Major efforts have been made in the United States during the last 15 years to develop high quality programs for the teaching of African languages. These efforts are encountering increasing difficulties which are largely a function of a variety of special problems affecting the teaching of African languages. All of these problems contribute to another, the problem of the high cost of teaching African languages. In an attempt to give some idea of the scope of language teaching efforts in the United States and the cost of African language instruction, information has been gathered from eight African language and area centers. The data indicate that 28 languages were actually offered at these centers in 1976-1977 and 37 other languages could have been offered in case of demand. Data on costs and enrollments indicate that the cost of teaching African languages was $269 per credit hour as compared to $60 for Romance languages. Federal grants for these programs represent only a small proportion of the cost of these programs. A breakdown is given for costs of salaries and fringe benefits, laboratories and materials, institutional support, enrollments and credit hours, cost per enrollment, and cost per credit hour. (Author/AMH)