African French

African French (French: français africain) is the umbrella grouping of varieties of the French language spoken throughout Francophone Africa. Used mainly as a secondary language or lingua franca, it is spoken by an estimated 167 million people across 34 countries and territories, some of which are not Francophone, but merely members or observers of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie. Of these, 18 sovereign states recognize it as an official de jure language, though it is not the native tongue of the majority. According to Ethnologue, only 1,2 million people spoke it as a first language. African French speakers represent 47% of the Francophonie, making Africa the continent with the most French speakers in the world.

In Africa, French is often spoken as a second language alongside the Indigenous ones, but in a small 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, Côte d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the urban areas of Douala, Yaoundé in Cameroon, in Libreville, Gabon, and Antananarivo.

In some countries, though not having official de jure status, it is a first language among a small 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.

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