French-Speaking Africa

The short answer is colonial history. From the 1800s to the middle of the 1900s, France took control of large parts of West, Central and North Africa (Algeria from 1830, Tunisia from 1881, Morocco from 1912), and Belgium ruled the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. Colonial rule was imposed by force and did serious harm to the people who lived there; French arrived as the language of the rulers, used in government, courts and the few schools that existed. Most of these countries won their independence around 1960 (Guinea in 1958, a long list of countries in 1960, Algeria in 1962). After independence, many of them chose to keep French as an official language. One reason is practical: a country where people speak dozens of different languages needs a shared language for its laws, schools and national media, and its government and school system were already working in French. French also connects these countries to each other and to international organisations. Today French rarely stands alone: most people are multilingual, using French at school or at work and an African language such as Wolof, Lingala, Kinyarwanda or Malagasy at home and with friends.

Dakar, Senegal's capital, sits on a peninsula at the westernmost tip of mainland Africa. Senegal's first president, Léopold Sédar Senghor (president from 1960 to 1980), was also a celebrated poet. As a student in Paris in the 1930s, he and the writers Aimé Césaire (from Martinique) and Léon-Gontran Damas (from French Guiana) founded la Négritude, a literary movement that wrote in French to celebrate Black identity and African cultures. In 1983 Senghor became the first African member of the Académie française, the institution that watches over the French language. He was also one of the leaders behind la Francophonie as an organisation: in 1970, in Niamey (Niger), representatives of 21 countries created the agency that later became the OIF. Senegalese culture is famous for la teranga, a Wolof word for hospitality and welcoming guests — the national football team is even nicknamed les Lions de la Teranga. A classic dish is thiéboudienne, rice cooked with fish and vegetables; the singer Youssou N'Dour made Senegal's mbalax music known around the world. Just off Dakar lies the île de Gorée, a UNESCO World Heritage Site that is a place of memory for the Atlantic slave trade.

• Côte d'Ivoire — Abidjan, built around a lagoon, is the country's largest city and economic centre, nicknamed la Perle des lagunes. Street food includes attiéké (grated cassava steamed like couscous, often served with grilled fish) and alloco (fried plantain). Young Ivorians made coupé-décalé a popular dance music, and Abidjan's street slang, le nouchi, mixes French with local languages. Abidjan hosted the Jeux de la Francophonie (a sports and arts competition for young people from French-speaking countries) in 2017.
• République démocratique du Congo — Kinshasa lies on the Congo River, directly across the water from Brazzaville, the capital of the neighbouring Republic of the Congo. Congolese rumba, often sung in Lingala, was added to UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage in 2021. Kinshasa hosted the Jeux de la Francophonie in 2023.
• Burkina Faso — the capital, Ouagadougou, has hosted FESPACO, one of Africa's best-known film festivals, since 1969; it has been held every two years since 1979.
• Le Maroc — in the old city of Marrakech, the covered markets called souks sell spices, leather and lanterns around the famous square Jemaa el-Fna. Families share couscous and tajine (a stew cooked slowly in a clay pot with a cone-shaped lid). French is not official here, but many Moroccans switch easily between Arabic and French.

To say to or in a place, French chooses the preposition from the kind of place. Cities take à (à Dakar). Countries have a gender, and most countries ending in -e are feminine: feminine countries take en (en Tunisie), masculine countries take au (au Sénégal, from à + le), and plural countries take aux (aux Comores, from à + les). To say from, swap in the de family: de Dakar, de Tunisie (d'Algérie before a vowel), du Sénégal, des Comores. That is all you need for now; the full rule, with its exceptions, is a Grade 10 lesson.

Translation: My name is Awa, I'm fifteen and I live in Dakar, in Senegal. At home I speak Wolof with my family, but at school all my classes are in French. On Saturday mornings I go to the market with my mother, and in the evening we cook our national dish together, a rice and fish dish called thiéboudienne. My cousin Moussa lives in Côte d'Ivoire, in Abidjan, and next summer I'm going to visit him. My pen pal, Émilie, comes from Canada: she lives in Sudbury, in Ontario. She says that Senegalese teranga is a lot like the warm welcome of her Franco-Ontarian community! Check each preposition: à before the cities Dakar, Abidjan and Sudbury; au before the masculine Sénégal; en before the feminine Côte d'Ivoire and before Ontario, a masculine name that starts with a vowel; du (from) before the masculine Canada.