Traditional medicinal practices play a key role in health care systems in countries with developing economies. The aim of this survey was to validate the use of traditional medicine within Northern African communities. In this review, we summarize the ethnobotanical uses of selected plant species from the Northern African flora and attempt to correlate the activities of the isolated bioactive principles with known local uses of the plant species in traditional medicine. The literature is covered for the period 1971 to 2014. Part I of this series focuses on plant families with names beginning with letters A to C, with the ethnobotanical uses of 32 plant species correlated with the bioactivities of 176 compounds identified.