Atlantic-Congo in the context of "Senegambian languages"

The number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated (depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect) at between 1,250 and 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SIL Ethnologue), one of the greatest concentrations of linguistic diversity in the world. The languages of Africa belong to many distinct language families, among which the largest are:

• Niger–Congo, which include the large Atlantic-Congo and Bantu branches in West, Central, Southeast and Southern Africa.
• Afroasiatic languages are spread throughout Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa and parts of the Sahel.
• Saharan, Nilotic and Central Sudanic languages (grouped under the hypothetical Nilo-Saharan macro-family), are present in East Africa and Sahel.
• Austronesian languages are spoken in Madagascar and parts of the Comoros.
• Khoe–Kwadi languages are spoken mostly in Namibia and Botswana.
• Indo-European languages, while not indigenous to Africa, are spoken in South Africa and Namibia (Afrikaans, English, German) and are used as lingua francas in Liberia and the former colonies of the United Kingdom (English), former colonies of France and of Belgium (French), former colonies of Portugal (Portuguese), former colonies of Italy (Italian), former colonies of Spain (Spanish) and the current Spanish territories of Ceuta, Melilla and the Canary Islands and the current French territories of Mayotte and La Réunion.

There are several other small families and language isolates, as well as creoles and languages that have yet to be classified. In addition, Africa has a wide variety of sign languages, many of which are language isolates.

The Bantu expansion was a major series of migrations of the original Proto-Bantu-speaking group, which spread from an original nucleus around West-Central Africa across Central Africa, Eastern Africa, and Southern Africa. In the process, the Proto-Bantu-speaking settlers absorbed, displaced, and possibly in some cases replaced pre-existing hunter-gatherer and pastoralist groups that they encountered.

There is linguistic evidence for this expansion – a great many of the languages which are spoken across sub-Equatorial Africa are remarkably similar to each other, suggesting a recent common cultural origin of their original speakers. The linguistic core of the Bantu languages, which constitute a branch of the Atlantic-Congo language family, was located in the southern regions of Cameroon. Genetic evidence also indicates that there was a large human migration from central Africa, with varying levels of admixture with local population.