Africa is historically associated with great linguistic diversity (Koelle 1854; Alexandre 1967), which is seen as a causal explanation for the fragmentation of African societies. Alexandre (1967) developed a four-level categorization of African countries based on their linguistic diversity. The first category consists of linguistically homogeneous states such as Rwanda and Burundi. The second category includes linguistically heterogeneous states with one or more dominant languages, such as Tanzania, where Swahili is the dominant language. The third category consists of states with limited linguistic heterogeneity, such as Ghana, Senegal, and Togo. The fourth category includes states with high linguistic heterogeneity, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, and Cameroon. I refer to such theorization on the linguistic diversity of Africa as pertaining to rhetoric of multilingualism. This rhetoric takes the postcolonial state as its epistemic matrix, as if the linguistic geography of Africa were isomorphic with the political and administrative territories that emerged after the Berlin Conference in 1885, when the European powers decided to partition Africa. Language policy and planning, as well as language classification and description in the postcolonial era, have been largely informed by this rhetoric, which I also refer to as “colonial linguistic rhetoric” or “nation-state rhetoric.”