African diaspora

The African diaspora is the diaspora created by the movements and culture of Africans and their descendants throughout the world, in places including Europe, the Caribbean, the Americas including United States and Canada, South America, and Central America. The majority of the African diaspora are descended from people taken into slavery, with the largest population living in Brazil. In recent years they include a rising number of voluntary emigrants and asylum-seekers as well.

More broadly, the African diaspora comprises the indigenous, or black peoples of Africa and their descendants, wherever they are in the world beyond the African continent. Pan-Africanists and Afrocentrism often also consider other Negroid (or "Africoid") peoples as diasporic "African peoples." These groups include Negritos of the Andamanese islands, Philippines, Malay Peninsula (Orang Asli), New Guinea, and the aboriginal peoples of Melanesia.

The African Union has defined the African diaspora as "[consisting] of people of African origin living outside the continent, irrespective of their citizenship and nationality and who are willing to contribute to the development of the continent and the building of the African Union." Its constitutive act declares that it shall "invite and encourage the full participation of the African Diaspora as an important part of our Continent, in the building of the African Union."

See also

• Black people
• History of Africa
• African American
• British Afro-Caribbean community
• African-Canadian

External links

• "African Diaspora", a resource list, Columbia Universities, African Studies
• "Negrito and Negrillo", by M. Stewart
• Report of the Meeting of Experts from Member States on the Definition of the African Diaspora, African Union, April 2005