abstract: Among Fabaceae cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.), common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.), and soybean (Glycine max L. Merry) are the major pulse crops grown in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), however, the yield remains very low due to the low efficacy of biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) process. Improvement of the yields is possible only in the presence of an efficient BNF rhizobia strains that can be either native or exogenous introduced as a seed inoculants capable to establish effective symbiotic interactions with their legume crops. There are very few studies targeting the phenotypic and genetic characterization of effective indigenous symbiotic rhizobia of Fabaceae plants in Sub-Saharan Africa ecozones. This review describes nearly 100 BNF rhizobia out of about 4000 indigenous strains isolated from soils and root nodules of pulses from different SSA ecozones. Most of these isolates outperformed reference strains and most of the commercial inoculants. The majority of the described indigenous isolates effectively nodulating common bean roots were identified as Rhizobium etli, R. leguminosarum, R. leguminosarum sv. phaseoli and R. tropici, whereas potent diazotrophs symbionts of soybean and cowpea were identified as Bradyrhizobium elkanii and B. japonicum. In addition, some strains of B. yuamingense were found to be beneficial as inoculates for cowpea along with several unidentified isolates effective as seed inoculants of common bean, soybean, and cowpea. Overall, this review provides a first comprehensive assessment of biodiversity of indigenous symbiotic rhizobia in legume plants grown in SSA and discusses their potential agricultural applications.