Hausa communities today

Hausa-speaking communities now live across West and Central Africa: in Niger, Ghana, Cameroon, Chad and Sudan, and in cities of the Gulf, Europe and North America. Many trace their origin to traders, scholars, pilgrims on their way to Mecca who settled along the route, or later students and workers. They send money home, run shops and mosques, and use radio and social media in Hausa to keep in touch.

The lesson of Sabon Gari and the zongos is that being Hausa abroad is often as much about organisation as about birth. A leader who can protect the group, a mosque, a market and a shared language build a community in someone else’s city. It is also a story about relations with hosts, in which cooperation, rivalry and misunderstanding go together.