Talk:List of ethnic groups of Africa

message: I saw a reference to west philadelphia. presumably this is vandalism but i'm not sure how to fix or be sure. 2602:306:CD65:4530:DD35:9E01:238A:C976 (talk) 06:33, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: It looks like Ethnic groups of the Middle East covers the north Africa, but I don't know how good that article is.80.186.205.118 (talk) 05:45, 26 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Comments

message: I have removed the following from the article because it is a mess with all those templates and needs incorporating properly in the alphabetical list.  It is between nowiki tags to stop it making a mess of the talk page as well.  I would do this myself but have no way of knowing that the data is actually valid.  Most of the templates don't exist - I think this may have been dumped in from another wiki. Anyone with some knowledge on this subject, please leave a note on my talk page and I will come back and sort it out. SpinningSpark 12:07, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unorganised data removed from article 

message: This article needs a good deal of work starting from the opening sentence (it's a bit of an overstatement to say there are "thousands, each having their own distinct language and culture"). The attempt to list all ethnic groups is something that would need a lot more input and some reorganization to reflect groupings (e.g., Bambara and Mandinka in Manding; Zulu, Xhosa in Nguni; etc.). One could consider splitting this effort into two articles, with one on Ethnicity in Africa or Population groups in Africa, discussing the meaning of the term, and the overall picture of identities in Africa. The other article could be a list of groups.--A12n (talk) 21:47, 26 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quality of article & possible approaches 

message: Egyptians is a nationality not a race!.. there is alot of races in egypt.. and arabs is the Majority of egypt makes 70% of Population maybe more  .. and for berbers i think they 20 millions only not more than that.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.196.168.55 (talk) 23:33, 13 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Egyptians are racially distinct, and have been for millenia. They are the largest single race within the Semitic family of races. Culturally, they are Arab, constituting the largest individual racial group that self-identifies as being culturally Arab.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.150.80.244 (talk) 14:21, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Egyptians as a race? and 65 millions Berbers? 

message: I know there is a fair bit of confusion as to the proper name to include in a chart such as this for the Krahn-Wee-Guere tribes, but they still hold an important place in Liberian and Côte d'Ivoire history so I think they definitely deserve a place in the chart. I am also in the process of updating the Krahn people page so there can be a link to that article.--AngelKelley (talk) 22:37, 17 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Krahn/Wee/Guere? 

message: I deleted some pov material about who was really what ethnic group. Some is cited to  and imho is a complete misrepresentation that paper and for some reason doesn't mentions "The present research confirms anecdotal evidence in the Senegalese printed press of the decreasing size of the Serer ethnic group." The insistence here and elsewhere that the Serer are the ancestors of the Wolofs uses  as a source, something written by Ebou Momar Taal who seems to have no qualifications that make him any sort of reliable source.
The article "   Normal  0          false  false  false    EN-GB  X-NONE  X-NONE                                                                       What Do You Mean There Were No Tribes in Africa?": Thoughts on Boundaries: And Related Matters: In Precolonial Africa" says "It turns out, to the best of my understanding,  that such matters did not used to be an issue among Niumi's residents, or seemingly among persons over a much wider area of Africa's western savannas, because the distant ancestors of today's Gambians did not identify themselves-at least primarily-as members of ethnic groups (or, God forbid, tribes). How they did identify themselves is difficult to determine because of the lack of evidence, all the more so because it appears that people's primary means of identity may have changed over time. Still, at some point in the past, several centuries ago, many people living in the Niumi banko may have held several levels of identity, none of which was as a "Mandinka." The top taxo- nomic level for some seems clearly to have been with an extended family. The state's mansakiindalu identified themselves as such, above all. Sonko Jilenkunda was one such family. Its members had enormous family pride; their praise singers extolled the past greatness of its male members and recited its (seemingly fabricated) tradition of origin. Persons who joined the family-either as marital partners or long-term clients-became "naturalized" in a sense: they learned the family history, gained an identity with important ancestors, and eventually took on a new Sonko identity." Dougweller (talk) 10:07, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deleted material 

