The African wildcat (Felis lybica) is a small wildcat species with sandy grey fur, pale vertical stripes on the sides and around the face. It is native to Africa, West and Central Asia, and is distributed to Rajasthan in India and Xinjiang in China. It inhabits a broad variety of landscapes ranging from deserts to savannas, shrublands and grasslands.

The African wildcat is the ancestor of the domestic cat (F. catus). Some African wildcats were domesticated about 10,000 years ago in the Near East. Interspecific hybrids between both species are common where their ranges overlap.

Felis lybica was the scientific name proposed in 1780 by Georg Forster who based his description on a specimen from Gafsa on the Barbary Coast that had the size of a domestic cat, but a reddish fur, short black tufts on the ears, and a ringed tail. Between the late 18th and 20th centuries, several naturalists and curators of natural history museums described and proposed new names for wildcat holotypes from Africa and the Near East, including:

Since 2017, three African wildcat subspecies are recognised as valid taxa:

Phylogenetic analysis of the nuclear DNA in tissue samples from all Felidae species revealed that the evolutionary radiation of the Felidae began in Asia in the Miocene around 14.45 to 8.38 million years ago. Analysis of mitochondrial DNA of all Felidae species indicates a radiation at around 16.76 to 6.46 million years ago.

The African wildcat is part of an evolutionary lineage that is estimated to have genetically diverged from the common ancestor of the Felis species around 2.16 to 0.89 million years ago, based on analysis of their nuclear DNA. Analysis of their mitochondrial DNA indicates a genetic divergence from Felis at around 4.21 to 0.02 million years ago. Both models agree in the jungle cat (F. chaus) having been the first Felis species that diverged, followed by the black-footed cat (F. nigripes), the sand cat (F. margarita) and then the African wildcat.

The Asian and European wildcats descend from Felis lunensis, which inhabited Europe during the Pliocene and Pleistocene. Wildcat fossils are only found in Europe until the late Pleistocene, when an early form of the steppe-type wildcat appears to have diverged from the European population and quickly expanded into the Middle East, followed shortly after by secondary expansions into Southern Asia and the Middle East. Based on a mitochondrial DNA study of 979 domestic and wildcats from Europe, Asia, and Africa, the African wildcat is thought to have split off from the European wildcat about 173,000 years ago, with the North African/Near Eastern wildcat splitting from the Asiatic wildcat and the Southern African wildcat about 131,000 years ago.

About 10,000 years ago, some African wildcats were tamed in the Fertile Crescent, becoming the ancestors of the domestic cat. Domestic cats are derived from at least five "Mitochondrial Eves". African wildcats were also domesticated in ancient Egypt. The Egyptian domestic cat lineage started spreading in the Mediterranean Basin from the 8th century BCE onwards and arrived on the Baltic Sea coast by the 5th century CE.