Most of the people of coastal East Africa were ancestors of the modern Swahili. The occurrence of Swahili loans in unrelated neighbouring languages is quite frequent. The influence of Arabic loans, mainly via Swahili, was not confined to East Africa, or to Nilotic and Bantu languages (particularly Mijikenda and Pokomo), but also to Central African languages like Kikongo, Lingala up to the Sango. This is clear because Islam penetrated mainly and exclusively through Swahili speaking people and not directly from Arabic, so all the words dealing with the new religion, and which so abundantly arrived in West African languages, were not necessarily lent. In this paper, a research in progress is presented. It started one year ago by collecting Arabic loans in languages spoken in East and Central Africa. The main object of investigation is to organise a data base similar to what done for West Africa, using the same methodology. Up to now a few dictionaries and other sources on these languages have been consulted: Acholi, Ankole, Anywa, Ateso, Bari, Bemba, Bende, Dholuo, Kikamba, Kikongo, Kikuyu, Kiluba, Kiw’oso, Kuria, Lega, Lingala, Lomongo, Lotuxo, Luena, Luganda, Lunyankole, Lunyoro, Macua, Madi, Matengo, Ngombe, Pokomo, Pokot, Rendille, Shona, Swahili, Xhosa and Zande, but this article is dealing with Nilo-Saharan languages only.

The Arabic influence in West Africa has been studied from the perspectives of linguistics, anthropology, culture and religion. This paper will discuss both the common and divergent aspects of this influence, not only on linguistic material but also on anthropological data. This does not mean that only anthropological data has influenced the languages dealt with, but the donor language is also studied under the perspectives of what is transferred to the recipient. So, for example, Kanuri has been influenced by Arabic loan words for centuries, whereas all the minor languages in the wider Mega-Chad area and even in West Africa received Arabic loan words rather late. This gives us a kind of chronology whereby the linguae francae – simply because of their great numbers of speakers - cannot be neglected. An example is Hausa, which from its strong influence on other languages might be heavily responsible for that transmission. Another fact that cannot be ignored is the Fulfulde. Through their historical migrations over the whole Savanna belt of West Africa, they have been considered as carriers of Islam and thus, through the spread of Islam, have infiltrated the various ethnic groups with many loan words. Therefore this paper provides a concise overview of the work done so far on West African languages.