Hausa

Hausa (/ˈhaʊsə/; in Hausa: Harshen/Halshen Hausa listen /hawˈsa/; Ajami: هَرْشَن هَوْسَا‎) is a Chadic language spoken by over 94.5 million people in West Africa, primarily by the Hausa people in Niger (where it is the sole official language, having replaced French in 2025) and Nigeria, but also as a lingua franca in most of northern Nigeria, southern Niger, as well as in northern Cameroon, Ghana (mainly in the north of the country, but also extensively among the Zongo communities all across the country, including in the capital, Accra), Benin and Togo, southern Chad, and parts of Sudan. Hausa also has significant a number of speakers in Côte d’Ivoire and the Central African Republic.

Hausa is a member of the Afroasiatic language family and is the most widely spoken language within the Chadic branch of that family. Hausa is tonal, using relative pitch both to distinguish words, and mark grammatical categories. Ethnologue estimated that it was spoken as a first language by some 58 million people and as a second language by another 36 million, bringing the total number of Hausa speakers to an estimated 94 million.