Francophonie

The Francophonie or Francophone world is the whole body of people and organisations around the world who use the French language regularly for private or public purposes. The term was coined by Onésime Reclus^[1] in 1880 and became important as part of the conceptual rethinking of cultures and geography in the late 20th century.

When used to refer to the French-speaking world, the Francophonie encompasses the countries and territories where French is official or serves as an administrative or major secondary language, which spans 50 countries and dependencies across all inhabited continents.^[2] The vast majority of these are also member states of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF), a body uniting countries where French is spoken and taught; 27 countries recognized it as an official de jure language.