All You Need to Know About African Languages

The origin of African languages can be traced back to a single ancestral language spoken in Africa between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago. Research led by Quentin Atkinson from the University of Auckland suggests that this ancient "mother tongue" is the foundation of the world's 6,000 modern languages.

"It was the catalyst that spurred the human expansion that we all are a product of," Atkinson said, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Atkinson's study analyzed distinct sounds, or phonemes, across 504 languages and found that African languages possess the greatest phonemic diversity.

For instance, some African click languages have over 100 phonemes, whereas languages like Hawaiian have as few as 13. This pattern mirrors human genetic diversity, supporting the theory that early human migrations from Africa carried this proto-language everywhere they went as reported by Daily Mail UK.

Furthermore, The Wall Street Journal reported that this finding could help explain how the first spoken language came to be, grew, and shaped the success of human society.

Atkinson's research, while not definitive, suggests that modern language may have originated only once, a discussion that continues to spark debate among linguist experts.

Africa is home to some of the oldest languages in the world, each carrying a piece of our continent’s vast history. We may have close to or more than two thousand languages today. However, one thing is certain: they all originated from somewhere.

For instance, if you examine the families of African languages, you will find that they stem from ancient tongues whose names are lost to time. This makes it fair to say that the spoken word has been part of Africa’s cultural heritage for thousands of years.

This is why linguists take great interest in African languages—not only to understand our incredible diversity but also to explore how tribal life and oral traditions have shaped these tongues for thousands of years.

While it is difficult to identify one definitive “oldest” African language, here are ten of the most commonly mentioned ancient languages:

Egyptian Arabic

This Egyptian Arabic dates back to around 2690 BC, Egyptian is considered the oldest known language in Africa. It was the language of ancient Egypt, with a rich literary tradition that included hieroglyphic inscriptions and religious texts.

Ge'ez

Ge'ez, also known as Ethiopic, originated in the Horn of Africa around the 8th to 9th century BC. It is the liturgical language of the Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Churches and has its own unique script.

Berber (Tamazight)

The Berber languages have ancient roots, with the Tifinagh script used for writing Berber languages dating back to at least the 6th century BC. The language is spoken by the Berber people across North Africa.

Coptic

The Coptic language came from ancient Egyptians around the 2nd century AD. It served as the language of Christian Egypt and is still used in the liturgy of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

Meroitic

The Meroitic is around 2,300 years old and used between 300 BC and 400 AD in the Kingdom of Kush (modern-day Sudan). Despite being undeciphered, the Meroitic script represents the advanced civilization of ancient Nubia.

Old Nubian

The Old Nubian, attested from the 8th century AD, is the oldest recorded Nilo-Saharan language. It is over 1200 years old. It was used in Christian Nubian kingdoms and is among the earliest written African languages outside the Afroasiatic family.

Amharic

Dating back over a millennium, Amharic has been spoken in Ethiopia since at least the 9th century AD. As the official language of Ethiopia, it has a rich literary tradition and uses the Ge'ez script.

Tigrinya

Tigrinya has been spoken since at least the 13th century AD in the Horn of Africa, meaning that it's around 700 years old or more. It is spoken in Eritrea and northern Ethiopia.

Hausa

Hausa has been a lingua franca in West Africa for centuries, with written records dating back to the 17th century AD. It is one of the most widely spoken languages in Africa, and uses both Arabic and Latin scripts.

Swahili

Swahili was developed along the East African coast, with the earliest writings from the 18th century AD. As a Bantu language with significant Arabic influence, it serves as a trade and communication medium across East Africa.

Africa's linguistic diversity is unmatched, with over 2,000 languages spoken across its 55 countries and territories. For example, countries like Nigeria and South Africa have multiple official languages to represent their diverse linguistic heritage.

Therefore, understanding the distribution of languages across African nations offers more insight into our continent's rich culture and heritage.

Swahili is not just one of the most spoken languages in Africa, but also one of the fastest-growing globally, with over 200 million speakers. It is one of the six official languages of the African Union (AU) and the East African Community (EAC). About 40% of Swahili's vocabulary comes from Arabic, introduced by Arabian traders along the East African coast.

Annabel Naa Odarley Lankai, a Swahili student from the University of Ghana, told the BBC, "It's high time we move from the colonizer's language." "Africa should have something that is of us and for us," she added.

The UN's cultural organization, Unesco, recognized Swahili's importance by declaring July 7th as World Swahili Day. Swahili is also the only African language recognized by the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

With its growing influence, and introduction of Swahili translator tools, more academic institutions across Africa are planning to integrate Swahili into their systems, with South Africa, Botswana, and Ethiopia leading this charge. Linguistic experts predict that Swahili's impact will continue to expand as reported by the BBC.

Most linguistic analyses all agree that Afrikaans is Africa’s youngest language. Afrikaans came into prominence in the late 17th century, with its roots developed from Dutch dialects spoken by settlers in South Africa. It was further influenced by other languages, including Malay, Portuguese, and indigenous African tongues.

The evolution of Afrikaans was marked by its transition from being perceived as a colloquial variant of Dutch to gaining official recognition. In 1925, Afrikaans was declared an official language of South Africa and became a distinct language.

