Languages of Africa
By country - for some countries[edit]
Official languages[edit]
Besides the former colonial languages of English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, only a few languages are official at the national level. These are:
- Arabic, in Algeria, Comoros, Chad, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Libya, Mauritania,[1] Morocco, Somalia, Sudan, and Tunisia
- Swahili in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, and Rwanda
- Chichewa in Malawi
- Amharic in Ethiopia
- Somali in Somalia
- Tigrinya in Eritrea (technically a working language)
- Kinyarwanda in Rwanda and the closely related Kirundi in Burundi
- Sango in the CAR
- Swazi in Swaziland and South Africa
- Malagasy in Madagascar
- Seychellois Creole in the Seychelles
- Shona in Zimbabwe
- Afrikaans, Ndebele, Xhosa, Zulu, Pedi, Sotho, Tswana, Swazi, Venda, and Tsonga in South Africa, the only multilingual country with widespread official status for its indigenous languages, in addition to English.[2]
By number of speakers[edit]
Demographics[edit]
- REDIRECT Template:Further
Of the 890 million Africans (as of 2005), about 17% speak an Arabic dialect. About 10% speak Swahili, the lingua franca of Southeastern Africa, about 5% speak a Berber dialect, and about 5% speak Hausa, a West African lingua franca. Other important West African languages are Yoruba, Igbo and Fula. Major Northeast African languages are Oromo and Somali. Important South African languages are Zulu and Afrikaans (related to Dutch). English, French and Portuguese are important languages: 130, 115 and 20 million speak them as secondary in general.
List of major African languages (by total number of speakers in million):
| Arabic (North Africa, Horn of Africa) | 100 native + 30 secondary |
| Berber (North Africa) | 40 native + 4 secondary |
| Swahili (East Africa) | 5 native + 80 secondary |
| Hausa (West Africa) | 24 native + 15 secondary |
| Oromo (Northeast Africa) | 25 |
| Zulu (South Africa) | 9 native + 16 secondary |
| Somali (Horn of Africa) | 18-21 |
| Yoruba (West Africa) | 19 native + 2 secondary |
| Igbo (West Africa) | 18 native + 1 secondary |
| Amharic (Northeast Africa) | 14 native + 3 secondary |
| Shona | 15 native + 2 secondary |
| Bambara (West Africa) | 3 native + 10 secondary |
| Twi | 8 native + 2 secondary |
| Ibibio Language (Ibibio/Annang/Efik, Nigeria) | 8-12 |
| Fula (West Africa) | 10-16 |
| Malagasy (Madacascar) | 17 |
| Afrikaans (South Africa) | 6-7 native + 6-7 secondary |
| Lingala (Democratic Republic of the Congo) | 2 native + 10 secondary |
| Chichewa (Southeast Africa) | 10 |
| Xhosa (South Africa) | 7 |
| Kinyarwanda (Rwanda) | 7 |
| Kongo | 7 |
| Tigrinya | 7 |
| Gbe | 7 |
| Tshiluba (Democratic Republic of the Congo) | 6 |
| Wolof | 3 native + 3 secondary |
| Gikuyu (Kenya) | 5 |
| More (West Africa) | 5 |
| Kirundi (Central Africa) | 5 |
| Sotho (South Africa) | 5 |
| Luhya | 4 |
| Tswana (Southern Africa) | 4 |
| Kanuri (West Africa) | 4 |
| Umbundu (Angola) | 4 |
| Northern Sotho (South Africa) | 4 |