Summary
- Nigerian Pidgin has about 121 million speakers, and 116 million of them use it as a second language, the largest second-language community of any African-born language (Ethnologue, 2026 edition)
- Swahili has about 95 million speakers on Ethnologue's 2026 count, only 4 million of them first-language speakers. Wider estimates run from 40 million to 200 million (Ethnologue 2026; Wikipedia, "Swahili")
- Hausa has the largest first-language community on this list, 58 million, plus 36 million second-language speakers, and became an official language of Niger in 2025 (Ethnologue 2026; Wikipedia, "Hausa language")
- Amharic's total grew from about 57.5 million in Ethnologue's 2019 count to 78 million in 2026, with first-language and second-language speakers now level at 39 million each (Wikipedia, "Ethio-Semitic languages"; Ethnologue 2026)
| # | Language | Family | Main Countries | First-Language (L1) | Second-Language (L2) | Total (L1+L2) | Data Year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nigerian Pidgin | English-based creole | Nigeria | 5 million | 116 million | 121 million | 2026 |
| 2 | Swahili | Niger-Congo (Bantu) | Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, DR Congo | 4 million | 91 million | 95 million | 2026 |
| 3 | Hausa | Afro-Asiatic (Chadic) | Nigeria, Niger | 58 million | 36 million | 94 million | 2026 |
| 4 | Amharic | Afro-Asiatic (Semitic) | Ethiopia | 39 million | 39 million | 78 million | 2026 |
| 5 | Yoruba | Niger-Congo | Nigeria, Benin, Togo | 48 million | 5 million | 53 million | 2026 |
| 6 | Oromo | Afro-Asiatic (Cushitic) | Ethiopia, Kenya | 45.5 million | Not reported | 45.5 million+ | 2019–2024 |
| 7 | Lingala | Niger-Congo (Bantu) | DR Congo, Republic of Congo | 21 million | 20 million | 41 million | 2021 |
| 8 | Fula | Niger-Congo (Atlantic) | Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Nigeria | 37 million | 2.7 million | about 40 million | 2014–2021 |
| 9 | Igbo | Niger-Congo | Nigeria | 34 million | Not reported | 34 million+ | 2023 |
| 10 | Zulu | Niger-Congo (Bantu) | South Africa, Lesotho | 12 million | 16 million | 28 million | 2013–2017 (L2: 2002) |
This list is ranked by total speakers, first language plus second language, counted worldwide rather than only inside Africa. Oromo and Igbo have no reported second-language figure, so their true totals are higher than shown.
Selected Details About Each Language on the List
1. Nigerian Pidgin (Nigeria)
About 121 million speakers, of whom only 5 million speak it as a first language and 116 million as a second language (Ethnologue, 2026). That makes roughly 96% of its speakers people who picked it up on top of another tongue. Ethnologue classifies it as an English-based creole, which is why some lists leave it out. It is here because it developed in Nigeria; Ethnologue counts it as a language in its own right, and over a hundred million people use it to talk across language lines. Take it out and Somali, with about 24 million first-language speakers, would enter the top ten (Wikipedia, "Somali language").
2. Swahili (East and Central Africa)
About 95 million speakers, 4 million of them first-language and 91 million second-language (Ethnologue, 2026). Wikipedia's Swahili page, using a slightly different Ethnologue-based count, gives 5.3 million first-language and 92 million second-language speakers, and notes that published estimates of the total range from 40 million to 200 million. Swahili is an official language in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda, a national language in DR Congo, and a working language of the African Union, the East African Community and SADC (Wikipedia, "Swahili"). Germany designated it an administrative language after seizing Tanganyika in 1886, which helped spread it inland (New World Encyclopedia). 7 July is marked as Swahili Language Day, the date Julius Nyerere adopted the language as a unifying force in Tanganyika's independence struggle. Explore how African lingua francas developed and spread across the continent.
3. Hausa (Nigeria and Niger)
About 94 million speakers: 58 million first-language (2023–2024) and 36 million second-language (2021–2024) (Ethnologue, 2026; Wikipedia, "Hausa language"). It has the biggest first-language community on this list. About 53% of Niger's population speaks it, and Niger declared it an official language in 2025. Hausa is written in two scripts, the Latin-based Boko alphabet and the Arabic-based Ajami, and it works as a lingua franca across northern Nigeria and the wider Sahel, including among many speakers of other languages (Wikipedia, "Hausa language"; "Central-Eastern Niger Fulfulde").
4. Amharic (Ethiopia)
About 78 million speakers, split evenly between 39 million first-language and 39 million second-language (Ethnologue, 2026). In Ethnologue's 2019 count, the total was 57.5 million, including 25.1 million second-language speakers (Wikipedia, "Ethio-Semitic languages"). It is the second most widely spoken Semitic language in the world after Arabic. In March 2020, Ethiopia added four federal working languages, Afar, Oromo, Somali and Tigrinya, alongside Amharic (Africanews, 4 March 2020). Amharic is written in the Fidel (Ethiopic) script rather than the Latin alphabet.
5. Yoruba (Nigeria, Benin and Togo)
About 53 million speakers: 48 million first-language and 5 million second-language (Ethnologue, 2026). Wikipedia's Yoruba page, drawing on an earlier count, gives roughly 50 million, including about 2 million second-language speakers. Only Hausa has more first-language speakers on this list, and Yoruba is the Niger-Congo language with the most first-language speakers of all (Wikipedia, "Yoruba language"). It also travelled across the Atlantic: the Yoruba of Brazil is called Nago and that of Cuba Lucumi (University of Georgia, African Studies). Samuel Ajayi Crowther, the first African Anglican bishop, published a Yoruba grammar and began translating the Bible into it (Wikipedia, "Yoruba language").
