English words of African origin

• azawakh - probably from Fula or Tuareg. A breed of dog from West and North Africa
• banjo – probably Bantu mbanza
• basenji – breed of dog from Central Africa - Congo, Central African Republic etc. Also visible on Ancient Egyptian stelae.
• boma – from Swahili
• bwana – from Swahili, meaning a husband, important person or safari leader.
• chemistry - from Ancient Egyptian khemia meaning transmutation of earth
• chimpanzee – loaned in the 18th century from a Bantu language, possibly Kivili ci-mpenzi.^[1]
• dengue – possibly from Swahili dinga
• ebony - from Ancient Egyptian hebeni
• gerenuk - from Somali. A long-necked antelope in Eastern Africa (Kenya, Somalia, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Djibouti).
• gnu – from Khoisan !nu through Khoikhoi i-ngu and Dutch gnoe
• goober – possibly from Bantu (Kikongo and Kimbundu nguba)
• gumbo – from Bantu (Kimbundu ngombo meaning "okra")
• impala – from Zulu im-pala
• impi – from Zulu language meaning war, battle or a regiment
• indaba – from Xhosa or Zulu languages – 'stories' or 'news' typically conflated with 'meeting' (often used in South African English)
• isis - from an Ancient Egyptian name for a god. Isis is a Greek transliteration. Asa occurs as the name for God in Kenyan languages. Isis appears in West Africa as Osu.
• jenga - from the Swahili word for 'build.'
• jumbo – from Swahili (jambo (hello) or from Kongo nzamba "elephant")
• kalimba—a type of thumb piano.
• Kwanzaa – recent coinage (Maulana Karenga 1965) as the name of an African American holiday, abstracted from a Swahili phrase matunda ya kwanza, meaning "first fruits [of the harvest]".
• kijiji - from Swahili for 'village,' 'hamlet' or 'small town.'
• laibon – from Maasai medicine-man. Used in Kenyan English.
• lapa – from Sotho languages – enclosure or barbecue area (often used in South African English)
• macaque – from Bantu makaku through Portuguese and French
• mamba – from Zulu or Swahili mamba
• manyatta – from Maasai enclosure or compound
• marimba – from Bantu (Kimbundu and Swahili marimba, malimba)
• moran – from Maasai class structure for warrior. Used in Kenyan English.
• okapi – from a language in the Congo
• osiris - from an Ancient Egyptian god. Osiris is a Greek transliteration. Osiris occurs in the Luhya of Kenya as Siira - to cross and among the Kisii of Kenya as Osoro.
• safari – from Swahili travel, ultimately from Arabic
• sangoma – from Zulu – traditional healer (often used in South African English)
• Tilapia – Possibly a latinization "thiape", the Tswana word for fish.^[2]
• tsetse – from a Bantu language (Tswana tsetse, Luhya tsiisi)
• ubuntu – Nguni term for "mankind; humanity", in South Africa since the 1980s also used capitalized, Ubuntu, as the name of a philosophy or ideology of "human kindness" or "humanism".
• vuvuzela – musical instrument, name of Zulu or Nguni origin
• zebra – of unknown origin, recorded since c. 1600, possibly from a Congolese language, or alternatively from Amharic.
• zombie – likely from West African (compare Kikongo zumbi "fetish", Kimbundu nzambi "god"), but alternatively derived from Spanish sombra "shade, ghost".

References

1. "chimpanzee" in American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2011.
2. Tilapia etymology