This volume investigates focus strategies in Niger-Congo and Afro-Asiatic languages via various theoretical and methodological approaches. Their common goal is to increase our knowledge of the representation and marking of the information-structural category of focus in natural language. Among the examined issues are focus-sensitive particles, focus and related constructions, the focus-prosody relation, the influence of information structure on word order, ex situ versus in situ focus marking strategies, and the focus marking devices inventory. The present inquiry into the focus systems of African languages has repercussions on existing theories of focus. It reveals new focus strategies as well as fine-tuned focus distinctions that are not discussed in the theoretical literature, which is almost exclusively based on well-documented intonation languages.