If one were to employ the same test/criteria, I wonder how many languages are spoken in North America? It also makes me wonder how many people in North America don't speak any significant amount of Spanish or English. There are some for various reasons, but not many. At the same time, the article refers to an SSIL document which lists USA as having 422 living languages--which would be 7th in the world for most active languages. However, in practice most public life is carried out in Spanish or English. Will the same phenomenon in store for Africa?