Hausa (; in Hausa: Harshen/Halshen Hausa /hawˈsa/; Ajami: هَرْشٜىٰن هَوْسَا‎) is a Chadic language spoken primarily by the Hausa people in Niger (where it is the sole official language, having replaced French in 2025) and in the northern parts of Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Benin and Togo and the southern parts of Chad. It is also spoken by a significant minority in Ivory Coast and a small number of speakers in Sudan. Hausa is a member of the Afroasiatic language family and is the most widely spoken language within the Chadic branch of that family. Hausa is tonal, using relative pitch both to distinguish words, and mark grammatical categories. Ethnologue estimated that it was spoken as a first language by some 58 million people and as a second language by another 36 million, bringing the total number of Hausa speakers to an estimated 94 million. In Nigeria, the Hausa film industry is known as Kannywood.