The African pygmy kingfisher was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1780 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux.

[2] The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text.

[3] Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Todier de Juida in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées.

[9] The natalensis subspecies occurring in the south of the range has paler underparts and a blue spot above the white ear patch.

The African pygmy kingfisher is distributed widely in Africa south of the Sahara, where it is a common resident and intra-African migrant.

[9] The African pygmy kingfisher's diet consists of insects like grasshoppers, praying mantis, worms, crickets, dragonflies, cockroaches and moths.