In March 2025, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger all withdrew from the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, calling it “a remote-controlled political instrument” operated from Paris. Countries that spent decades with French as their sole official language are demoting it, replacing it with indigenous languages, and in some cases expelling French troops alongside French grammar.
If you have ever wanted your language studies to carry a whiff of anti-colonial energy, here are the languages to learn.
1. Mooré (Burkina Faso)
MossiIn January 2024, Burkina Faso ratified a constitutional amendment that demoted French from official language to mere “working language” and elevated four indigenous languages to official status: Mooré, Dioula, Fula, and Bissa.
Mooré is the biggest of the four, spoken by roughly 50% of Burkina Faso’s population (~11 million speakers). It is a Gur language of the Niger-Congo family. As of November 2025, the Ministry of Education has introduced new curricula promoting Mooré as a medium of instruction, and youth bilingual education programs are actively integrating it into classrooms.
Burkina Faso formally withdrew from the OIF in March 2025. The message was clear: French is a tool, not an identity.
2. Bambara (Mali)
BambaraIn June 2023, Mali approved a new constitution by a 96.91% referendum vote that removed French as the official language and elevated 13 indigenous languages to official status. Bambara leads the pack.
About 80% of Mali’s population speaks Bambara as a first or second language, around 14 million speakers total. It is a Mande language, mutually intelligible with Dioula/Jula, which extends its usefulness across West Africa. The N’Ko script, an indigenous alphabet created in 1949 specifically for Manding languages, offers an alternative to the Latin script that French imposed.
In December 2024, Mali renamed streets in Bamako that had honored French colonial figures. In March 2025, they too walked out of the OIF.
3. Hausa (Niger)
HausaOn March 31, 2025, Niger’s government signed a charter that replaced French with Hausa as the official language. French was demoted to “working language.”
47% of Niger’s 27 million people speak Hausa, while only 13% speak French. The colonial language was never the people’s language. Hausa is also the dominant language of northern Nigeria and one of Africa’s most widely spoken languages, with 80-85 million speakers across the Sahel. Learning Hausa connects you to a cross-border linguistic community stretching from Niger through Nigeria, Ghana, and beyond.
Niger also expelled French military forces and terminated defense cooperation. They were not subtle about it.
4. Kinyarwanda (Rwanda)
KinyarwandaRwanda’s de-Francophonization was not gradual. It was a deliberate, politically motivated rupture. In 2008, Rwanda switched its entire education system from French to English as the medium of instruction. In 2009, it joined the Commonwealth, despite being a former Belgian/French colony.
The language switch was tied to the aftermath of the 1994 genocide. The Rwandan government associated France with complicity in the genocide, making the linguistic break deeply personal.
Through all of this, Kinyarwanda itself is spoken by over 90% of Rwandans (~12 million speakers) and remains the national language and the language of daily life. French has been effectively marginalized. Learning Kinyarwanda means learning the language of a country that looked at French, looked at its own history, and said never again.
5. Kabyle (Algeria)
KabyleAlgeria is fighting French on three fronts simultaneously. Arabization has been official policy since independence in 1962. But the more interesting story is the Amazigh (Berber) revival: Tamazight was upgraded to an official language in the 2016 constitution, and Kabyle is its largest variety.
Kabyle is concentrated in the Kabylie region of northern Algeria, with millions of speakers. The Amazigh identity movement has been a powerful grassroots force for decades, including the “Berber Spring” of 1980 and the “Black Spring” of 2001.
As of September 2025, Algeria has also begun replacing French with English in university instruction for scientific and medical programs. Learning Kabyle is a triple act of defiance: against French colonialism, against Arabization policies that marginalized Amazigh people, and in solidarity with one of North Africa’s oldest indigenous language movements.
6. Wolof (Senegal)
WolofSenegal was historically France’s most culturally important African colony, the seat of French West Africa. That makes the current shift all the more significant.
President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, elected in April 2024 on an anti-establishment platform, now delivers all official speeches in both French and Wolof. He has pledged to make local languages the primary medium of instruction in schools, with French introduced later rather than first.
Over 12 million of Senegal’s 17 million people speak Wolof, while only about 4 million speak French. Wolof is not tonal, which makes it more accessible to many learners than other West African languages. Film festivals now require subtitles in national languages, and radio stations are encouraged to air more Wolof content.
7. Vietnamese
VietnameseVietnam finished its de-Francophonization decades ago. After the 1945 Declaration of Independence, Ho Chi Minh’s government made Vietnamese the medium of all education. Revolutionary leaders refused to speak French, delivering speeches exclusively in Vietnamese. Massive literacy campaigns taught 10 million people to read Vietnamese by 1950.
The irony is structural: the Latin-based Vietnamese script (Quốc Ngữ) was invented by a French Jesuit missionary in the 17th century to help convert Vietnamese to Christianity. Vietnam took the colonizer’s tool and turned it into a vehicle of independence.
Today, with ~85 million speakers, Vietnamese is one of the most widely studied Southeast Asian languages, with a huge diaspora and excellent learning resources. French is a historical footnote.
8. Haitian Creole
Haitian Creole100% of Haitians speak Haitian Creole. Only 5-10% speak French. Yet French historically dominated education, government, and prestige, despite most teachers and students barely speaking it. The colonial language was a gatekeeping mechanism, not a communication tool.
Haitian Creole is not “broken French.” It is its own language with its own grammar, deeply influenced by West African languages (especially Fon and Ewe), Taíno, Spanish, and Portuguese. It was born from the language of enslaved people who then overthrew their French colonizers in the world’s first successful slave revolution in 1804.
The Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen continues to standardize and promote Creole in schools, and recent curriculum reforms (2025-2027) explicitly center Creole-first education. Learning Kreyòl instead of French is both a linguistic and historical statement.
9. Malagasy (Madagascar)
MalagasyMalagasy is not an African language. It is Austronesian, related to Indonesian, Malay, and Tagalog. Madagascar was settled by seafarers from Borneo roughly 1,500 years ago, and learning Malagasy connects you to the Austronesian world, not the Francophone one.
With ~25 million speakers, Malagasy is the language of instruction for the first five years of school and continues alongside French through high school. The country has cycled between Malagasyization and re-Francophonization since independence, but the current trajectory favors Malagasy: a $185 million education project approved in 2025 will directly benefit 4.7 million students with Malagasy-integrated curricula.
What This Adds Up To
The withdrawal of Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger from the OIF in 2025, combined with the expulsion of French military forces from the Sahel, represents the most significant retreat of French influence in Africa since decolonization. Algeria is replacing French with English in universities. Rwanda switched to English nearly two decades ago. Senegal’s new president champions Wolof.
French is not disappearing from the world, but its days as an imposed lingua franca in former colonies are numbered. The languages on this list have millions of speakers, growing institutional support, and political momentum behind them.
Pick one. Explore them all on the mossyrune.
Sources: Global South World — Burkina Faso Elevates Indigenous Languages, OkayAfrica — Mali Adopts New Constitution, Language Magazine — Mali Drops French, Global Voices — Hausa Replaces French in Niger, CGTN Africa — Rwanda Language Switch, The Conversation — Kinyafranglais, The Voice of Africa — Algeria Drops French, Imminent/Translated — Senegal’s Cultural Reawakening, Washington Post — Senegal’s Linguistic Shift, RealShePower — How Vietnam Reclaimed Its Voice, Foreign Policy — Haiti’s Foreign Language Stranglehold, UNESCO IBE — Embracing Creole in Haitian Schools, World Bank — Madagascar Education Project, Peoples Dispatch — OIF Withdrawal