ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on several African Youth Languages (AYLs) in the East, West, and South regions of Africa. It explains the concept of African youth languages, and then presents an overview for each of the selected AYLs using seminal and contemporary literature, and scientific studies in the field. The chapter highlights some converging focal insights into AYLS in general and proposes, with suggestions of effective approaches, a better method to obtain reliable data in order to make credible generalisations. The term 'African urban youth languages' itself, as used over the years by M. Abdulaziz and K. Osinde, R. Kießling and M. Mous, H. Brookes, C. Wilson and N. Nassenstein, is not supported by all scholars in the field. The label ethnolect presupposes ethnicity, which is not necessarily the case in AYL. In fact, one of the roles of AYL is to defuse ethnic divisions. The AYLs associated with Kenya are Sheng and Engsh.