message: I propose that Africans be merged into this page, Ethnic groups in Africa. The topic is already covered here in greater detail. This will also bring it in line with European people, which redirects to Ethnic groups in Europe. Middayexpress (talk) 00:04, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: My opinion on the Middayexpress proposed merger proposel is that the article Africans exist as a continental "collective demonym" and should continue existing due to the many phenotypes and ethnicities that exist on the African continent as well as the African continent being the second largest continent in the world as with the phenotype and ethnicity complexity of the largest continent in the world- Asia hence the existing continental "collective demonym" article Asian people. Merging an significant informative "collective demonym" article such as Africans which describes the complexity of the many phenotypes and ethnicities on the second largest continent in the world- Africa which contains more phenotypes and ethnicities than any other continent in the world to the continental native ethnicity based and largely unsouced article Ethnic groups in Africa which solely describes the locations of the native ethnic groups inhabiting the African continent as with the continental native linguistic based article Languages of Africa which solely describes the locations of the native languages spoken on the African continent is slightly absurd and especially when comparing articles as Middayexpress has done with the redirected wikilink European people to the continental native ethnicity based article Ethnic groups in Europe that has no comparison. Regards -- 149.254.51.83 (talk) 06:49, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Africa is indeed a diverse continent, much like Asia. However, the Asian people page is an unfitting analogy as it is largely on expatriate groups from Asia. There are also weird passages on "Asian eyes", "Asian noses", "Asian fat distribution" and "Asian teeth", which mainly deal with East Asians. The page appears to be more of an essay than anything. It may therefore also have to be merged into the corresponding Ethnic groups in Asia, per European people redirecting to Ethnic groups in Europe. Also, both Ethnic groups in Africa and Demographics of Africa already cover much of the material. Middayexpress (talk) 18:32, 14 February 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, I've merged the page since the ip above has been blocked and per WP:SILENCE. Middayexpress (talk) 18:36, 15 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger proposal 

message: All population figures need reliable sources. Hopefully these are in the original articles, but notwithstanding they need to be in this one as well. My experience is that without sources editors happily come along and change them to their preferred figures. They do this even when sourced, but at least we can check them when they are changed. Dougweller (talk) 08:57, 25 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Population figures need reliable sources 

message: Should "African" redirect here? There are a great many things that are african without being ethnic groups: african mountain ranges, african food, african climate, african political organisations... Compare European and Asian, which are disambiguation pages. I almost linked an endangered african lizard here. The idea of the turquoise dwarf gecko belonging to a human ethnic group seems a bit silly, but it is undisputably african. HLHJ (talk) 10:10, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: No way as this is just a single topic under Africa, create a Dab instead. Suggest this page should also be renamed to Native ethnic groups of Africa to match its content. Stanleytux (talk) 11:34, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Query of redirect 

message: from Cameroon were added to the tables, while the idea was to present the largest groups as an overview.Marcin862 (talk) 16:58, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Very small groups 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: The overview section is crucial, otherwise this becomes completely intractable.
We do have estimates available, it is just important to state these aren't much more accurate than "order of magnitude" (give or take a factor 2 or so).
It is still important to report that the Bantu have of the order of 250 million people, while the Khoisan have of the order of 1 million, such differences are significant even if the estimates are only good for one order of magnitude (upon review [below], the actual 2016 count is closer to 330M, for an error bar of the order of 20%).
Populations are under-reported because censuses in sub-Saharan Africa are as good as impossible, and the best available ethnographic estimates in some cases date to the 1990s or even 1980s. Population growth is anyone's guess, and it was systemically underestimated in the past, so that historical estimates for "2000" extrapolated from 1980s data will already be too low before they are further extrapolated to the 2010s.
Bearing this in mind, we have perfectly good references giving the order of magnitude of populations, and the separation into phyla. 
At present, we can say (as of 2016 or "late 2010s"): 
*total population  1.2G to 1.3G
*Afro-Asiatic (North Africa, Sahara/Sahel, Horn of Africa): c. 400M
*Niger-Congo: c. 500M (most severely under-estimated in view of the corrections of the UN population projections for 2016)
*Nilotic: 70M
*Khoisan: 1M
*Malagasy: 25M
*European: 6M
From this it is clear that Khoisan, Malagasy and European are negligible for total African population (well within the margin of error "1.2-1.3 billion")
If Nilotic is rounded up to 100M (high estimate), 
we are left with 1,100 million (low estimate) for Afro-Asiatic plus Niger-Congo.
UN projections limit Afro-Asiatic by:
*North Africa: 230M
*Horn of Africa plus Sudan: 170M 
So within the UN projections, 400M is already an upper limit for Afro-Asiatic.
The lowest number for Niger-Congo compatible with the UN projections is therefore
700 million:
*Afro-Asiatic: 0.4G
*Niger-Congo: 0.7G
*Nilotic: 0.1G
*others: 0.0G (below 40M)
*total: 1.2G
A total of 700M is more than 30% too high compared  with the totals I have aggregated in the Niger-Congo page.  A closer review will be needed to establish which groups had their growth most severely underestimated. But across the board, the updated figures for Niger-Congo will be close to:
*Atlantic: 45M
*Volta-Niger: 160M
*Benue-Congo: 360M (330M  Bantu, 30M "other Bantoid")
*other: 120M
The reason I am looking into this is that it has come to my attention 
that up to 300 milllion people are missing in our demographic estimates by ethnic or ethno-linguistic group. This is of the order of 4% of world population, or close to the entire population of the United States going unreported.
In addition, the massive population growth in these populations means that the fraction of world population completely unaccounted for on Wikipedia is growing by the day. If I have ever seen a textbook case of Wikipedia:Systemic bias, this has got to be it. 
I realise we cannot make up date that hasn't been reported anywhere, and indeed we have to be clear that these figures are estimates with margins of error of the order of 20% to 30%, but this doesn't excuse us from compiling such inaccurate data as there is and presenting it, for better or worse. 
The bottom line is that population estimates the Bantu phylum, as the largest group, are most crucial and should be looked into first. There is an uncertainty of scores of millions of people just within Bantu (about "250-350M").
--dab (𒁳) 11:00, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Overview, separation into phyla, population best estimates

