African French


African French 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 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, 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.

List of countries in Africa by French proficiency

French proficiency in African countries according to the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie.
CountriesTotal populationFrench speaking populationPercentage of the population that speaks FrenchYear
Algeria

Status

Official status

Non-official but often administrative or cultural

Varieties

There are many different varieties of African French, but they can be broadly grouped into five categories:
  1. The French variety spoken in Central Africa and West Africa including Angola with French ancestry or French residents who speak French especially in Cabinda – spoken altogether by about 97 million people in 2018, as either a first or second language.
  2. The French variety spoken by Berbers and Maghrebis in North-west Africa, which has about 33 million first and second language speakers in 2018.
  3. The French variety spoken in the Comoro Islands and Madagascar, which have 5.6 million first and second language speakers in 2018.
  4. The French variety spoken by Creoles in the Mascarene Islands and Seychelles, which has around 1.75 million first and second language speakers in 2018. The French spoken in this region is not to be confused with the French-based creole languages, which are also spoken in the area.
  5. The French variety spoken in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, which has about 0.5 million first and second language speakers in 2018.
All the African French varieties differ from Standard French, both in terms of pronunciation and vocabulary, but the formal African French used in education, media and legal documents is based on standard French vocabulary.
File:Kutuku Chez Maman la Joie.jpg|thumb|Alcohol seller in Kara, Togo, with sign in French; she uses the phrase Soyez les bienvenus, considered an archaic phrase in Metropolitan France; some terms and words persist in use in Africa after falling out of use in France.
In the colonial period, a vernacular form of creole French known as Petit nègre was also present in West Africa. The term has since, however, become a pejorative term for "poorly spoken" African French.
In Angola, French is spoken in Angola especially Cabinda, particularly in the northern regions. While Portuguese is the official language, French is understood and spoken, especially among the Kongo people in the north and by Angolans with French ancestry. It's also one of the foreign languages taught in schools with 90% speak French from neighboring DR Congo as a legacy of Belgian colonial rule which established as Belgium's private colony of Francophone Africa until its independence on 30 June 1960.
Code-switching, or the alternation of languages within a single conversation, takes place in both DR Congo and Senegal, the former having four "national" languages – Ciluba, Kikongo, Lingala, and Swahili – which are in a permanent opposition to French. Code-switching has been studied since colonial times by different institutions of linguistics. One of these, located in Dakar, Senegal, already spoke of the creolization of French in 1968, naming the result "franlof": a mix of French and Wolof which spreads by its use in urban areas and through schools, where teachers often speak Wolof in the classroom despite official instructions.
The omnipresence of local languages in Francophone African countries – along with insufficiencies in education – has given birth to a new linguistic concept: le petit français. Le petit français is the result of a superposition of the structure of a local language with a narrowed lexical knowledge of French. The specific structures, though very different, are juxtaposed, marking the beginning of the creolization process.
Some African countries such as Algeria intermittently attempted to remove the use of French; it was removed as an official language in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger in 2023, 2024, and 2025 respectively.

Français populaire africain

In the urban areas of Francophone Africa, another type of French has emerged: Français populaire africain or FPA. It is used in the entirety of Sub-Saharan Africa, but especially in cities such as Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire; Cotonou, Benin; Dakar, Senegal; Lomé, Togo; and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. At its emergence, it was marginalized and associated with the ghetto; Angèle Bassolé-Ouedraogo describes the reaction of the scholars:
However, FPA has begun to emerge as a second language among the upper class. It has also become a symbol of social acceptance.
FPA can be seen as a progressive evolution of Ivorian French. After diffusing out of Côte d'Ivoire, it became Africanized under the influence of young Africans and cinema, drama, and dance.
FPA has its own grammatical rules and lexicon. For example, "Il ou elle peut me tuer!" or "Il ou elle peut me dja!" can either mean "This person annoys me very much " or "I'm dying for him/her" depending on the circumstances. "Il ou elle commence à me plaire" signifies a feeling of exasperation, and friendship can be expressed with "c'est mon môgô sûr" or "c'est mon bramôgo."
FPA is mainly composed of metaphors and images taken from African languages. For example, the upper social class is called "les en-haut d'en-haut" or "les môgôs puissants".

Pronunciation

Pronunciation in the many varieties of African French can be quite varied. There are nonetheless some trends among African French speakers; for instance, r| tends to be pronounced as the historic alveolar trill of pre-20th Century French instead of the now standard uvular trill or 'guttural R.' The voiced velar fricative, the sound represented by in the Arabic word مغرب Maghreb, is another common alternative. Pronunciation of the letters,, and may also vary, and intonation may differ from standard French.

Abidjan French

According to some estimates, French is spoken by 75 to 99 percent of Abidjan's population, either alone or alongside indigenous African languages. There are three sorts of French spoken in Abidjan. A formal French is spoken by the educated classes. Most of the population, however, speaks a colloquial form of French known as français de Treichville or français de Moussa. Finally, an Abidjan French slang called Nouchi has evolved from an ethnically neutral lingua franca among uneducated youth into a creole language with a distinct grammar. New words often appear in Nouchi and then make their way into colloquial Abidjan French after some time. As of 2012, a crowdsourced dictionary of Nouchi was being written using mobile phones.
Here are some examples of words used in the African French variety spoken in Abidjan :
  • une go is a slang word meaning a girl or a girlfriend. It is a loanword either from the Mandinka language or from English. It is also French hip-hop slang for a girl.
  • un maquis is a colloquial word meaning a street-side eatery, a working-class restaurant serving African food.
  • un bra-môgô is a slang word equivalent to "bloke" or "dude" in English. It is a loanword from the Mandinka language.
  • chicotter is a word meaning to whip, to beat, or to chastise. It is a loanword from Portuguese where it meant "to whip". It has now entered the formal language of the educated classes.
  • le pia is a slang word meaning money. It comes perhaps from the standard French word pièce or pierre, or perhaps piastre.
When speaking in a formal context, or when meeting French speakers from outside Côte d'Ivoire, Abidjan speakers would replace these local words with the French standard words une fille, un restaurant or une cantine, un copain, battre and l'argent respectively. Note that some local words are used across several African countries. For example, chicotter is attested not only in Côte d'Ivoire but also in Senegal, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad, the Central African Republic, Benin, Togo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
As already mentioned, these local words range from slang to formal usage, and their use therefore varies depending on the context. In Abidjan, this is how the sentence "The girl stole my money." is constructed depending on the register:
  • formal Abidjan French of the educated people: La fille m'a subtilisé mon argent.
  • colloquial Abidjan French : Fille-là a prend mon l'argent.
  • Abidjan French slang : La go a momo mon pia.
Another unique, identifiable feature of Ivorian French is the use of the phrase n'avoir qu'à + infinitif which, translated into English, roughly means, to have only to + infinitive. The phrase is often used in linguistic contexts of expressing a wish or creating hypotheticals. This original Ivorian phrase is generally used across the Côte d'Ivoire's population; children, uneducated adults, and educated adults all using the phrase relatively equally. Often in written speech, the phrase is written as Ils non cas essayer de voir rather than Ils n'ont qu'à essayer de voir.