African diaspora

This article is about emigration from Africa in historic times. For prehistoric human migration, see recent African origin of modern humans. For recent migration, see emigration from Africa.

African diaspora
Flag of Pan-Africanism
World map of African diaspora
Regions with significant populations
 Brazil20,656,458–112,739,744 (2022)[a][4][5][6]
 United States41,104,200–46,936,733 (2020)[7]
 Haiti11,200,000 (2023)[8]
 France8,000,000-10,000,000[9][10][11][12][13]
 Colombia4,671,160–7,800,000 (2018)[14]
 Saudi Arabia3,600,000[15]
 Yemen3,500,000[16]
 Mexico2,576,213 (2020)[17]
 Jamaica2,510,000[18]
 United Kingdom2,485,724 (2021)[19]
 Iraq2,000,000[20]
 Dominican Republic1,704,000 (2017)
8,000,000(Mixed)[21][22]
 Panama1,258,915 (2023)[23]
 Spain1,206,701[b][24]
 Canada1,547,870[25]
 Italy1,140,000[c][26]
 Venezuela1,087,427 (2011)[27]
 Cuba1,034,044[28]
 Germany1,000,000[29]
 Peru828,894 (2017)[30]
 Oman750,000
 Ecuador569,212 (2022)
245,256 (Mixed)[31]
 Netherlands507,000
 Trinidad and Tobago452,536[32]
 Belgium358,268 (2023)[33]
 Australia326,673 (2021)[34]
 Portugalup to ~ 700,000
 Argentina302,936 (2022)[35]
 Barbados270,853[36]
 Sweden250,881 (2022)[37]
 Pakistan250,000[38]
 Puerto Rico228,711[39]
 Guyana225,860[40]
 Suriname200,406[41][42][43]
 Chile195,809 (2017)[d][44][45]
 Uruguay149,689 (2011)[46]
 Norway149,502 (2023)[47]
 Grenada108,700[48]
 Turkey100,000[49]
 Finland70,592 (2023)[50]
 Jordan60,000[51]
 Russia50,000[52] (est. 2009)
 Costa Rica45,228 (2018)
289,209 (Mixed)[53]
 Guatemala27,647 (2018)
19,529 (Mixed)[54]
 India19,514 (2011)[55]
 Paraguay8,013 (2022)[56]
Languages
English (American, Caribbean), French (Canadian, Haitian), Haitian Creole, Jamaican Patois, Spanish, Portuguese, Papiamento, Dutch, Palenquero and African languages
Religion
Christianity, Islam, Traditional African religions, Afro-American religions
Related ethnic groups
Africans

The African diaspora refers to people around the world whose ancestors came from Africa.[57] Most often, it describes the descendants of West and Central Africans who were taken from their homes and forced into Atlantic slave trade in the Americas between the 1500s and 1800s. Today, large African diaspora communities can be found in places like Brazil, the United States, and Haiti.[58][59] The term can also include people of African descent who moved to other parts of the world. Experts describe this movement from Africa in four main waves.[60]

The phrase "African diaspora" became commonly used around the start of the 21st century.[61] The word "diaspora" comes from a Greek word διασπορά (diaspora which means "scattering"). It was first used in English to talk about the Jewish diaspora, and later began to describe other groups who moved away from their original homeland.[62] Sometimes, scholars also use the term to talk about more recent migration from Africa.[63]

The African Union (AU) defines the African diaspora as people who are fully or partly of African origin and live outside Africa, no matter their citizenship or nationality, but who are willing to help develop Africa and support the goals of the African Union.[64] The AU’s founding document also says it will invite and support the full involvement of the African diaspora in building the African Union.[65]

History

Dispersal through slave trade

See also: Atlantic slave trade, Trans-Saharan slave trade, Red Sea slave trade, Indian Ocean slave trade, and Slavery in Africa

Many Africans were taken to different parts of the world—including North America, South America, Europe, and Asia—during the Atlantic, Trans-Saharan, Red Sea, and Indian Ocean slave trades.

The first known records of Africans being slaves outside Africa come from Ancient Greece and Rome. Back in the Greco-Roman world, Africans were usually called Aithiopians, a name connected to a star group (constellation) called Cepheus. In Greek stories, Cepheus was the king of Ethiopia. The name Cepheus also means “gardener” in Greek, and it includes a special star called Delta Cephei. This star helps scientists measure distances in space.

Most Aithiopian slaves came from Kush, which is now part of Sudan.They were often captured during wars (prisoners of war) with Egypt. However, only a small number of slaves in Greece and Rome were Aithiopian because it was hard to bring them from so far away. These slaves usually worked in homes or as entertainers, which suggests they were seen as luxury items. For example, the Roman Emperor Nero once filled an entire theater with Aithiopian slaves to show off Rome's wealth and power to a visiting foreign king.[66]

In the early 700s, Arabs took African slaves from central and eastern Africa. These Africans were called the Zanj. They were sold to places in the Middle East, India, and the Far East to work as slaves in powerful Muslim empires like the Umayyad Caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate, the Mamluk Sultanate, and the Ottoman Empire.

From the early 1400s (15th century), Europeans started capturing or buying African slaves from West Africa. At first, they took them to Europe. Later, when Europeans began settling in the Americas in the late 1400s, they sent many of these African slaves there too. The Atlantic slave trade ended in the 1800s (19th century).[67]

This forced movement of people is one of the largest in human history. It caused great harm to Africa. Many young people were taken away, and whole communities were damaged.

Some communities made up of African slaves' descendants still exist today in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. In other cases, African slaves married people from other groups, and their descendants became part of the local population.

In the Americas, people from many different ethnic backgrounds came together, creating mixed societies. In Central and South America, most people today have ancestors from Europe, Native American groups, and Africa. By 1888 in Brazil, nearly half the people were descended from African slaves, and their looks showed a wide mix of features (Northern Tier).

In the United States, there were more European settlers compared to African slaves, especially in the North. In places like colonial Virginia, there was a lot of intermarriage between races, both during and after slavery.

After the Civil War (1861–1865) and the Reconstruction period (1863–1877), southern states passed laws to keep races separate. These included Jim Crow laws and bans on interracial marriage. In the late 1800s (19th century) and early 1900s (20th century), many new European immigrants also arrived, which helped keep racial groups more separate.

In the early 1900s, many southern states used a rule called the "one drop rule." This rule said that if a person had even a small amount of African ancestry, they were legally considered Black.[68] This caused problems for people from mixed backgrounds—especially Native American groups—who were often wrongly labeled as only Black, and their Native identity was erased in official records.[69]

