The Languages of Africa

geography
maps
languages
africa
Numbers of native languages spoken in Africa
Published

January 13, 2026

Load Packages

require(pacman)
p_load(tidytuesdayR, magick, tidyverse, janitor, here, trashpanda, rnaturalearth, rnaturalearthdata, glue, ggtext, showtext)

Data

tuesdata <- tidytuesdayR::tt_load('2026-01-13')
africa <- tuesdata$africa

Map

n_lang <- africa |> 
  summarise(n = n(),
            .by = country)

africa_map <- ne_countries(continent = "Africa",
                       scale = "medium",
                       returnclass = "sf") |> 
    mutate(admin = recode(admin,
    "United Republic of Tanzania" = "Tanzania",
    "eSwatini"   = "Eswatini"
  )) |> 

  left_join(n_lang, by = c("admin" = "country"))

plot <- ggplot(africa_map) +
  geom_sf(aes(fill = n), color = "white", linewidth = 0.2) +
  scale_fill_viridis_c(
    option = "viridis",
    breaks = seq(0, 100, by = 20),
    na.value = "grey60",
    name = "Number of \nAfrican Languages"
  ) +
  coord_sf(expand = FALSE) +
  theme_minimal(base_size = 25) +
  theme(
    panel.grid = element_blank(),
    axis.text = element_blank(),
    axis.title = element_blank(),
    plot.title = element_text(vjust = 0.5, hjust = 0.5, face = "bold"),
    legend.position = "inside",
    legend.position.inside = c(0.25, 0.35),
    legend.title = element_text(hjust = 0.5, face = "bold"),
    legend.key.width = unit(0.75, "cm"),
    legend.key.height = unit(2, "cm"),
    plot.margin = margin(5, 5, 5, 5)
  ) +
  labs(
    title = "Cameroon has the highest linguistic diversity \nfor natively spoken languages in Africa"
  ) +
  add_caption_cwb(type = "plot", include_data_source = TRUE,
           data_source = "Robert Muwanga & Wikipedia")

# Save and display images
current_dir <- dirname(knitr::current_input())

ggsave(plot = plot, 
       dpi = "screen",
       width = 17,
       height = 20,
       device = ragg::agg_png,
       filename = file.path(current_dir, "african_languages.png"))


# Read the big plot
img <- image_read(file.path(current_dir, "african_languages.png"))

# Force 16:9 aspect ratio with minimal padding
# Target size: 1200x675 px (16:9)
img_card <- image_scale(img, "1200x675")           # scale to fit inside 16:9
img_card <- image_extent(
  img_card,
  geometry = "1200x675",
  gravity = "center"
)

# Save as card preview
image_write(img_card, path = file.path(current_dir, "preview.png"))

knitr::include_graphics(
  file.path(current_dir, "african_languages.png")
)

References

cwb::cite_packages(format = "rmd")

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