African languages

This is a page to gather useful information about African languages in Wikimedia projects, in order to increase the number of writers on the continent itself. Specifically African languages with many speakers, but not many writers, so excluding French, English, Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic and Afrikaans, which have fairly active Wikipedias already.

Si tu veux tu peux écrire en français ici, soit on traduira les phrases en anglais, soit on créera une traduction en français.

The term "African languages" refers to the approximately 1800 languages spoken in Africa. Some African languages, such as Swahili, Hausa, and Yoruba, are spoken by millions of people. Others, such as Laal, Shabo, and Dahalo, are spoken by a few hundred or fewer.

Generally, books are expensive in Africa. Many languages have a purely oral tradition. Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects are excellent ways of improving the situation of African languages.

Would you be willing to help develop the presence of African languages on Wikipedia and Wiktionary? That is, to help set up Wikipedias in African languages, and to accelerate the process of adding words to the Wiktionaries.

Your knowledge

In which languages are you able to write? Also, since you're studying, you might know more people who are interested in a project like this.

Guaka:
- basic knowledge of Bambara
- in possession of Bambara-French, French-Bambara dictionary
- English, German, French, Dutch, little Spanish
- currently in Mali
moyogo:
- learning Lingala
- in possession of French-Bangala-Lingala dictionary, three Lingala teaching books and a Lingala dictionary
- French, English, little Dutch, intermediary Spanish
Inisheer:
- learning kinyarwanda
- english-kinyarwanda (tiny) dictionnary, one teaching book
- French, English, German, little Spanish
- currently in Switzerland
A12n 14:59, 21 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Fula, Bambara
- Have a bunch of materials in storage; published a lexicon of Fula (focusing on Maasinankoore
- French, lesser knowledge of various other languages
- Coordinating PanAfriL10n project; co-founder of Afrophonewikis group
Jagwar grrr... 16:29, 2 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- Malagasy as native language.
- Malagasy language dictionary : Rakibolana Malagasy, 1985 Ed. ; online Malagasy language dictionaries
- French (fluent), English (fluent), Spanish.
- Currently in Paris (France).

Wikipedias set up

Active

The table lists article counts at several different times from several sources (see notes below table):

Language	Sep. 2006	Dec. 2008	April 2011	Nov. 2011	June 2012	Sep. 2013	July 2014	June 2015	Jan. 2016	June 2018	April 2019	Nov. 2021	Nov. 2022	Nov. 2023
Afrikaans (af)		11,285	17,000	20,000	23,040	26,752	32,161	35,856	38,354	50,275	77,941	101,011	105,677	112,648
Akan (ak)	8		67	144	158		286		252		560	1,407	591	moved to Twi
Amharic (am)	437	3,251	7,000	11,317	11,654	12,360	16,109	12,950	13,017	14,286	14,863	15,007	15,022	15,252
Bamanankan (bm)	128		378	386	385		403		358		652	720	783	819
Chi Chewa (ny)			129	133	140		216		160		535	855	933	1,025
ChiShona (sn)	37		107	279	1,027	1,421	2,075	2,321	2,455	3,630	4,290	7,385	9,287	11,315
ChiTumbuka (tum)	15		128	147	151		174		439		572	600	8,099	18,646
Egyptian Arabic (arz)						12,440			14,648	18,605	20,243	1,370,994	1,610,868	1,620,361
Ɛʋɛ (ee)			256	280	291		298		317		350	384	462	840
Fante (fat)														506
Farefare (gur)														852
Fulfulde (ff)	14		114	131	150		210		182		227	362	637	1,678
Fon (fo)														527
Ghanaian Pidgin (gpe)														894
Gĩkũyũ or Kikuyu (ki)			111	115	198		359		741	1,357	1,359	1,501	1,502	1,533
Gun (guw)													1,128	1,223
Hausa (ha)	14		263	270	274		1,389	1,345	1,356	1,856	3,471	13,048	19,423	32,541
Igbo (ig)	11		668	686	692		1,008	1,019	1,045	1,320	1,395	2,532	13,422	21,526
isiZulu (zu)	76	182	225	256	558	579	676	683	696		1,070	10,460	10,685	11,534
Kabyle (kab)						1,503		2,296	2,507	2,844	3,037	6,224	6,510	6,720
Kikongo (kg)	142		596	622	679		878		1,116	1,179	1,193	1,233	1,258	1,272
Kinyarwanda (rw)	34		1,798	1,805	1,808	1,817	1,832	1,780	1,784	1,823	1,821	2,545	3,907	6,619
Kirundi (rn)	11		177	189	183		429		487		609	620	621	639
Kiswahili or Swahili (sw)	1,584	7,807	21,000	22,310	24,054	25,265	26,496	29,127	31,616	42,773	49,593	68,202	75,349	78,614
Lingala (ln)	217	1,074	1,600	1,792	1,828	2,025	2,080	2,062	2,112	3,023	3,115	3,235	3,302	3,352
Luganda (lg)									709	1,162	1,170	1,370	1,526	2,805
Malagasy (mg)			3,213	4,050	37,840	45,361	47,147	79,329	81,138	84,996	91,644	94,316	95,100	96,264
Nigerian Pidgin (pcm)													401	989
Northern Sotho (nso)		301				685		1,000	2,773	8,050	8,019	8,446	8,533	8,581
Oromo (om)									682		776	1,076	1,100	1,628
Sango (sg)									240		255	278	314	6,578
Sesotho (st)	37	68	120	132	145	188	197	223	293		547	821	900	935
Setswana (tn)	18	102	112	251	491	495	509	503	503		645	723	955	1,291
Soomaali (so)	32		1,800	2,249	2,408	3,646	3,658		3,785	4,898	5,455	7,094	8,701	7,880
Swati (ss)		146				364		410	412		467	543	599	879
Tigrinya (ti)			249	254	257		270		160		169	217	238	258
Twi (tw)	15		65	125	142		516		559		651	1,135	2,154	3,508
Tyap (kcg)													587	826
Venda (ve)		120				204		151	189		265	636	748	748
Wolof (wo)	226		1,000	1,109	1,117	1,161	1,143	1,023	1,042	1,166	1,186	1,643	1,650	1,692
Xhosa (xh)	29	109	118	125	139	148	337	356	460		790	1,222	1,241	1,611
Xitsonga (ts)		150	188	192	241	240	303	266	281		586	709	720	751
Yoruba (yo)	55	6,246	12,000	29,652	30,008	30,585	30,949	31,068	31,135	31,672	31,879	33,503	31,889	33,294

