Rhabdalestes is a genus of small, slender African tetras in the family Alestidae, distributed widely across sub-Saharan Africa's rivers, floodplains, and wetlands, from West African drainages through the Congo basin to southern African systems such as the Okavango. Several of its species carry the evocative common name "robber," a nod to the genus's slim, fast-moving build and predatory feeding on small invertebrates, though at 1.5–3 in these are modest, unassuming fish rather than dramatic hunters. They typically school in open water along vegetated margins.
Rhabdalestes is little known outside ichthyological survey work; the genus barely registers in the aquarium trade, and husbandry data for most of its species are sparse to nonexistent. Conservation assessment is similarly thin, with most of the atlas's eight species Not Evaluated and one Data Deficient, reflecting how much of tropical Africa's small-stream fish fauna remains under-surveyed rather than any documented threat to the genus as a whole.