Family of some 1,400 languages of Africa.
All of these are considered to be distinct languages and not simply dialects. The named dialects of these languages number many thousands more, not to mention the variant names for those languages and dialects. Niger-Congo languages are spoken by about 85% of the population of Africa, from Dakar, Senegal, in the west to Mombasa, Kenya, and in the east and south to Cape Town, S.Af. The name Niger-Congo was introduced in 1955 by Joseph H. Greenberg . As understood today, Niger-Congo has nine branches: Mande , Kordofanian , Atlantic (formerly West Atlantic), Kru , Gur , Kwa , Ijoid , Adamawa-Ubangi (formerly Adamawa-Eastern), and Benue-Congo .