Today, Afrikaans is spoken by approximately seven million people as a first language and by an additional ten million as a second language, primarily in South Africa and Namibia.

An endangered language is one that is at risk of disappearing as its speakers shift to using other languages, often under pressure from social, economic, or political forces.

In Africa, this is not just a linguistic crisis—it is a cultural one. Hundreds of languages, each representing a unique way of life, are fading away. Experts predict that by 2100, nearly 40% of African languages could disappear, per Kabod Group.

Factors Driving Language Extinction in Africa

Urbanization and Globalization: As people move to cities and adopt global languages like English and French, smaller indigenous languages are left behind. A UCLA linguistics study highlights how urbanization has accelerated the loss of traditional languages, especially in regions like Ethiopia and South Africa.

Education Systems: Schools across Africa prioritize colonial languages for instruction, sidelining indigenous ones. According to UNESCO, this has created a gap where younger generations no longer learn their ancestral tongues.

Declining Populations: Some languages on the brink of extinction are spoken by small, isolated groups whose numbers are shrinking due to migration, intermarriage, or even disease.

Nigeria

The Nigerian government has recently launched its first Multilingual Large Language Model (LLM) to support indigenous languages like Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Pidgin, and Ibibio, alongside accented English.

Nigeria, Africa's largest country by population, has the highest share of languages (520) on the continent. This makes it imperative for initiatives like this to build the largest dataset for native Nigerian languages, preserving its linguistic diversity through AI.

“This effort is about more than just technology; it’s about ensuring our languages and cultures remain vital in a rapidly evolving digital world,” said Dr. Bosun Tijani, Nigeria’s Minister of Communications, Innovation, and Digital Economy, who is leading this initiative.

Over 7,000 fellows from the Three Million Technical Talent (3MTT) program are actively involved in the translation of English into local languages.

South Africa

For many African families living in the diaspora, preserving native languages is always a challenge. Children grow up speaking English or other dominant languages, while their ability to communicate fluently in their mother tongue gradually fades away.

This was the case for Zanele Mkhize, a South African events worker living in the UK. Despite her regular visits back home and efforts to use Zulu in daily conversations, her children’s fluency waned over time, especially during their teenage years.

“I don’t think they could ever lose their ability to understand Zulu, because I spoke it to them in their early years. Yet their reading, writing, and speaking was not as good, as they always spoke and studied in English growing up,” says Mkhize.

However, a breakthrough came when one of her kids, now an adult, found out about Duolingo—a popular language-learning app.

After the platform introduced Zulu tools, he began using them to strengthen his Zulu fluency. He learned at his own pace while balancing a busy life. This single effort helped him reconnect with his cultural roots.

“My son was really excited when Duolingo made Zulu available last year, as it’s easier to learn that way than to be arched over a textbook when you have a busy life.” She added, per African Business.

Mali

In Mali, after French was removed as the national language, Michael Leventhal and Seydou Katikon created RobotsMali, an AI tool that uses ChatGPT, Google Translate, and Playground to create 107 storybooks in Bambara, Mali's most widely spoken language, to bridge the communication gap.

These storybooks, specifically designed for elementary school students, were distributed through volunteer-led after-school programs as per Rest of World.

“Artificial intelligence will help a lot in making sure no language is marginalized. So, I hope RobotsMali will be reinforced and become the center of AI utilization for improving teaching in our national languages,” said Assétou Founé Samake, a former Malian minister of higher education and research.

“We don’t want languages to be marginalized, because every language contains a culture [and] knowledge that we must not lose.” He added.

Cameroon

Stemming from the frustration of African languages being excluded from global digital platforms, Cameroonian-born, Netherlands-based sisters Barbara Gwanmesia and Ndipabonga Atanga founded Batazia, a company dedicated to preserving and advancing the African "mother tongue" through modern AI technology.

Barbara’s inspiration for this initiative arose when a major global repository platform refused to include Kiswahili; a language spoken by over 200 million people and instead decided to include European languages spoken by only a few people.

"...how could Kiswahili not be in their silo of languages when some European languages spoken by as few as twenty thousand to thirty thousand people were in their repository of languages?" Barbara told Beacons and Icons.

"I was shocked. Not just because they said ‘no’ to these languages, but because the book was a transformative book that I was convinced would change many lives in Africa," she added.

This disparity drove her to come up with a solution that ensures authentic translations into, from, and across African languages. Her solution also focuses on codifying oral traditions into written forms and empowers millions to access knowledge in their native tongues.

“Batazia is not just a platform, it's a bridge to Africa's linguistic diversity,” said co-founder Ndipabonga Atanga.

Despite these promising efforts, challenges abound. A study from Science.org says that many AI models “mangle” African languages due to a lack of quality data. Most AI tools are trained in high-resource languages like English, leaving indigenous African languages underrepresented. Additionally, ethical concerns about data ownership and consent complicate the digitization process.

Shamsuddeen Hassan Muhammad, a Ph.D. student at the University of Porto and co-founder of HausaNLP, shared an example where a Hausa translation error on Facebook led to an offensive misinterpretation of a joyful announcement. "There isn’t even a data set to train a model to understand whether this is hate or not hate," Muhammad explained, as he stressed the need for targeted data creation.