Languages

More than 1000 languages are spoken in Africa Although more than 50 languages have 500,000 or more speakers each, the majority of African languages are spoken by relatively few people. Apart from Arabic, the most widely spoken are Swahili and Hausa.

The main linguistic families or groups are Niger-Kordofanian and Nilo-Saharan, the largest groups with more than 160 million speakers each; Hamito-Semitic, or Afro-Asiatic, which predominates in northern and northeastern Africa; and Khoisan, spoken among the San and Khoikhoi of southern Africa.

Many Africans, particularly those of sub-Saharan Africa, are bilingual, speaking their own language as well as that brought by earlier European colonial administrations.