Alestes is a genus of African characins in the family Alestidae, sometimes called African tetras, though most species grow far larger than the tank-bred South American tetras that name evokes. The atlas covers 7 species ranging from roughly 3.5 in up to 23.5 in, found across a broad swath of Africa spanning the Congo basin, the Nile system, and Sahelo-Sudanian rivers and lakes, with atlas records from Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Gambia. They share a fusiform, silvery body built for open water, a forked tail, and a single dorsal fin followed by the small adipose fin typical of characins, and most species move in schools through rivers, floodplains, and lake margins rather than dense vegetation.
The larger species in the genus, such as Alestes baremoze (silversides) and A. dentex (sickle-fin alestes), are important food fish across their range, supporting subsistence and commercial fisheries in Nile-basin lakes and rivers rather than featuring in the aquarium hobby, where their adult size makes them impractical for anything but very large systems. Smaller species like A. macrophthalmus (bigeye tetra) and A. ansorgii (Ansorge's tetra) are closer in scale to familiar tetras but are seen only occasionally in the trade. With five of the atlas's seven species assessed as Least Concern and two Not Evaluated, the genus does not currently read as a conservation priority, though the wide-ranging river and lake fisheries several species support make their population trends worth watching.