Hausa (;h Harshen/Halshen Hausa; Ajami: هَرْشَن هَوْسَ) is a Chadic language spoken by the Hausa people in the northern half of Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon, Benin and Togo, and the southern half of Niger, Chad and Sudan, with significant minorities in Ivory Coast.

Hausa is a member of the Afroasiatic language family and is the most widely spoken language within the Chadic branch of that family. Ethnologue estimated that it was spoken as a first language by some 47 million people and as a second language by another 25 million, bringing the total number of Hausa speakers to an estimated 72 million.

It is often said that you will find Hausa speakers from Dakar to Port Sudan, from Leopoldville to Fez. The explorer Heinrich Barth in the 1840's is said to have had his first Hausa lesson in Tunis. In 1890, Bishop Tugwell of the Church Missionary Society went to study Hausa in Tripoli before undertaking their missionary into the emirates of the Sokoto Caliphate.

In Nigeria, the Hausa-speaking film industry is known as Kannywood.