South Volta

South Volta groups the Kwa, Volta-Niger and Bantoid branches, the southern core of the Volta-Congo division of the Niger-Congo family. Its languages run from southeastern Ghana through Togo and Benin into southern Nigeria and Cameroon: Kwa carries Akan and Gbe along the Guinea coast, while Volta-Niger includes Yoruba, Igbo and Bini.

Bantoid, centred on the Nigeria-Cameroon border, contains the Bantu languages, whose expansion beginning around 1000 BC carried related speech across most of subequatorial Africa. The South Volta languages are tonal and share elaborate noun-class systems and vowel harmony; by the 1300s they served such powers as Ife, Benin and Oyo.