African time (or Africa time) is the perceived cultural tendency in parts of Africa and the Caribbean toward a more relaxed attitude to time. This is sometimes used in a pejorative sense, about tardiness in appointments, meetings and events. This also includes the more leisurely, relaxed, and less rigorously scheduled lifestyle found in African countries, especially as opposed to the more clock-bound pace of daily life in Western countries. As such, it is similar to time orientations in some other non-Western culture regions such as South and West Asia. In 2014, Nigerian-American filmmaker Chijindu Kelechi Eke explored this topic as a cultural rift through his film, African Time.

The appearance of a simple lack of punctuality or a lax attitude about time in Africa, may instead reflect a different approach and method in managing tasks, events, and interactions. African cultures are often described as "polychronic", which means people tend to manage more than one thing at a time rather than in a strict sequence. Personal interactions and relationships are also managed in this way, such that it is not uncommon to have more than one simultaneous conversation. An African "emotional time consciousness" has been suggested which contrasts with Western "mechanical time consciousness".

In the Caribbean, "...[t]hings just won't always happen as quickly or as precisely as you may be accustomed to". Due to the cultural influence of "Caribbean time" or "island time", locals do not have the sense of time pressure that is part of Western culture.

Colored People's Time (also abbreviated to CP Time or CPT) is an American expression referring to African Americans as frequently being late. It claims that African Americans can have a relaxed or indifferent view of punctuality, which leads to them being labeled as lazy or unreliable.

According to NPR's podcast Code Switch, the phrase has variations in many other languages and cultures, is often used as a light-hearted comment or joke regarding being late, and may have first been used in 1914 by The Chicago Defender newspaper.

There are differences between monochronic societies and polychronic societies (e.g., some of those found in Sub-Saharan Africa).

The concept of African time has become a key topic of self-criticism in modern Africa. According to one Ghanaian writer,

One of the main reasons for the continuing underdevelopment of our country is our nonchalant attitude to time and the need for punctuality in all aspects of life. The problem of punctuality has become so endemic that lateness to any function is accepted and explained off as 'African time.'