Mooré language in the context of "Niger–Congo"

Niger–Congo is a proposed family of languages spoken over the majority of sub-Saharan Africa. 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. If valid, Niger–Congo would be the world's largest language family in terms of member languages, the third-largest in terms of speakers, and Africa's largest in terms of geographical area. The number of named Niger–Congo languages listed by Ethnologue is 1,540.

The proposed family would be the third-largest in the world by number of native speakers, with around 600 million people as of 2025. Within Niger–Congo, the Bantu languages alone account for 350 million people (2015), or half the total Niger–Congo speaking population. The most widely spoken Niger–Congo languages by number of native speakers are Yoruba, Igbo, Fula, Lingala, Ewe, Fon, Ga-Dangme, Shona, Sesotho, Xhosa, Zulu, Akan, and Mooré. The most widely spoken by the total number of speakers is Swahili, which is used as a lingua franca in parts of eastern and southeastern Africa.

Ajami (Arabic: عجمي, ʿajamī) or Ajamiyya (عجمية, ʿajamiyyah), is a variety of Arabic-derived scripts used for writing African languages such as Songhai, Mandé, Fula, Hausa and Swahili, although multiple other languages are also written using the script, including Mooré, Wolof, Kanuri, and Yoruba. They are adaptations of the Arabic script to write sounds not found in Standard Arabic. Rather than adding new letters, modifications usually consist of additional dots or lines added to pre-existing letters.