| Tourney Name: | African Youth Championship |
| Year: | 1985 |
| Dates: | 2 September 1984 – 4 May 1985 |
| Num Teams: | 17 |
| Confederations: | 1 |
| Count: | 2 |
| Matches: | 26 |
| Goals: | 59 |
| Prevseason: | 1983 |
| Nextseason: | 1987 |
The 1985 African Youth Championship was the 5th edition of the biennial African qualification tournament for the FIFA World Youth Championship which was contested on a home-and-away two-legged basis.
Nigeria reached the final for the first time in consecutive editions of the tournamentand successfully defended the title for the second time and beat Tunisia 3–2 on aggregate, although both teams qualified for the 1985 FIFA World Youth Championship in the Soviet Union.
The following teams entered this edition of the tournament and played at least a match:
Preliminary Round:
First Round:
Second Round:
Burkina Faso, Libya and Togo withdrew, leaving Benin, Ethiopia and Senegal to advance to the First Round. The teams that received byes to the next round were Algeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Nigeria, Tunisia and Zimbabwe.
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Benin and Senegal withdrew, leaving Guinea and Ivory Coast to advance to the second round.
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Ivory Coast entered this edition of the tournament at this round.|}
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These two best performing teams qualified for the 1985 FIFA World Youth Championship in the Soviet Union: