[1] The African grey woodpecker was described by the German zoologist Philipp Ludwig Statius Müller in 1776 from a specimen collected in Senegal.

[4] The specific epithet is from the French polymath Comte de Buffon who noted that "Goërtan" was the name used for the species in Senegal.

[7] The African grey woodpecker is now placed in the genus Dendropicos that was introduced by the French ornithologist Alfred Malherbe in 1849.

It is a typical woodpecker shape, and has unmarked green upperparts and a pale grey head and underparts.

Its range includes Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo and Uganda.