Nigeria's Quadri Aruna and Egypt's Dina Meshref emerged victorious at the ITTF-Africa Top 16 Cup in Sudan’s capital Khartoum ©ITTF

Nigeria's Quadri Aruna and Egypt's Dina Meshref emerged victorious at the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF) Africa Top 16 Cup in Sudan’s capital Khartoum, ensuring they will represent their continent at the 2016 ITTF World Cups.

Throughout the event, Aruna showed the form that catapulted him to becoming the 2014 ITTF Male Star award.

The second seeded Nigerian accounted for Egyptian top seed Omar Assar in the final, winning 8-11, 11-8, 11-7, 11-6, 11-9.

The victory was sweet revenge for Aruna, who lost to the African number one a year ago and consequently missed out on the ITTF World Cup qualification position.

"I felt so good after the quarter-final; it was 50/50 against Omar, my forehand was the key to winning," said the 27-year-old, who had lost his previous previous four encounters against Assar.

"I lost the first game - if I had lost the second, I would have lost the match."

Aruna now gets a chance to beat his career best performance of an ITTF Men's World Cup quarter-final, which he achieved in 2014.

"Everybody knows me now and wants to beat me," he added. 

"It will be even harder to achieve my goal."

Nigeria's Quadri Aruna beat Egypt's Omar Assar in the men's final of the ITTF-Africa Top 16 Cup
Nigeria's Quadri Aruna beat Egypt's Omar Assar in the men's final of the ITTF-Africa Top 16 Cup ©Getty Images

Meshref once again proved herself to be the queen of African table tennis, as she strolled to her third consecutive ITTF-Africa Top 16 title.

The top seed was too good for fourth-ranked Nigerian Offiong Edem in the final, prevailing 12-10, 8-11, 11-7, 11-5, 11-5 to book a third-straight appearance at the ITTF Women's World Cup.

"I am very happy to win the cup again, it's very special for me," said Meshref.

"It also means I will participate in the Women's World Cup this year, and each year I am getting better results in that competition.

"Today the toughest match was against Offiong Edem; she is a very strong player."

The ITTF World Cups are the second most prestigious events on the international table tennis calendar, with only 20 of the top players qualifying through their respective Continental Cups.

The 2016 ITTF Liebherr Men's World Cup is due to be held from October 1 to 3 in the German city of Saarbrücken, while the 2016 ITTF Women's World Cup is scheduled to take place from October 7 to 9 in a location to be announced.

Players who have already secured their places at the ITTF World Cups along with Aruna and Meshref are Germany’s Dimitrij Ovtcharov, Spain’s Shen Yanfei, Portugal’s Joao Monteiro, Russia’s Alexander Shibaev, Turkey’s Hu Melek and Austria’s Liu Jia, all of whom qualified at the recent ITTF-Europe Top 16.

Attention in Sudan now turns to the ITTF-African Qualification tournament for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games with play set to start tomorrow.