References

  1. ↑ In the 2022 Brazilian census, 20,656,458 Brazilians self-identified as preto (black), while 92,083,286 identified as pardo (brown), a category that designates individuals of mixed racial ancestry. There is debate over whether all pardos have African ancestry. While some pardos may have mixed heritage without African descent, this is considered marginal as the majority have some degree of African ancestry.[1][2][3]
  2. ↑ 79% being North African
  3. ↑ 60% being North African
  4. ↑ Including Haitian immigrants
  1. ↑ Reiter, Bernd; Sánchez, John Antón (November 8, 2022). Routledge Handbook of Afro-Latin American Studies. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-000-68546-6.
  2. ↑ "Afro-Brazilians". Minority Rights Group International. Retrieved March 16, 2025. An estimated 91 million Brazilians are of African ancestry, according to the 2010 census, which found that more than half (50.7 per cent) of the Brazilian population now identified as preto (black) or pardo (mixed ethnicity).
  3. ↑ "Maioria da população do Brasil se declara parda". Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte. Retrieved March 16, 2025. (Translated) The figures show that 45.3% of the population of the country declared themselves brown; 43.5% declared themselves white, 10.2% black, 0.8% indigenous and 0.4% yellow. In the sum, 56.7% of Brazilians are non-white, of these, 55.5% are afrodescendant.
  4. ↑ "Tabela 9605: População residente, por cor ou raça, nos Censos Demográficos". sidra.ibge.gov.br. Retrieved January 8, 2024.
  5. ↑ "Afro-Brazilians". Minority Rights Group International. Retrieved March 16, 2025. An estimated 91 million Brazilians are of African ancestry, according to the 2010 census, which found that more than half (50.7 per cent) of the Brazilian population now identified as preto (black) or pardo (mixed ethnicity).
  6. ↑ "Maioria da população do Brasil se declara parda". Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte. Retrieved March 16, 2025. (Translated) The figures show that 45.3% of the population of the country declared themselves brown; 43.5% declared themselves white, 10.2% black, 0.8% indigenous and 0.4% yellow. In the sum, 56.7% of Brazilians are non-white, of these, 55.5% are afrodescendant.
  7. ↑ "Race and Ethnicity in the United States: 2010 Census and 2020 Census". US Census Bureau. August 12, 2021. Retrieved April 26, 2022.
  8. ↑ "HAITI 2023 INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM REPORT" (PDF). www.state.gov.
  9. ↑ Don't believe anyone in France who says they don't see race, October 21, 2014, retrieved October 21, 2014
  10. ↑ Combien sont-ils ?, April 2, 2007, retrieved October 21, 2024
  11. ↑ Combien y a-t-il de Noirs en France ?, April 1, 2008, retrieved October 21, 2024
  12. ↑ Crumley, Bruce (March 24, 2009), "Should France Count Its Minority Population?", Time, archived from the original on August 8, 2018, retrieved October 11, 2014
  13. ↑ Percentage of black people in European populations (2020), December 13, 2022, retrieved October 21, 2024
  14. ↑ "visibilización estadística de los gruposétnicos". Censo General 2018. Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadistica (DANE). Retrieved February 10, 2020.
  15. ↑ "Saudi-Arabia". The World Factbook (2025 ed.). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved March 25, 2017. (Archived 2017 edition)
  16. ↑ "Yemen's Al-Akhdam face brutal oppression – CNN iReport". November 29, 2014. Archived from the original on November 29, 2014. Retrieved April 27, 2021.
  17. ↑ "Principales resultados del Censo de Población y Vivienda 2020" (PDF). inegi.org.mx (in Spanish). Archived (PDF) from the original on April 20, 2024. Retrieved March 3, 2024.
  18. ↑ "Jamaica – People". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved April 27, 2021.
  19. ↑ "2021 Census: Ethnic group, local authorities in the United Kingdom". Office for National Statistics. November 11, 2022. Retrieved February 28, 2022.
  20. ↑ "Refworld | World Directory of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples - Iraq : Black Iraqis".
  21. ↑ "The ethnicity of the Dominican population".
  22. ↑ "Ethnic groups of the Dominican Republic". April 25, 2017.
  23. ↑ "El 32,8 % de la población de Panamá se reconoce como afrodescendiente". March 2023.
  24. ↑ "Población extranjera por país de nacionalidad, edad (grupos quinquenales) y sexo". Archived from the original on October 25, 2022. Retrieved December 17, 2022.
