Bantu peoples
The Bantu peoples are an ethnolinguistic grouping of approximately 400 distinct native African ethnic groups who speak Bantu languages. The languages are native to 24 countries spread over a vast area from Central Africa to Southeast Africa and into Southern Africa.
Approximate distribution of Bantu peoples divided into zones according to the Guthrie classification of Bantu languages | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 460 million | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| |
| Languages | |
| Bantu languages (over 535) | |
| Religion | |
| Predominantly Christianity, traditional African faiths; minority Islam |
There are several hundred Bantu languages. Depending on the definition of "language" or "dialect", it is estimated that there are between 440 and 680 distinct languages. The total number of speakers is in the hundreds of millions, ranging at roughly 350 million in the mid-2010s (roughly 30% of the population of Africa, or roughly 5% of the total world population). About 60 million speakers (2015), divided into some 200 ethnic or tribal groups, are found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo alone.
The larger of the individual Bantu groups have populations of several million, e.g., the people of Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Burundi (25 million), the Baganda people of Uganda (5.5 million as of 2014), the Shona of Zimbabwe (17.6 million as of 2020), the Zulu of South Africa (14.2 million as of 2016), the Luba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (28.8 million as of 2010), the Sukuma of Tanzania (10.2 million as of 2016), the Kikuyu of Kenya (8.1 million as of 2019), the Xhosa people of Southern Africa (9.6 million as of 2011), and the Pedi of South Africa (7 million as of 2018).