African literature is literature from Africa, either oral ("orature") or written in African and Afro-Asiatic languages. Examples of pre-colonial African literature can be traced back to at least the fourth century AD. The best-known is the Kebra Negast, or "Book of Kings", from the 14th century AD. Another well-known book is the Garima Gospels, one of the oldest known surviving bibles in the world, written in Ge'ez around 500 AD.

A common theme during the colonial period is the slave narrative, often written in English or French for Western audiences. Among the first pieces of African literature to receive significant worldwide critical acclaim was Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, published in 1958. African literature in the late colonial period increasingly features themes of liberation and independence.

Post-colonial literature has become increasingly diverse, with some writers returning to their native languages. Common themes include the clash between past and present, tradition and modernity, self and community, and politics and development. Overall, female writers are today far better represented in African literature than they were before independence. The internet has also changed the landscape of African literature, leading to the rise of digital reading and publishing platforms such as OkadaBooks.

As George Joseph notes in his chapter on African Literature in Understanding Contemporary Africa, whereas European views of literature stressed a separation of art and content, African awareness is inclusive and "literature" can also simply mean an artistic use of words for the sake of art alone. Traditionally, Africans do not radically separate art from teaching. Rather than write or sing for beauty in itself, African writers, taking their cue from oral literature, use beauty to help communicate important truths and information to society. An object is considered beautiful because of the truths it reveals and the communities it helps to build.

Oral literature (or orature, the term coined by Ugandan scholar Pio Zirimu) may be in prose or verse. The prose is often mythological or historical and often includes tales of the trickster character. Storytellers in Africa sometimes use call-and-response techniques to tell their stories. Poetry describes a narrative poem based on a short, ribald anecdote. It is often sung through narrative epic, occupational verse, ritual verse, and praise poems of rulers and other prominent figures. Praise singers, bards sometimes known as "griots", tell their stories with music. Also recited, often sung, are love songs, work songs, children's songs, along with epigrams, proverbs and riddles. These oral traditions exist in many languages including Fula, Swahili, Hausa, and Wolof.

In Algeria, oral poetry was an important part of Berber traditions when the majority of the population was illiterate. These poems, called Isefra, were used in both religious and secular contexts. The religious poems included devotions, prophetic stories, and poems honoring saints. Secular poetry may concern celebrations such as births and weddings, or accounts of heroic warriors. As another example, in Mali, oral literature or folktales continue to be broadcast on the radio in the native language Booma.

Examples of pre-colonial African literature are numerous. In Ethiopia, there is a substantial body of literature in Ge'ez dating back at least to the fourth century AD; the best-known work in this tradition is the Kebra Negast, or "Book of Kings." One popular form of traditional African folktale is the "trickster" story, in which a small animal uses its wits to survive encounters with larger creatures. Examples of animal tricksters include Anansi, a spider in the folklore of the Ashanti people of Ghana; Ijàpá, a tortoise in Yoruba folklore of Nigeria; and Sungura, a hare found in central and East African folklore. Other works in written form are abundant, namely in North Africa, the Sahel regions of west Africa, and on the Swahili coast. From Timbuktu alone, there are an estimated 300,000 or more manuscripts tucked away in various libraries and private collections, mostly written in Arabic but some in the native languages (namely Fula and Songhai). Many were written at the famous University of Timbuktu. The material covers a wide array of topics, including astronomy, poetry, law, history, faith, politics, and philosophy. Swahili literature, similarly, draws inspiration from Islamic teachings but developed under indigenous circumstances, one of the most renowned and earliest pieces of Swahili literature being Utendi wa Tambuka or "The Story of Tambuka" (dated 1728).

Precolonial African literature also included extensive manuscript traditions, particularly in regions connected to Islamic scholarly networks. Research conducted under the European Research Council-funded project Islam in the Horn of Africa documented more than 4,500 previously unrecorded manuscript texts produced in Arabic and local African languages across the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Somaliland). The study identified over 3,500 individuals involved in manuscript production and transmission, including authors, copyists, teachers, and owners, as well as approximately 50 previously unknown authors active in the region. These manuscripts reflect a wide range of genres, including theology, law, poetry, history, and pedagogy, and illustrate the role of African scholars in transregional intellectual exchanges linking East Africa, the Red Sea, and the broader Islamic world. Such findings highlight the scale and diversity of written literary production in precolonial Africa alongside well-documented oral traditions.