria," he said.

"We need to have competitions that will keep the players active for the major part of the year. 

"We also need to upgrade our league as soon as possible."

Action in both the Asian and European Men's Handball Championship will restart tomorrow (January 26) following a rest day today.