Nope, never. East African teams mostly suck at the world stage, and the strongest (and oldest) teams are Ethiopia and Sudan. The interesting cliff notes:
2 east African teams founded the Africa Cup in 1957 (Sudan and Ethiopia). Ethiopia won 2nd place then and first place in 1962. They went on to the 1962 World Cup qualification were they were knocked out by Israel in the 2nd round. This was probably one of Ethiopia's best national team and was mostly Eritreans, when Eritrea was still part of Ethiopia.
They closest since then was 2014 World Cup where they advanced to Group A World Cup qualifications after beating Somalia 5-0. Out of their group, they were the strongest team and were set to advance to the World Cup for the first time ever when they got knocked out by Nigeria in the third round.
In the 1958 World Cup qualifications, Ethiopia was refused entry. Sudan was allowed in but withdrew because they had to play Israel. Sudan won the 1970 Africa Cup.
Somalia's team has never qualified for the World or African cups, nor has it won or gotten top 3 in any tournament. We all know the situation in Somalia for the past 25 years, no one could even play in Somalia let alone adequately prepare a national team.
Same with Djibouti.
Kenya has been banned since 2006 by FIFA.
Eritrea has never qualified for the World or African cups, and its team is famous for running away at away games and applying for asylum, which makes sense when you remember Eritrea is basically the North Korea of Africa, if not worse.
- 2006, after a CAF Champions League match in Nairobi 4 members of the Eritrean team Red Sea FC defected.
2007 CECAFA Cup in Tanzania, 12 members of the Eritrean national team defected.
March 2007 after a Africa Cup qualifying game in Angola, another 6 Eritrean national team members defected and sought asylum. Later, 3 more members of the Eritrean national team sought asylum in Sudan.
Because of all these high profile defections, Eritrea withdrew from the 2008 CECAFA cup, the 2010 FIFA World Cup and 2010 African Cup. The Eritrean government also began requiring athletes to pay 100,000 Nakfa bond before traveling for away games.
This didn't work though, since when Eritrea returned to the 2009 CECAFA cup, 12 members of the team failed to show up for their return flight and instead sought assistance from the Refugee Consortium of Kenya.
This was very embarrassing to the Eritrean regime which hired on a new coach who promised to prevent any future defections like the infamous one in Kenya.
December 2012, 17 Eritrean footballers and the team doctor vanished after CECAFA championship in Uganda and all applied for asylum.
December 2013, this same coach who said he'd stop defections and 9 players from the Eritrean national football team all disappeared in Kenya, once again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_na ... _World_Cup
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopia_n ... tball_team
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia_na ... tball_team
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eritrea_na ... tball_team
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan_nati ... tball_team