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In 1962, there was a writers’ gathering impressively styled “A Conference of African Writers of English Expression”. Despite this rather solemn title, there was something that we tried to do and failed — that was to define “African literature”. Was it literature produced in Africa or about Africa? Should it be in indigenous African languages or should it include Arabic, English, French, Portuguese, Afrikaans, and so on? You cannot cram African literature into a small, neat definition. I do not see African literature as one unit but as a group of associated units — the sum of all the national and ethnic literatures of Africa. A national literature has a realized or potential audience throughout its territory. In other words, a literature that is written in the national language.
An ethnic literature is available only to one ethnic group within the nation. If you take Nigeria as an example, the national literature, as I see it, is the literature written in English; and the ethnic literatures are in Hausa, Ibo, Yoruba, Efik, Edo, Ijaw, etc.
From the text, it is possible to infer that Hausa, Ibo, Yoruba, Efik, Edo, Ijaw are ethnic languages spoken all over Africa.