  25. ↑ Government of Canada, Statistics Canada (February 9, 2022). "Profile table, Census Profile, 2021 Census of Population - Canada [Country]". www12.statcan.gc.ca. Retrieved November 6, 2017.
  26. ↑ Fabrizio Ciocca (November 12, 2019). "Africani d'Italia". Neodemos (in Italian).
  27. ↑ "XIV Censo National de Poblacion y Vivienda" (PDF). May 2014. Archived from the original (PDF) on August 5, 2019. Retrieved April 27, 2021.
  28. ↑ "Población por sexo y zona de residencia según grupos de edades y color de la piel" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on June 3, 2014. Retrieved April 27, 2021.
  29. ↑ "Zu Besuch in Neger und Mohrenkirch: Können Ortsnamen rassistisch sein?". Rund eine Million schwarzer Menschen leben laut ISD hierzulande. [About one million black people are living in this country according to ISD.]
  30. ↑ "La Autoidentificación Étnica: Población Indígena y Afroperuana" (PDF) (in Spanish). 2018. p. 123. Retrieved January 16, 2024.
  31. ↑ "Población del país es joven y mestiza, dice censo del INEC". El Universo (in Spanish). September 2, 2011. Retrieved April 27, 2021.
  32. ↑ "Trinidad and Tobago 2011 Population and Housing Census: Demographic Report" (PDF). Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, Central Statistical Office. 2012. p. 94. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 19, 2017. Retrieved August 20, 2017.
  33. ↑ "Origin | Statbel". statbel.fgov.be. Retrieved July 4, 2023.
  34. ↑ "ABS Statistics". stat.data.abs.gov.au. November 25, 2021. Archived from the original on July 28, 2020. Retrieved April 22, 2020.
  35. ↑ "Censo 2022". INDEC. Retrieved March 8, 2024.
  36. ↑ Barbados. The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency.
  37. ↑ "Foreign-born by county, municipality, sex and country of birth 31 December 2022". www.scb.se. Statistics Sweden.
  38. ↑ Paracha, Nadeem F. (August 26, 2018). "Smokers' corner: Sindh's African roots". DAWN.COM. Retrieved April 27, 2021.
  39. ↑ "Puerto Rico Population Declined 11.8% from 2010 to 2020".
  40. ↑ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on July 21, 2011. Retrieved October 23, 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  41. ↑ "Censusstatistieken 2012" (PDF). Algemeen Bureau voor de Statistiek in Suriname (General Statistics Bureau of Suriname). p. 76. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 5, 2016. Retrieved October 23, 2017.
  42. ↑ "Cuadro P42. Total del país. Población afrodescendiente en viviendas particulares por sexo, según grupo de edad. Año 2010" [Table P42. Total for the country. Afro-descendant population in private households by sex, according to age group, 2010]. INDEC (in Spanish). Archived from the original (XLS) on October 29, 2013.
  43. ↑ "Cuadro P43. Total del país. Población afrodescendiente en viviendas particulares por sexo, según lugar de nacimiento. Año 2010" [Table P43. Total for the country. Afro-descendant population in private homes by sex, according to place of birth, 2010]. INDEC (in Spanish). Archived from the original (XLS) on April 18, 2014.
  44. ↑ "Medición de Pueblos Indígenas y Afrodescendientes en el Censo de Población y Vivienda 2017" (PDF). Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas. November 2018.
  45. ↑ "Extranjeros en Chile superan el millón 110 mil y el 72% se concentra en dos regiones: Antofagasta y Metropolitana". El Mercurio. April 9, 2018. Retrieved December 23, 2019.
  46. ↑ "La población afro-uruguaya en el Censo 2011" (in Spanish). March 7, 2021. Archived from the original on March 7, 2021. Alt URL
  47. ↑ "Statistics Norway - Immigrants and Norwegian-born to immigrant parents, 6 March 2023". Retrieved January 19, 2024.
  48. ↑ "Grenada". The World Factbook. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Retrieved May 3, 2021.
  49. ↑ "İstanbul'da yaşayan Afrikalıların sayısı 70 bine yakın. Ten renklerinden ötürü ötekileştirilmiyor olmak onları Türkiye'ye bağlıyor". www.trthaber.com (in Turkish). December 13, 2020. Archived from the original on December 13, 2020. Retrieved October 26, 2021.
  50. ↑ "11rv -- Origin and background country by sex, by municipality, 1990-2023". Statistics Finland. Retrieved September 29, 2024.
    Note:
    "Origin and background country". Statistics Finland. Retrieved September 29, 2024. Origin and background country ... All such persons who have at least one parent who was born in Finland are also considered to be persons with Finnish background. ... Persons whose both parents or the only known parent have been born abroad are considered to be persons with foreign background. ... If either parent's country of birth is unknown, the background country for persons born abroad is their own country of birth. ... For children adopted from abroad, the adoptive parents are regarded as the biological parents.
    I.e., according to Statistics Finland, people in Finland:
     • whose both parents are African-born,
     • or whose only known parent was born in Africa,
     • or who were born in Africa and whose parents' countries of birth are unknown.
    Thus, for example, people with one Finnish parent and one African parent or people with more distant African ancestry are not included in this country-based non-ethnic figure.
    Also, African-born adoptees' backgrounds are determined by their adoptive parents, not by their biological parents.
  51. ↑ http://www.africanviews.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=105 Archived 2014-07-24 at the Wayback Machine Jordan
  52. ↑ Gribanova, Lyubov "Дети-метисы в России: свои среди чужих" Archived November 4, 2008, at the Wayback Machine (in Russian). Nashi Deti Project. Retrieved February 25, 2010.
  53. ↑ "Costa Rica: Población total por autoidentificación étnica-racial, según provincia y sexo. (Spanish)". Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (Costa Rica). Retrieved November 19, 2016.
  54. ↑ "Portal de Resultados del Censo 2018". Censopoblacion.gt. Archived from the original on December 17, 2019. Retrieved April 14, 2022.
  55. ↑ "A-11 Individual Scheduled Tribe Primary Census Abstract Data and its Appendix". Census of India 2011. Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India. Retrieved March 24, 2017.
  56. ↑ "Afroparaguayos, condenados a no existir".
  57. ↑ "African Diaspora | Encyclopedia.com". www.encyclopedia.com. Retrieved May 23, 2022.
  58. ↑ Ade Ajayi, J. F.; International Scientific Committee For The Drafting Of a General History Of Africa, Unesco (July 1, 1998). General History of Africa. University of California Press. pp. 305–15. ISBN 978-0-520-06701-1. via Google Books
  59. ↑ Warren, J. Benedict (1985). The Conquest of Michoacán. University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-1858-1.
  60. ↑ Harris, J. E. (1993). "Introduction" In J. E. Harris (ed.), Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora, pp. 8–9.
  61. ↑ "Google Books Ngram Viewer". books.google.com. Retrieved April 27, 2021.
  62. ↑ In an article published in 1991, William Safran set out six rules to distinguish "diasporas" from general migrant communities. While Safran's definitions were influenced by the idea of the Jewish diaspora, he recognised the expanding use of the term. Rogers Brubaker (2005) also noted that use of the term "diaspora" had started to take on an increasingly general sense. He suggests that one element of this expansion in use "involves the application of the term diaspora to an ever-broadening set of cases: essentially to any and every nameable population category that is to some extent dispersed in space". An early example of the use of "African diaspora" appears in the title of Sidney Lemelle, Robin D. G. Kelley, Imagining Home: Class, Culture and Nationalism in the African Diaspora (1994).
  63. ↑ Akyeampong, E. (2000). "Africans in the Diaspora: The Diaspora and Africans". African Affairs. 99 (395): 183–215. doi:10.1093/afraf/99.395.183.
  64. ↑ "The Diaspora Division | African Union". au.int. Archived from the original on July 14, 2023. Retrieved May 23, 2022.
  65. ↑ "The Diaspora Division". Statement. The Citizens and Diaspora Organizations Directorate (CIDO). Archived from the original on December 1, 2015. Retrieved January 7, 2016.
  66. ↑ "Slavery in Antiquity", Jews and the American Slave Trade, Routledge, pp. 17–32, September 29, 2017, doi:10.4324/9780203787946-2, ISBN 978-0-203-78794-6, retrieved June 27, 2023
  67. ↑ "Historical survey > The international slave trade > Slavery". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007. Archived from the original on September 29, 2007. Retrieved September 30, 2007.
  68. ↑ Olson, Steve (2003). Mapping Human History: Genes, Race, and Our Common Origins. Houghton Mifflin Company. pp. 54–69. ISBN 978-0-618-35210-4.
  69. ↑ "One drop & one hate". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. January 2005. Retrieved May 22, 2022.

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