Notes:

The 2006 figures, which are incomplete, come from a thread on the AfrophoneWikis list (6 Sept. 2006).
The "Neverness" blog is the source of the 2008 figures, and the 2013 & 2015 figures. These are also incomplete, as this blog focuses mainly on South Africa .
The 2016 figures were extracted manually from Wikistats - All Wikimedia Projects by Size. The 2019 figures were also extracted manually, but from the counter on the main page of each wiki.
The 2011, 2012 & 2014 figures were previously entered in table.

The 2018 figures are from http://www.greenman.co.za/blog/?p=2244 Data available only if >1000.

Other sources for pagecounts: List of Wikipedias; list of Wikipedias on en.wikipedia.org; and a user page on the Lingala edition that has an additional set of page countsfor 2011.

Closed (and in incubator)

Afar --> (aa)
Herero --> (hz)
Kanuri --> (kr)
Kuanyama --> (kj)
Ndonga --> (ng)

Incubator

A number of African languages are listed in the incubator, most without substantive content. Some Wikipedia incubatees that do have a number of pages include:

Deleted

Words in Wiktionary

Bamanankan

Dogon

Kinyarwanda

Lingala

Swahili

Hausa

Yoruba

Songhay

Number of speakers

**List of major African languages (by total number of speakers)**
name	number of speakers (millions)
Swahili (Southeast Africa)	5-10 native 80 secondary
Maghrebi Arabic	80
Egyptian Arabic	76
Hausa (West Africa)	40 native 15 secondary
Oromo (East Africa)	30-35
Yoruba (West Africa)	25
Amharic (East Africa)	25
Sudanese Arabic	19
Somali (Somalia)	15
Ibibio (Ibibio/Annang/Efik, Nigeria)	8-12
Igbo (Nigeria)	10-16
Fula (West Africa)	10-16
Malagasy (Madagascar)	17
Zulu (South Africa)	10
Afrikaans (South Africa)	10
Chichewa (East Africa)	9
Akan	9
Shona	7
Xhosa (South Africa)	8
Kinyarwanda (Rwanda)	7
Kongo	7
Tigrinya	7
Tshiluba (Congo)	6
Wolof	3 native 3 secondary
Gikuyu (Kenya)	5
Kalenjin (Kenya)	8
More (West Africa)	5
Kirundi (Central Africa)	5
Sotho (South Africa)	5
Luhya (Kenya)	4
Tswana (Southern Africa)	4
Kanuri (West Africa)	4
Umbundu (Angola)	4
Northern Sotho (South Africa)	4
Dagbani (Ghana)	4
(there are lots of missing languages with smaller communities, and the estimations above may be very inaccurate)
Total number of people in this table	about 538
Total number of people in Africa	about 900

External links

Article (in English) on African languages in Wikipedia, New York Times, 2006-08-26 (old, may be inaccessible, or no longer relevant to the current situation)