The acacia pied barbet was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1780 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from a specimen collected from the Cape of Good Hope region of South Africa.

[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 Bucco leucomelas in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées.

[4] The acacia pied barbet is now placed in the genus Tricholaema that was introduced by the French brothers Jules and Édouard Verreaux in 1855.

The acacia pied barbet has been observed taking fruit from various trees and shrubs, such as Ficus, Searsia and Phoenix reclinata, as well as Aloe nectar and insects.