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.| Countries | Total population | French speaking population | Percentage of the population that speaks French | Year |
 AlgeriaStatusOfficial statusNon-official but often administrative or culturalVarietiesThere are many different varieties of African French, but they can be broadly grouped into five categories:
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 Belgium–Democratic [Republic of the Congo relations|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 africainIn 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". PronunciationPronunciation 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 FrenchAccording 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 :
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:
CharacteristicsMany characteristics of Ivorian/Abidjan French differ from "standard" French found in France. Many of the linguistic evolutions are from the influences of native African languages spoken within the Côte d'Ivoire and make Abidjan French a distinct dialect of French.Some of the major phonetic and phonological variations of Abidjan French, as compared to a more "typical" French, include substituting the nasal low vowel for a non-nasal , especially when the sound occurs at the beginning of a word, and some difficulty with the full production of the phonemes /ʒ/ and /ʃ/. There are also, to a certain degree, rhythmic speaking patterns in Ivorian French that are influenced by native languages. Ivorian French is also unique in its grammatical differences present in spoken speech such as these:
Algerian FrenchWithout being an official language, French is frequently used in government, workplaces, and education. French is the default language for work in several sectors. In a 2007 study set in the city of Mostaganem, it was shown that French and Arabic were the two functional languages of banking. Technical work is also frequently done in French. Documents, forms, and posters are often in both French and Arabic.The usage of French among the Algerian population is different depending on social situations. One can find:
Few academic sources exist surrounding the particularisms of Beninese French. Nevertheless, it is evident that Beninese French has adapted the meanings of several French terms over time, such as: seconder, doigter. Burkinabe FrenchFrench is the language of administration, education, and business in Burkina Faso and was the de jure official language until a constitutional change in 2024. While spoken fluently only by about a quarter of the population, French has progressively become a native language among urban populations since the late 20th century, notably in the cities of Ouagadougou, Bobo-Dioulasso, and Banfora. By 2010, about 10% of Ouagadougou residents spoke French as their first language.Linguists have observed the development of a local vernacular of French in the country called français populaire burkinabè which is influenced by local languages such as Mooré and is used as a lingua franca in commerce. It is largely used as a spoken language whereas speakers continue to use standard French as the written language. Cameroonian FrenchKinshasa FrenchWith more than 11 million inhabitants, Kinshasa is the largest Francophone city in the world, surpassing Paris in population. It is the capital of the most populous francophone country in the world, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where an estimated 43 million people can speak French. Contrary to Abidjan where French is the first language of a large part of the population, in Kinshasa French is only a second language, and its status of lingua franca is shared with Lingala. Kinshasa French also differs from other African French variants, for it has some Belgian French influences, due to colonization. People of different African mother tongues living in Kinshasa usually speak Lingala to communicate with each other in the street, but French is the language of businesses, administrations, schools, newspapers and televisions. French is also the predominant written language.Due to its widespread presence in Kinshasa, French has become a local language with its own pronunciation and some local words borrowed for the most part from Lingala. Depending on their social status, some people may mix French and Lingala, or code switch between the two depending on the context. Here are examples of words particular to Kinshasa French. As in Abidjan, there exist various registers and the most educated people may frown upon the use of slangish/Lingala terms.
Here are some of the phonetic characteristics of Kinshasa French:
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