The Hausa people are an ethnic group native to West Africa. They speak the Hausa language, which is the second most spoken language after Arabic in the Afro-Asiatic language family. The Hausa are a culturally homogeneous people based primarily in the Sahelian and the sparse savanna areas of southern Niger and northern Nigeria respectively, numbering around 86 million people, with significant populations in Benin, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Chad, the Central African Republic, Togo, and Ghana, as well as smaller more recent populations in Sudan, Eritrea.

Predominantly Hausa-speaking communities are scattered throughout West Africa and on the traditional Hajj route north and east traversing the Sahara, with an especially large population in and around the town of Agadez. Other Hausa have also moved to large neighbouring coastal cities in the region such as Lagos, Port Harcourt, Accra, Abidjan and Cotonou as well as to parts of North Africa such as Libya over the course of the last 500 years. The Hausa are traditionally agriculturists who live in small villages as well as in precolonial towns and cities. The Hausa aristocracy had historically developed an equestrian based culture. Still a status symbol of the traditional nobility in Hausa society, the horse still features in the Eid day celebrations, known as Ranar Sallah (in English: the Day of the Prayer). Daura is the cultural center of the Hausa people. The town predates all the other major Hausa towns in tradition and culture.

In the last millennia, the Hausa have migrated throughout Africa for several reasons. These include military service, long-distance trade, hunting, performance of hajj, fleeing from oppressive feudal Hausa kings, and propagating Islam.

The vast majority of Hausas and Hausa speakers are Muslim. Attempts to embark on the hajj pilgrimage have resulted in some settling in regions from western and sub-saharan Africa to the Hijaz region.^{[citation needed]} Many Hausa in Saudi Arabia identify as both Hausa and Afro-Arab. In the Arab world, the surname "Hausawi" (alternatively spelled "Hawsawi") is an indicator of Hausa ancestry.

The homeland of Hausa people is Hausaland ("Kasar Hausa"), situated in Nigeria and Niger.

Daura, in Nigeria, is the oldest city of Hausaland. Historically, Katsina was the centre of Hausa Islamic scholarship but was later replaced by Sokoto stemming from the 19th century Usman Dan Fodio Islamic reform.

In the 7th century, the Dalla Hill in Kano was the site of a Hausa community that migrated from Gaya and engaged in iron-work. The Hausa Bakwai kingdoms were established around the 7th to 11th centuries. Of these, the Kingdom of Daura was the first, according to the Bayajidda legend. The legend of Bayajidda is a relatively new concept in the history of the Hausa people and is generally disregarded as myth by scholars.

The Hausa Kingdoms were independent political entities in what is now Nigeria and emerged, predominantly in the 16th century, as powerful and economically important trading states. Similarly to Bornu and other neighbouring cities, Hausa states like Katsina and Kano became major centres of long-distance trans-saharan trade with Hausa merchants specializing in producing textiles and leatherwork. The primary exports were leather, gold, cloth, salt, kola nuts, slaves, and henna with the Hausa people acting as a median of trade within West Africa. By the 14th century, Islam had become widespread in the Hausa states due to commerce, with Muhammad Korau of Gobir generally attested as the first Muslim ruler by the mid 14th century, though smaller populations of Hausas, like the Maguzawa remained followers of the traditional Hausa religion.