August 2025 African language Wikipedia update

Language families of Africa
Image from Wikimedia Commons

African Language Wikipedias

It’s Wikimania 2025 here in Nairobi, so time for an update to the African language Wikipedia stats, which I last reported on at 2024 Wiki Indaba in October 2024.

Here is the full list of all African languages with more than 1,000 articles, as well as additional South African languages not yet on 1,000.

Number of articles should be read in conjunction with other indicators of quality, as it’s a poor metric on its own. Some languages have been populated by bots, or editors have focused on article creation rather than detail. The depth metric (higher is better) is one attempt to measure article quality, while a high number of active editors and active users are also indicators of a healthy community. Data for active editors (1 edit) is only available for June at the time of writing, which accounts for some of the anomalies, such as Lingala having more editors with 5 edits than with 1 edit.

Language #Articles
Aug 2025		 #Articles
Oct 2024		 % change Active editors (June 2025)
(5 edits)		 Active users
(1 edit)		 Depth Aug 2025 Depth Oct 2024 Admins
1 Egyptian Arabic 1,628,379 1,625,117 +0.2% 39 186 0 0 7
2 Afrikaans 125,771 118,766 +5.9% 38 184 38 45 14
3 Malagasy 100,691 98,140 +5.1% 39 47 10 10 2
4 Swahili 100,484 83,821 +19.9% 45 471 7 9 14
5 Hausa 65,572 50,462 +29.9% 85 177 1 2 13
6 Igbo 57,182 43,264 +32.1% 20 143 0 0 4
7 Yoruba 35,586 34,371 +3.5% 30 57 4 3 3
8 Tumbuka 18,771 18,688 +0.4% 5 28 3 3 4
9 Amharic 15,439 15,371 +0.4% 8 48 33 33 1
10 (+3) Dagbani 13,158 10,090 +30.4% 34 48 5 3 3
11 (+11) Standard Moroccan Amazigh 11,796 2,777 +324.8% 13 63 8 23 3
12 (-2) Zulu 11,707 11,531 +1.5% 10 65 6 6 1
13 (-2) Shona 11,491 11,443 +0.4% 2 15 3 3 1
14 (+12) Shilha (Tachelhit) 10,870 1,900 +472.1% 3 15 33 0 2
15 (-3) Moroccan Arabic 10,695 10,296 +3.9% 4 44 259 190 4
16 (+2) Fula 10,319 4,449 +131.9% 17 30 9 38 3
17 (-3) Northern Sotho 8,775 8,701 +0.9% 3 19 0 0 1
18 (-2) Somali 8,394 8,090 +3.8% 10 78 47 48 1
19 (-4) Kinyarwanda 8,200 7,804 +5.1% 4 52 7 8 1
20 (-3) Kabyle 6,924 6,856 +1.0% 3 27 15 13 1
21 (-1) Lingala 4,794 4,070 +17.8% 13 12 22 31 4
22 (-3) Twi 4,465 4,146 +7.7% 18 46 11 13 3
23 (-2) Luganda 3,557 3,324 +7.0% 5 26 6 7 1
24 (+1) Ghanaian Pidgin English 3,447 2,020 +70.6% 46 41 82 49 2
25 (-1) Fon 2,564 2,058 +24.6% 3 21 2 3 2
26 (+4) Dagaare 2,379 1,714 – 9 32 18 5 1
27 (-4) Xhosa 2,289 2,107 +98.4% 5 27 14 15 1
28 Oromo 1,955 1,875 +4.3% 1 17 25 26 1
29 (-2) Tswana 2,391 1,888 +26.6% 9 56 19 27 1
30 (-1) Kikuyu 1,875 1,787 +4.9% 1 12 6 5 1
31 Wolof 1,737 1,703 +2.0% 1 11 92 95 2
32 (new) Kabiye 1,713 Not recorded – 1 9 5 Not recorded 1
33 (+1) Kongo 1,563 1,366 +14.4% 1 8 29 95 1
34 (-2) N’Ko 1,544 1,521 +1.5% 1 19 5 4 1
35 (-2) Gun 1,540 1,346 +14.4% 5 18 9 10 4
36 (-1) Nigerian Pidgin 1,498 1,237 +21.1% 10 25 7 8 4
37 (+1) Sotho 1,475 1,018 +44.9% 1 40 43 95 1
38 (new) Central Kanuri 1,399 Not recorded 5 13 4 Not recorded 4
39 (-3) Tyap 1,398 1,226 +14.0% 3 13 71 76 2
40 (new) Mossi 1,263 Not recorded – 6 38 5 Not recorded 0
41 (new) Ewe 1,217 Not recorded – 2 15 84 Not recorded 2
42 (new) Kusaal 1,178 Not recorded – 10 15 1 Not recorded 0
43 (new) Frafra 1,164 Not recorded – 9 22 10 Not recorded 0
44 (new) Swati 1,123 988 +13.7% 2 14 52 32 3
45 (-8) Chewa (Nyanja) 1,086 1,035 +4.9% 5 17 139 114 1
46 (new) Fanti (Fante) 1,073 Not recorded – 2 11 48 Not recorded 2
– Tsonga 948 908 +4.4% 14 14 112 58 2
– Venda 822 805 +2.1% 1 14 32 32 1
– Southern Ndebele 203 139 (incubator) +46.0% 7 18 20 – 1
Language #Articles
Aug 2025		 #Articles
Oct 2024		 % change Active editors
(5 edits)		 Active users
(1 edit)		 Depth Aug 2025 Depth Oct 2024 Admins

