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= West African surnames =

West Africa is home to 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, the Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo, and over 50 ethnic groups from the Niger–Congo, Chadic, Afroasiatic and Nilo-Saharan language families. The population of West Africa is estimated at 367 million people as of 2015.

Although the West africans might seem as a homogenous group to externals, their history, traditions and origins differ significantly from an ethnic group to another. It is very common for West africans to know the ethnic group of a person based on his or her surname.