This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Magnetic wide-bandgap semiconductors based on ZnO and GaN are promising for spintronics applications and interesting for studying the interaction of charge carriers with magnetic ions. We use time-resolved Faraday rotation spectroscopy to investigate the ultrafast spin dynamics in Zn 1Àx Mn x O and Ga 1Àx Mn x N. The mean field electron-magnetic ion exchange constant is determined by measuring the transient effective g-factor (g à ) for these materials. The relevant scattering processes are revealed by analyzing the ensemble spin dephasing time T à 2 .