A number of milestones were met. Firstly, six African language Wikipedias reached 1,000 articles:

  • Kabiye (spoken mostly in Togo, Ghana and Benin)
  • Central Kanuri (Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, Chad, and a diaspora community in Sudan)
  • Mossi (an official language in Burkina Faso, also spoken in Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Benin, Niger, Mali, Togo and Senegal)
  • Kusaal (Ghana and Burkina Faso)
  • Frafra (or Farefare) (also Ghana and Burkina Faso)
  • Swati (SiSwati) (South Africa)

I highlighted a number of Ghanaian languages knocking on the 1,000 article door in October, and it appears that that success has been built upon. I hope to find out more about this West African success story.

Fittingly while writing this in Nairobi, the Swahili Wikipedia has reached 100,000 articles since the last report, and the article count has also grown quickly since last year, albeit at a slight cost to depth. Way back in 2009, Swahili became the largest African language Wikipedia, before undergoing relative stagnation, so it’s good to see activity on the rise again.

Malagasy also reached 100,000 articles, and at the same time saw a rapid rise in the number of active editors with at least 5 edits. I’m not aware of the reason for this surge; perhaps activities around trying to get to 100,000? If anyone knows, please let me know in the comments.

Afrikaans remains the benchmark for large African instances, and recently reached 125,000 articles, a hefty one eighth of a million. It still maintains a good depth of 38, but this has dropped slightly from 45 in October 2024, which while still well ahead of the other large African language instances, is something to work on.

Edit: an explanation from Oesjaar of the Afrikaans Wikipedia for the drop in depth is the wonderful donation of 60,000 images by one of South Africa’s foremost plant experts, Braam van Wyk. Many of these have gone into short botanical articles, with relatively little information about the plants available. The Afrikaans Wikipedia far surpasses the English Wikipedia in this field. The images are available for all Wikimedia projects (although uploading them all is still underway), and are a wonderful resource for all to use.

And finally, Southern Ndebele, an official language of South Africa, which languished in the Incubator for many years, left the incubator to become an official project shortly after the October 2024 update.

Poor depth is common throughout, with the largest by article count, Egyptian Arabic, having a depth of 0, which means that articles are of little benefit to readers. Perhaps my focus on article count in this blog series has contributed to this, but I’d like to see particular attention given to improving the depth of the African language Wikipedias over the coming years. Fewer articles of high utility, rather than many articles of low utility.

Here is the list of African Wikipedias that have increased their depth over the period:

  • Moroccan Arabic (190 to 259) deserves special mention. Its depth was already the highest of any of the Wikipedias listed here, and it has shown dramatic improvement. The opposite of Egyptian Arabic!
  • Chewa (Nyanja) (114 to 139)
  • Tsonga (58 to 112), while inching closer to 1,000, the dramatic increase in depth is even more of a reason to celebrate
  • Ghanaian Pidgin English (49 to 82), also growing its article count by 70.6%
  • Swati (32 to 52), a noteworthy improvement in depth to add to its achievement in reaching 1,000 articles
  • Dagaare (5 to 18)
  • Kikuyu (5 to 6)
  • Dagbani (3 to 5)
  • N’Ko (4 to 5)
  • Kabyle (3 to 4)
  • Yoruba (3 to 4)

Hausa and Igbo continue to grow their article counts quickly, but suffer from poor depth. Short, uncited stubs, or copies from another language with English names still present, are common in these instances.

In my 2024 update, I noted Dagbani as being particularly inspirational. Since October, its article count has continued to increase quickly, passing Zulu, Shona and Moroccan Arabic. Unfortunately, it too suffers from poor, and worsening, depth, decreasing from 5 to 3.

There are a number of Wikipedias that have seen dramatic increases in article count. In percentage terms, Standard Moroccan Amazigh saw an increase of 324.8%, but this came at the cost of depth, dropping from 23 to 8. Shilha (also called Tachelhit) saw an even more extreme increase of 472.1%, but this dramatically slashed its depth from 33 to 0. Fula, which reached 10,000 articles with an increase of 131.9%, saw its depth drop from 30 to 9.

I am happy to see continued good progress on many of the African language Wikipedias, even if it means these reports take ever longer to prepare. Long may it continue!

Related posts

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *