BENUE-CONGO LANGUAGES

the largest branch of the Niger-Congo language family, in terms of the number of speakers, the number of languages, and the wide geographic spread, stretching from the Benin-Nigeria border across Nigeria and Cameroon through central Africa to eastern Africa. It includes all the countries in central and southern Africa. This huge area covers more than half the habitable terrain of the continent and represents a similar percentage of the population, totaling at least 500 million. The 900 languages of the Benue-Congo branch are further subdivided into 11 unequal groups. Languages in the first 10 of these 11 groups are spoken almost entirely within Nigeria.