In this chapter, I provide a historical and linguistic account of the ways in which French was introduced and spread to some parts of the African continent and then diversified along a basilect-to-acrolect continuum. I show the different communicative functions it plays in the new ecologies where it evolved. In environments where major African languages are used as vehicular languages, French enjoys limited communicative functions, mainly restricted to formal interactions such as in school, public administration, and government. Conversely, in ecologies where no indigenous lingua franca had emerged, it is used in daily interactions to communicate across ethnolinguistic groups. I then address the questions of why schooling hasn’t contributed to the spread of French in the post-colonial era despite the significant increase of the school population and why it has not speciated into different regional varieties drastically different from those of the former metropoles (viz., France and Belgium). Finally, I present contrastive examples of Camfranglais/Francanglais (Cameroun) and Nouchi (Côte d’Ivoire) and argue that the latter may be the only variety that has speciated into a new one very different from that of France.

Nouchi is studied from a formal point of view as hybrid or mixed speech. From a sociolinguistic point of view, it is seen as slang or youth language. Hybridity is interpreted as a symbol of the coming together of all the languages of Côte d’Ivoire, like a combination of all the ethnic groups of the nation itself. However, hybridity is mostly approached from a lexical point of view, wherein the authors attempt to analyse the heterogeneous lexicon of Nouchi. Regarding the lexicon, the big distinction with Ivorian French is the massive incorporation of words, or morphemes in the case of hybrid words, of the Niger–Congo languages of the Ivory Coast and others. The questions posed in this chapter are (1) whether Nouchi also employs hybridity in syntax, phonology or spelling; and (2) whether Ivorian French, which acts as the base language, is not already largely hybrid. My hypothesis is that a hybrid language like Nouchi emerges in a social context where the process of hybridisation has already begun by pooling various social resources to build a space welcoming diversity.