To everyone's surprise, it is not in Paris that we find the most French speakers!
However, the French capital has been at the top of the ranking for years, but in 2016, it was overtaken by the city of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), populated by nearly 12.83 million people (compared to 11 million for Paris).
Here is the ranking of the cities where the French language is most practiced:
1. Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo)
2. Paris (France)
3. Abidjan (Ivory Coast)
4. Yaoundé (Cameroon)
5. Casablanca (Morocco)
6. Bamako (Mali)
7. Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso)
8. Alger (Algeria)
9. Dakar (Senegal)
10. Montreal (Canada)
More generally, among Francophones :
- 44% are located in Northern and Western Europe
- 34% in Sub-Saharan Africa Indian Ocean
- 13% in North Africa-Middle East
- 4% in North America
- 2% in Latin America and the Caribbean
- 2% in Central and Eastern Europe
- 1% in Asia-Pacific
In the DRC, more than half of the population (over 45 million people) speak French according to the World Organization of the Francophonie.
French (5th most practiced language in the world, and 2nd in Europe) is spoken by more than 321 million people around the world.