5 Most Ethnically Diverse Countries in Africa. Number One Will Surprise You

Photo: Nuba Mountains, Kordofan region, Sudan

In this video, I talk about Africa's most ethnically diverse countries.

Now we all know Africa is the most diverse continent in the world. But which country stands as the most diverse on the continent?

At number five is the Democratic Republic of Congo, home to over 200 ethnic groups and an array of Bantu and Nilotic languages. Chad follows, with more than 200 ethnic communities and approximately 130 languages, concentrated across fragmented ecological and cultural zones. Cameroon, often called "Africa in miniature," is home to around 250 ethnic groups and nearly 300 languages, reflecting the full range of Africa's linguistic diversity. Nigeria ranks second with over 370 recognized ethnic groups and more than 520 living languages, making it one of the most linguistically complex countries in the world.

But number one? It surprises many: Sudan.

When discussing 'ethnic' diversity, it refers to the number of ethnic groups as well as factoring linguistic diversity, cultural variation, and deep historical continuity across thousands of years. Sudan is unique in that it represents three of Africa’s four major language families, Afroasiatic, Nilo-Saharan, and Niger-Congo. The only major family not present is the Khoisan (restricted to Southern Africa). This linguistic complexity mirrors its ethnic landscape: Sudan’s diversity is layered, ancient, and intersectional, making it not just a matter of quantity, but of civilizational depth.

According to the United Nations' 1956 and 1983 Sudanese national censuses, Sudan and South Sudan together are home to 597 ethnic groups, with over 150 indigenous languages still spoken today. South Sudan alone accounts for approximately 80 distinct ethnic communities (often categorized into 64 units). This makes the Sudanese Nile corridor, not only in numerical terms but in terms of historical continuity, Africa’s most ethnolinguistically diverse region.

Yet Sudan's story doesn’t begin with modern borders. Archaeological research led by the Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology, the University of Oxford, CNRS France and others has revealed a continuous hominin presence in Sudan stretching back at least 500,000 years. A 2022 genomic study by Oxford’s Big Data Institute traced the deepest ancestral lineages of modern Homo sapiens to modern-day Sudan, suggesting that northeastern Sudan may represent one of the earliest geographic origins of our species.

(For full context and references, see: Sudan: The Forgotten Cradle of Humankind)

So why is this not widely known?

The reasons are political, historical, and epistemological. For decades, Sudanese statecraft centered on Arabization policies that sought to overwrite indigenous African identities with a singular Arab-Islamic narrative. Colonial taxonomies, introduced by British ethnographers and preserved in postcolonial governance further erased ethnic and linguistic distinctions for administrative convenience. Add to this two civil wars, forced displacement, and state suppression of minority languages, and the result is not just cultural loss but epistemic disappearance.

According to UNESCO’s Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger, over 30 Sudanese languages are currently endangered. Communities such as the Ghulfan, Dilling, Ingessana, Berti, and Daju have seen precipitous declines in intergenerational language transmission. Entire oral traditions, cosmologies, law systems, ecological knowledge, risk extinction within a generation.

And yet, prior to South Sudan’s independence in 2011, Sudan was home to the Beja peoples of the Red Sea Hills (Hadendowa, Bisharin, Amarar), whose Cushitic language Bedawi is among the oldest still spoken in the region; the Nubians of the Nile (Mahas, Danagla, Halfawi), descendants of the Kingdom of Kush and the 25th Dynasty of Egypt; the Fur, Masalit, Zaghawa, and Daju of Darfur; over fifty distinct Nuba tribes in South Kordofan (Koalib, Tira, Moro, Otoro, Nyimang); the Uduk, Komo, and Berta of Blue Nile; and immigrant West African communities like the Hausa and Fulani. In South Sudan: Nilotic groups such as the Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, and Anyuak; Central Sudanic groups including the Baka and Moru-Madi; and Niger-Congo speakers like the Azande and Balanda.

In today's global consciousness, Sudan is too often reduced to civil war, famine, or geopolitical crisis. Western textbooks trace Nile Valley civilization only as far south as Aswan. African Studies syllabi frequently omit Sudanese and Nubian histories altogether. Museums display Egyptian antiquity, while Sudanese pyramids at Meroë go unmentioned. Even the Nubian Complex stone tool industry, now found in both Sudan and Southern Arabia, and recognized as one of the key signatures of early human migration out of Africa - is largely absent from mainstream narratives.

Sites like Sai Island reveal human occupation over 200,000 years ago. Jebel Sahaba, near Wadi Halfa, contains what may be the world’s oldest evidence of organized warfare, skeletal remains with embedded projectile points dated to 13,000 BCE. The Affad 23 site, with its spatially organized hunting camps and hearths, points to advanced cognitive planning in the Late Pleistocene. These archaeological sites are milestones in the human journey.

Sudan is not merely Africa’s most diverse country. It is a repository of deep time and deep identity. Its rivers, mountains, and languages carry stories older than the written word. And its people - though marginalized by modern politics, are heirs to one of the most enduring human legacies on Earth.