• Most prominent language family of sub-Saharan Africa: up to almost 1,500 separate languages distinguished.
  
• A hypothetical common ‘proto-Niger-Congo’ ancestor thought to have ceased to exist 5,000 years ago.
  
• Exact hierarchical subdivision still under debate.
  
• The largest of the sub-families is made up by the Bantu languages, native to Central and the largest part of Southern Africa.
  
  
  Source: Wikipedia / Author: Mark Dingemanse / Creative_Commons Licenses
  
  

Most spoken languages:

• Swahili (5 M first language speakers in the East African countries, plus 30 million using it as a second language lingua franca)
• Yoruba (20 M) in Nigeria and the eastern part of West Africa; Igbo (17 M) of Nigeria
• Fulani (13 M, including second language speakers) in West Africa
• Wolof (2.7 M in Senegal, plus 7 million second language speakers)
• Zulu (9.5 M) of South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique
• Rwanda (9.5 M) of Rwanda and adjacent countries

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