message: The information stating "Cape Coloured" is an Indo-Afrikaaner ethnic group is grossly wrong. There is no such ethnic group or race called "coloured". The term "coloured" is a derogatory, classification created by the old apartheid Afrikaaner government. There are no such a people as "coloured". This is empirical knowledge. The people that are discriminatory labeled as "coloured" are aboriginal descendants from the Khoi and San. 41.193.88.15 (talk) 18:11, 12 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: See the article Cape Coloureds and the references cited on that page. It's a name and we reflect titles used by reliable sources. – Thjarkur (talk) 00:01, 13 March 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semi-protected edit request on 12 March 2020 

message: If a discussion has to be started, the editor who wants to change should start it, in this case, that's you. Indo-European Afrikaans has been spoken in South Africa for more than 300 years, and it is listed in the book referenced at the end of the row in the table (pages 211 and 212 discuss it at length). --Rsk6400 (talk) 15:17, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Indo-European languages 

message: Voice 197.239.6.241 (talk) 08:45, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of ethnic groups in east africa 

message: The data in the population totals have discrepancies with their respective hyperlinks. i.e. of 2020 both Yoruba people and Hausa people have an estimation of 50 million worldwide but one needs only to sum to see that their population in Africa alone surpasses 40 million.
The major ethnic groups per population rank is as follows (bold is current page revision):
* Maghrebis - 108.5 (2011)
* Hausa - 78 (2019)
* Yoruba - ~50 (2020)
* Oromo - 41 (2018)
* Somali - 38 (2017)
* Igbo - 34 (2020)
* Fulani - 30 (2019)
* Hutu - 24.4 (no year found)
* Amhara - 22 (2007)
* Nilotes - 22 (2007)
* Akan - 20 (2012)
* Kongo - 18.9 (no year found)
* Shona - 17.6 (2016)
* Mongo - 15
* Zulu - 14.2 (2016)
* Mossi - 12.5 (2010)
* Chewa - 12 (2017)
* Kanuri - 10.3 (2021)
* Ibibio - 10 (2020)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Queen of Wa, friend of Wei (talk • contribs) 08:18, 6 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Data update 

message: The first map shows the green area as Bantu, but the Volta-Niger area (home of Yoruba, Edo, Igbo etc. languages) is also colored green, making the impression those languages belong to the Bantu family. Is it possible to add a different map? Casa de Lancastre (talk) 12:52, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Map shows Volta-Niger as Bantu 

message: I think the title of this article is problematic, as I think people would expect a semi-exhaustive list including all ethnic groups that have a population over say 100,000. If the list itself is not expanded, then I think a more suitable name would just be Ethnic groups in Africa. I imagine it would be a fairly straightforward task to just look at countries' demographic pages and include populous ethnic groups, and possibly identify wider groupings. Please let me know what you think. Alexanderkowal (talk) 16:33, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Title