Full list: Nigerian Pidgin Tops List as African Most Spoken Language, 14th in the World
- Nigerian Pidgin emerges as the most widely spoken language in Africa, ranking 14th globally, and recording over 120 million active speakers
- Urbanisation, regional trade, and the global reach of Nollywood and Nigerian music have contributed to the language's rapid expansion beyond Nigeria's borders.
- Nigerian Pidgin serves as a bridge across the country's multiple ethnic groups, beating Egyptian Arabic and several other African languages to make the list
According to the latest data from Ethnologue, which was compiled by Visual Capitalist, Nigerian Pidgin has emerged as Africa's most widely spoken language in 2025, boasting an impressive 121 million speakers.
Source: Twitter
Nigerian Pidgin ranks 14th globally among languages with the most speakers, surpassing Egyptian Arabic, Hausa, and Swahili. Interestingly, while only around 5 million people speak it as their native language, approximately 116 million use it as a secondary language. This has cemented its status as a rapidly expanding lingua franca in Africa.
As seen by Legit.ng on the Visual Capitalist website, the English language took the top spot worldwide with 1.5 billion speakers, followed by Mandarin Chinese at 1.2 billion and Hindi at 609 million.
The report revealed that the growing prominence of Nigerian Pidgin can be attributed to factors such as rapid urbanisation, thriving regional trade, and the global reach of Nigerian entertainment, including music and movies, which play a significant role in spreading the language beyond Nigeria's borders.
Despite its unofficial status, Pidgin serves as a bridge across Nigeria's multiple ethnic groups, widely accepted by many who can't fully comprehend British English. As such, news media, the government, and traders have adopted it in their day-to-day activities.
Full list below
- English, with 1,528,000 active speakers
- Mandarin, with 1,184,000 active speakers
- Hindi, with 609,000 active speakers
- Spanish, with 558,000 active speakers
- Standard Arabic, with 335,000 active speakers
- French, with 312,000 active speakers
- Bengali, with 284,000 active speakers
- Portuguese, with 267,000 active speakers
- Russian, with 253,000 active speakers
- Indonesia, with 252,000 active speakers
- Urdu, with 246,000 active speakers
- German, with 134,000 active speakers
- Japanese, with 126,000 active speakers
- Nigerian Pidgin, with 121,000 active speakers
- Egyptian Arabic, with 119,000 active speakers
- Marathi, with 99,000 active speakers
- Vietnamese, with 97,000 active speakers
- Telugu, with 96,000 active speakers
- Hausa, with 94,000 active speakers
- Turkish, with 91,000 active speakers
- Western Punjabi, 90,000 active speakers
- Swahili, with 87,000 active speakers
- Tagalog, with 87,000 active speakers
- Tamil, with 86,000 active speakers
- Yue Chinese, with 86,000 active speakers
Source: Getty Images
20-year-old Nigerian polyglot
Legit previously reported that a young Nigerian language prodigy, Favour Chisimdi Nwobodo, is versed in 9 foreign languages. Favour, according to Women Power Africa, can comfortably speak languages like French, Spanish, German, Indonesian, Filipino, Korean, Swahili, Shona and Chinese.
What is interesting is that the 20-year-old amassed these linguistics without going abroad or studying in any of the countries. She learnt everything in Nigeria!
Source: Legit.ng
