Have the smaller footballing nations caught up to the big guns in African football? It's a question that has been doing the rounds at press conferences over the past week, ever since Zambia and Nigeria were held by Ethiopia and Burkina Faso respectively, but I'm not sure we have a definitive answer yet.
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Almost to a man, the coaches have replied in the affirmative, which has certainly given the media an easy story. But as a colleague pointed out, these coaches are not exactly neutral in the matter and so there are other agendas involved.
After all, Nigeria coach Stephen Keshi is not about to say that, actually, you know, the smaller teams are all rubbish and we'll give them a good spanking in the end. It's in his interests to play up the abilities of Nigeria's opponents so that a 1-1 draw with Burkina Faso does not reflect quite so poorly on him.
On the other side of the coin, you would not expect Cape Verde coach Lucio Antunes to say that his boys are miles away from matching the more experienced teams, and basically just dismiss them outright and confirm that they are in South Africa on a jolly. He needs to give his players' egos a good stroking, so clearly there are other motives at play here.
Let's rather examine the evidence, which confirms that we have had a sizeable upset in the form of Cape Verde reaching the second round. For a group of islands that has a population of half-a-million people and an air traffic controller for a coach, that is some achievement.
However, they did not do so at the expense of quality teams - Morocco have not reached the second round since 2004, and generally squabbled their way through that key draw with Cape Verde. And while Angola reached the quarter-finals in 2008 and 2010, they have never gone any further in the tournament.
Group B has passed without major incident, with Congo proving that their surprising turnaround against Ghana was a one-off. In the end the unassuming class of Mali prevailed over Congo's unpredictable flair.
Raw evidence of the gap closing has therefore not presented an open-and-shut case. Nigeria will surely see off a weakened Ethiopian side on Tuesday night to advance, but the interesting one will be Zambia against Burkina Faso.
Zambia coach Herve Renard and captain Chris Katongo returned tough questions from journalists with interest on Monday, suggesting they may be a little rattled by their situation. Katongo made a point of slating the Mbombela pitch, which is fair enough, but the defending champions did not give off the air of being in complete control of their own destiny.
In a lighter moment, Renard joked that the reaction of Zambia's fans to the two draws so far was "like when you are driving a Corolla for many years, and after we give you a Mercedes, you are not happy when you come back to the Corolla".
It was another classic line from the Frenchman, and the final word on the little versus large manner should probably go to him.
"I was joking the other day, and I said that I'm sure a lot of coaches are telling their teams, 'If Zambia can win it, we can too,'" Renard said last week.
While I'm not convinced that the balance of power in African football has shifted any more dramatically than it normally has, Zambia's victory last year will certainly have inspired the smaller teams to believe that anything is possible.
Miles Maponyera
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