Fiona McLaughlin is an Associate Professor of African Languages and Linguistics at the University of Florida, USA.

• 1: An introduction to the languages of urban Africa Fiona Mc Laughlin (University of Florida, USA); I: African urban languages and their histories; 2: The historical dynamic of multilingualism in Accra M.E. Kropp Dakubu (University of Ghana-Legon, Ghana); 3: Urban Wolof: profile of a language Fiona Mc Laughlin (University of Florida, USA); 4: The spread of Lingala as a lingua france in the Congo basin, Eyamba G. Bokamba (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA); II: Theoretical approaches to the study of African urban languages; 5: Are African cities really different linguistically? Some insights from Cape Town, Cecile Vigouroux (Simon Fraser University, Canada); 6: Discourses, community, identity: Processes of linguistic homogenization in Bamako, Mali, Cecile Canut (CNRS-Paris, France); 7: Polarizing and blending: compatible practices in a bilingual urban community in Cape Town, Kay McCormick, (University of Cape Town, South Africa); III: The question of identity in African urban languages; 8. The story of old-urban vernaculars in North Afric, Atiqa Hachimi (Atiqa Hachimi, University of Florida); 9: Language choice in Dar-es-Salaam's billboards, Charles Bwenge (University of Florida, USA); 10: The multiple facts of Abidjan's urban language form, Nouchi, Sabine Kube (UNESCO-Paris, France); 11: Multilingualism and language use in Porto-Novo, Benin Wale Adeniran (Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria); 12: On the linguistic vitality of Ga~ in Accra, James Essegbey (University of Florida, USA); IV: The evolution of urban languages in Africa; 13: Innovations on the fringes of the Swahili-speaking world: observations from Bujumbura, Haig Der Houssikian, (University of Florida, USA); Index.

McLaughlin's edited volume, at long last, provides us an opportunity to comprehend the multilingual complexity of Africa's growing urban communities.