After Paris, it is the largest French-speaking city in the world. Canada is very much involved with Francophone issues. West Indians and Guyanans are bilinguals. All the varieties of African French are a school French, with each African language influencing French in its own way. See lexical differences p. 154.
Usage varies greatly from country to country though.
In Zaire , it is read and heard but not used as a lingua franca as in the Ivory Coast where is it used in daily life. Italians in Tunisia spoke French as well. Among the foreign people living in Algeria, Jews became French in 1870, Spaniards, Italians and Maltese in 1889. By 1930 French was spoken all over Algeria and French people no longer spoke Arabic. Later, when girls were schooled, teachers pronounced a velar r.