African French

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African French
français africain
A private pharmacy in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
Region	Africa
Native speakers	200 million (mostly non-native speakers) (2024)[1][2][3]
Language family	Indo-European Italic Latino-Faliscan Latin Romance Italo-Western Western Romance Gallo-Iberian Gallo-Romance Gallo-Rhaetian? Arpitan–Oïl Oïl French African French
Early forms	Old Latin Vulgar Latin Proto-Romance Old French Middle French
Dialects	West African French Maghreb French Djiboutian French Indian Ocean French Eastern African French
Writing system	Latin (French alphabet) French Braille
Official status
Official language in	Countries and territories  Benin  Burundi  Cameroon  Central African Republic  Chad  Comoros  Congo  Côte d'Ivoire  Djibouti  DR Congo  Equatorial Guinea  Gabon  Guinea  Madagascar  Mayotte  Niger  Réunion  Rwanda  Senegal  Seychelles  Togo
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–
IETF	fr-002
Francophone Africa. The countries coloured dark blue had a population of 487.6 million in 2023.[4] In 2050 their population is forecast to reach between 870.1 million[5] and 878.5 million.[4]

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African French (French: français africain) is the generic name of the varieties of the French language spoken by an estimated 167 million people in Africa in 2023 or 51% of the French-speaking population of the world^[6][7][8] spread across 34 countries and territories.^{[Note 1]} This includes those who speak French as a first or second language in these 34 African countries and territories (some of which are not Francophone, but merely non-Francophone members or observers of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie or OIF), but it does not include French speakers living in other African countries. Africa is thus the continent with the most French speakers in the world,^[9][10] and African French speakers now form a large and integral part of the Francophonie.

In Africa, French is often spoken alongside Indigenous languages, but in a number of urban areas (in particular in Central Africa and in the ports located on the Gulf of Guinea) it has become a first language, such as in the region of Abidjan, Ivory Coast,^[11] in the urban areas of Douala and Yaoundé in Cameroon, and in Libreville, Gabon.

In some countries, it is a first language among some social classes of the population, such as in Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and Mauritania, where French is a first language among the upper classes along with Arabic (many people in the upper classes are simultaneous bilinguals in Arabic/French), but only a second language among the general population.^[12]

In each of the Francophone African countries, French is spoken with local variations in pronunciation and vocabulary.

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