Swahili is a Bantu language of the Sabaki subgroup of Northeastern Coast Bantu languages. Swahili is spoken by an estimated 50 million people and, after Arabic, is the most widely understood language in Africa.
It is the official language of Tanzania and Kenya and is used extensively in Uganda and the eastern provinces of Zaire. In Burundi and Rwanda, it is known and used in major urban centers, but is not widely known or extensively used in the monolinguistic countryside.