African French

African French (French: français africain) is the generic name of the varieties of the French language spoken by an estimated 167 million people in Africa in 2023 or 51% of the French-speaking population of the world spread across 34 countries and territories. This includes those who speak French as a first or second language in these 34 African countries and territories (some of which are not Francophone, but merely non-Francophone members or observers of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie or OIF), but it does not include French speakers living in other African countries. Africa is thus the continent with the most French speakers in the world, and African French speakers now form a large and integral part of the Francophonie.

In Africa, French is often spoken alongside Indigenous languages, but in a 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, Ivory Coast, in the urban areas of Douala and Yaoundé in Cameroon, and in Libreville, Gabon.

In some countries it is a first language among some 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.