The Kanuri people (Kanouri, Kanowri, also Yerwa, Barebari and several subgroup names) are an African ethnic group living largely in the lands of the former Kanem and Bornu Empires in Niger, Nigeria, Chad, and Cameroon, as well as a diaspora community residing in Sudan.

In contrast to the neighboring Toubou or Zaghawa pastoralists, Kanuri groups have traditionally been sedentary, engaging in farming, fishing the Chad Basin, trade, and salt processing.

[10] The largest population of Kanuri reside in the northeast corner of Nigeria,[8] where the ceremonial Emirate of Bornu traces direct descent from the Kanem-Bornu empire, founded sometime before 1000 CE.

[12] In southeastern Niger, where they form the majority of the sedentary population, the Kanuri are commonly called Barebari (a Hausa name).

[7] The 400,000 Kanuri population in Niger includes the Manga subgroup, numbering some 100,000 (as at 1997) in the area east of Zinder, who regard themselves as distinct from the Barebari.

Once the core ethnic group of the Kanem-Borno Empire, whose territories at one time included northeastern Nigeria and southern Libya, the Kanembu retain ties beyond the borders of Chad.

According to Kanuri tradition, Sef, son of Dhu Ifazan of Yemen, arrived in Kanem in the ninth century and united the population into the Sayfawa dynasty.

Some "Pan-Kanuri" nationalists claimed an area of 532,460 square kilometres (205,580 sq mi) for the territory of what they called "Greater Kanowra", including the modern-day Lac and Kanem Prefectures in Chad, Far North Region in Cameroon, the Yobe and Borno states in Nigeria and Diffa and Zinder Regions in Niger and Darfur in Sudan.

[25] In 1954, the Borno Youth Movement (BYM) was founded and played a role as a mass regionalist political party up through the end of colonialism, though it petered out at independence.