[bolaft]

Secondary speakers are not people who learned French in school and live outside a French speaking country. If you took French in high school in the US you are not recorded in these numbers. Secondary speakers are people like, for example, those who grew up in Morocco, speak French but have Arabic as a mother tongue (for example).

Plus those numbers only account for speakers who can read and write. As I said in another comment, the alphabetization of Africa over the next few decades is expected to boost these numbers significantly.

So, as the rest of the planet catches up, "curiosity" becomes LESS accurate over time.