Francophone sub-Saharan Africa consists today of 17 countries of West and Central Africa in which French is the language of government. These 17 nations range in a contiguous semicircle from Mauritania in the west to Chad in the east and to Zaire in the south. They were colonies of France and Belgium from the late nineteenth to the mid twentieth century. (Other former French territories outside of West and Central Africa are not included in this book.) Francophone sub-Saharan Africa, defined in these terms, has existed for just over a century; it was brought into existence with the European conquest of Africa which reached its height in the 1880s.

Francophone sub-Saharan Africa covers an area of ten million square kilometers, which is 40% of the area of sub-Saharan Africa, or 35% of the area of the entire African continent. The 1995 population of the 17 countries was estimated at over 100 million, or one-fifth of the entire African population. The area of francophone sub-Saharan Africa is 17 times that of France and Belgium combined, and its population is today almost twice that of France and Belgium combined. Zaire is the largest of the francophone African countries – it is the second largest African nation in area, and third largest in population. Rwanda is the smallest and most densely populated country in francophone sub-Saharan Africa. It is equal in area to Belgium, and had a 1995 population two-thirds that of Belgium. France is slightly larger in area than Cameroon, while the 1995 population of Zaire, Cameroon and Ivory Coast taken together were nearly equal to that of France.