Only about 5-10 million people speak Swahili as their native language but it is a national or official language of 3 countries, Tanzania, Kenya and Congo.  In Uganda it is a required subject in primary schools and it was declared an official language in 2005.  Most of the people of the Comoros also speak Swahili. "Kiswahili" is the Swahili word for the Swahili language.

It is a Bantu language and about 35% of the vocabulary derives from Arabic.  English, French, German and Portuguese words have infiltrated Swahili over the last five centuries.

It was originally written in Arabic script but Christian missionaries and colonial administrators introduced the Latin alphabet and it is now based on that.

Germany made Tanganyika (Tanzania) a colony in 1886 and the British colonised neighbouring Kenya.  Both countries were keen to make a single language the main one for the country and Swahili fitted the bill in both countries. Germany made Swahili a official administrative language of Tanzania but the British did not go that far in Kenya. With Germany’s defeat in World War 1 Tanganyika became British and the authorities increased their resolve to make Swahili a common language in primary schools throughout their East African colonies (Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar and Kenya) but with English being the dominant language in secondary schools and government.

Currently about 90% of the 39 million Tanzanians speak Swahili, a lesser percentage of a similar number of Kenyans but it is still widespread. Most educated Kenyans can communicate in Swahili. Nearly half the 66 million Congolese apparently speak it.  In Uganda the Baganda generally do not speak Swahili but most of the other 25 million inhabitants do.  All in all, probably 5 – 10% of the 750 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa speak Swahili.

Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda are going to become a single state, to be called East African Federation, probably by 2013. Swahili will then be one of the main languages used.

An interesting fact, not related to the language, is that (East African) Swahili time runs from dawn to dusk, instead of midnight to midday.  This is because the sun rises about 6am and set about 6 pm every day in most of the equatorial areas where the people who speak Swahili live. 7am and 7pm are therefore both one o'clock while midnight and midday are six o'clock.

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