Mijikenda is a Bantu dialect cluster spoken along the coast of East Africa, mostly in Kenya, where there are 2.6 million speakers (2019 census) but also in Tanzania, where there are 166,000 speakers.
[3] An older, derogatory term for the group is Nyika which refers to the "dry and bushy country" along the coast.
[3] The New Updated Guthrie List from 2009[4] lists the following varieties and Guthrie codes as part of the Mijikenda cluster: The Degere are former hunter-gatherers like the Cushitic Waata, and are said to have once spoken a Cushitic language.
The Ethnologue[5] lists the following variety groupings: Ethnologue's 'Duruma' may refer to the same thing as Maho's 'Degere', as the Degere are variously reported to speak Duruma, Digo, or a similar dialect of their own.
Clicks have been reported in ideophones from two dialects of Mijikenda: Digo and Duruma.