They include Maninka (Malinke), Mandinka, Soninke, Bambara, Kpelle, Jula (Dioula), Bozo, Mende, Susu, and Vai.

There are around 60 to 75 languages spoken by 30 to 40 million people,[1] chiefly in Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) and also in southern Mauritania, northern Ghana, northwestern Nigeria and northern Benin.

Valentin Vydrin concluded that "the Mande homeland at the second half of the 4th millennium BC was located in Southern Sahara, somewhere to the North of 16° or even 18° of Northern latitude and between 3° and 12° of Western longitude.".

For example, Joseph Greenberg suggested that the Niger-Congo group, which in his view includes the Mande language family, began to break up at around 7000 years BP.

Its speakers would have practised a Neolithic culture, as indicated by the Proto-Niger-Congo words for "cow", "goat" and "cultivate".

In 1924, Louis Tauxier noted that the distinction is not well founded and there is at least a third subgroup he called mandé-bu.

Long (1971) and Gérard Galtier (1980) follow the distinction into three groups but with notable differences.

Accordingly, Dimmendaal (2008) argues that the evidence for inclusion is slim, and that for now Mande is best considered an independent family.

Kastenholz warns however that this is not based on objective criteria and thus is not a genealogical classification in the narrow sense.

Vydrin (2009) differs somewhat from this: he places Soso-Jalonke with Southwestern (a return to André Prost 1953); Soninke-Bozo, Samogho and Bobo as independent branches of Western Mande, and Mokole with Vai-Kono.