6. Oromo (Ethiopia and Kenya)
About 45.5 million first-language speakers across all countries (2019–2024), with no second-language total published in the sources used here (Ethnologue, 27th edition, via Wikipedia). In Ethiopia, speakers make up 33.8% of the population, the largest first-language community in the country, though Amharic has more speakers in total (Wikipedia, "Oromo language"). Under Emperor Haile Selassie, Oromo was effectively banned in education and administration. The Latin-based Qubee alphabet was adopted in 1991, and Google Translate added the language in May 2022. Ethnologue splits Oromo into several coded varieties, so counts depend on whether they are combined. Sheikh Bakri Sapalo also invented an Oromo script, Shaaldaa, in the late 1950s (Wikipedia, "Oromo language").
7. Lingala (DR Congo and Republic of Congo)
About 41 million speakers, 21 million first-language and 20 million second-language (2021) (Wikipedia, "Lingala"). It is a national language of both Congos and the everyday language of the two capitals, Kinshasa and Brazzaville. Lingala grew out of Bobangi, a trade language of the Congo River. The name first appears in print in a 1901–1902 publication by the missionary Égide De Boeck (Wikipedia, "Lingala"). Other estimates are much lower or higher, so Lingala's exact rank is one of the least certain on this list.
8. Fula (West Africa and the Sahel)
About 40 million speakers: 37 million first-language (2014–2021) and 2.7 million second-language (2019) (Wikipedia, "Fula language"). The Fula call their language Pulaar or Pular in the west and Fulfulde in the centre and east, and it is official in Burkina Faso and Mali. Its speakers are scattered from Senegambia and Guinea to Cameroon, Nigeria and Sudan, which is why counts are hard. Ethnologue lists the varieties separately: Nigerian Fulfulde alone has 17 million first-language speakers (2020). A figure of 95 million circulates online, but Wikipedia flags it as uncited, so this list uses the Ethnologue-based numbers.
9. Igbo (Nigeria)
At least 34 million first-language speakers (2023), with no second-language figure in the sources used (Wikipedia, "Igbo language"). It is spoken mainly in south-eastern Nigeria. Igbo is a tonal language, and its written standard has a contested history. The Union Igbo Bible of 1913 set the church standard, and a literary standard called Igbo izugbe was adopted around 1972. Chinua Achebe denounced those standardisation efforts in a 1999 lecture in Owerri (Wikipedia, "Igbo language"). Its total is probably higher than 34 million once second-language speakers are counted.
10. Zulu (South Africa and Lesotho)
About 28 million speakers: 12 million first-language (2013–2017) and 16 million second-language, though the second-language figure dates from 2002 (Wikipedia, "Zulu language"). Zulu is South Africa's most common home language: Census 2022 recorded 24.4% of the population, or 15.13 million people, speaking it most often at home, ahead of isiXhosa at 16.3% (10.11 million) (Stats SA via BusinessTech). It is understood by over half of South Africans and, by Ethnologue's count, is the second most widely spoken Bantu language after Swahili.
Quick Answers to Commonly Asked Questions About this Topic
What is the most spoken African language?
It depends on the measure. By total speakers, Nigerian Pidgin leads with about 121 million. By first-language speakers, Hausa leads this list with 58 million. As a bridge between peoples, Swahili stands out, with 91 million of its 95 million speakers using it as a second language.
Why is Arabic not on this list?
Arabic is a macrolanguage whose spoken varieties are not all mutually intelligible, and Ethnologue counts them separately. Counted that way, Egyptian Arabic (118 million speakers worldwide) would rank second on this list, and Sudanese Arabic (54 million) would rank sixth (Ethnologue 2026, via Wikipedia). Arabic arrived in Africa in the Arab expansion rather than originating there, so this list covers languages that began on the continent. English, French, and Portuguese are left out for the same reason.
Why does Swahili rank so high with so few native speakers?
Because it is a lingua franca. Ethnologue's 2026 count has about 4 million first-language speakers and 91 million second-language speakers, and the language is official in four countries and a national language in DR Congo.
Why do sources give such different numbers for the same language?
Three things differ: whether second-language speakers are counted, what year the count comes from, and whether related varieties are merged or split. Swahili estimates run from 40 million to 200 million, and Fula and Oromo both depend on how their varieties are grouped. Ethnologue's own pages are behind a paywall, so most free sources repeat older or partial figures.
How many languages are spoken in Africa?
About 2,000, roughly a third of all the world's languages (AfricaMap). The ten on this list account for only a fraction of them, which is why many smaller languages are at risk as larger ones spread.
Key Sources
Other sources are named in brackets in the text. All pages pulled October 20, 2026. Ethnologue's own pages are paywalled, so its 2026 figures were read through Wikipedia's compilation of them.
- Wikipedia, "List of languages by total number of speakers" (Ethnologue 2026 table). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers
- Wikipedia language pages: Swahili https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swahili, Hausa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausa_language, Yoruba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoruba_language, Oromo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oromo_language, Lingala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingala, Fula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fula_language, Igbo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igbo_language, Zulu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zulu_language, Ethio-Semitic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethio-Semitic_languages
- BusinessTech, "These are the most spoken languages in South Africa" (Stats SA Census 2022). https://businesstech.co.za/news/?p=724160
- Africanews, "One to Five: Ethiopia Gets Four New Federal Working Languages" (4 March 2020). https://www.africanews.com/2020/03/04/one-to-five-ethiopia-gets-four-new-federal-working-languages/
- University of Georgia, African Studies, "Yoruba Language." https://africa.uga.edu/Yoruba/yorubabout.html
