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In Sub-Saharan Africa, most official languages at the national level tend to be colonial languages such as French, Portuguese, or English. [ 4 ] [ 5 ] [ 6 ] The African Union declared 2006 the "Year of African Languages".
The numbers shown correspond to the dates of all Iron Age artifacts associated with the Bantu expansion. Sub-Saharan Africa, Subsahara, or Non-Mediterranean Africa[ 3] is the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lie south of the Sahara. These include Central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa.
An estimated 2,500–3,000 years ago (1000 BC to 500 BC), speakers of the Proto-Bantu language began a series of migrations eastward and southward, carrying agriculture with them. This Bantu expansion came to dominate Sub-Saharan Africa east of Cameroon, an area where Bantu peoples now constitute nearly the entire population.
The Bantu peoples are an ethnolinguistic grouping of approximately 400 distinct native African ethnic groups who speak Bantu languages. The languages are native to 24 countries spread over a vast area from Central Africa to Southeast Africa and into Southern Africa. [ 1][ 2] There are several hundred Bantu languages.
The ethnic groups of Africa number in the thousands, with each ethnicity generally having its own language (or dialect of a language) and culture. The ethnolinguistic groups include various Afroasiatic , Khoisan , Niger-Congo , and Nilo-Saharan populations.
The Bantu expansion was [ 3][ 4][ 5] a major series of migrations of the original Proto-Bantu -speaking group, [ 6][ 7] which spread from an original nucleus around West - Central Africa. In the process, the Proto-Bantu-speaking settlers displaced, eliminated or absorbed pre-existing hunter-gatherer and pastoralist groups that they encountered.
Y-DNA haplogroups in populations of Sub-Saharan Africa. The proportions of various human Y-DNA haplogroups vary significantly from one ethnic or language group to another in Africa . Data in the table below are based on genetic research. The second column designates linguistic affiliation of the sampled population (Semitic, Nilo-Saharan, Niger ...
Niger–Congo is a hypothetical language family spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. [1] It unites the Mande languages, the Atlantic–Congo languages (which share a characteristic noun class system), and possibly several smaller groups of languages that are difficult to classify.