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  • 21 Aug, 2019

  • By, Wikipedia

Afro-European
Black Europeans of African ancestry, or Afro-Europeans, refers to people in Europe who trace full or partial ancestry to Sub-Saharan Africa.

European Union

Summer Carnival in Rotterdam

In the European Union (EU) as of 2019, there is a record of approximately 9.6 million people of Sub-Saharan African or Afro-Caribbean descent, comprising around 2% of the total population, with over 50% located in France. The countries with the largest African population in the EU are:

Country Population % of country's population Year Comments / source
Austria Austria 40,000 0.5% 2020 Estimate making use of current Sub-Saharan born population (68,843), Caribbean born (21,730) for total foreign born black population (90,573) and approximate progeny born and their descendants based on historical migration and birth statistics. A multiple of 1.4x is used as migration has shorter time background. See here for access to country of birth data. This is a precise estimate.
Belgium Belgium 410,000 3.6% 2019 Estimate making use of current sub-Saharan born population (240,069) and approximate progeny born and their descendants based on historical migration and birth statistics. Most have roots in the former Belgian colonies of the Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi as well as other French-speaking African countries. This is an estimate, likely a slight overestimate (error: ± 25,000).
Denmark Denmark 52,795 0.9% 2019 Sub-Saharan Africans and their descendants, alongside any by racial or mixed race of African heritage are counted. Irregular migrants are counted in this due to the use of the Schengen Information System markers - as overstays are counted as "present" in one given country - and thus the European estimate evens out). This is a precise census number.
Finland Finland At least 53,296 1.0% 2022 I.e., according to Statistics Finland, people in Finland:
 • whose both parents are Sub-Saharan African-born (SSA; i.e., all other African countries but Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia),
 • or whose only known parent was born in SSA,
 • or who were born in SSA and whose parents' countries of birth are unknown.
Thus, for example, people with one Finnish parent and one SSA parent or people with more distant SSA ancestry are not included in this country-based non-ethnic figure. Because the figure is country-based, it may include some Sub-Saharan white Africans. Also, SSA-born adoptees' backgrounds are determined by their adoptive parents, not by their biological parents. They are mainly from Somalia, Nigeria, DR Congo, Ethiopia, and Ghana. This is a census number.
France France 3,000,000–5,000,000 4.7–7.8% 2009
Germany Germany 1,000,000 1.2% 2020 The German census does not use race as a category. The number of persons "having an extended migrant background" (mit Migrationshintergrund im weiteren Sinn, meaning having at least one grandparent born outside Germany), is given as 529,000. The Initiative Schwarzer Deutscher ("Black German Initiative") estimates the total of Black Germans to be about 1,000,000 persons.
Republic of Ireland Ireland 64,639 1.7% 2016 Sub-Saharan Africans and their descendants, alongside any by racial or mixed race of African heritage are counted. 2016 Census is used. This is a precise census number.
Italy Italy 463,425 0.8% 2020
Luxembourg Luxembourg 30,000 4.9% 2019 Estimate making use of current Sub-Saharan born population (18,253) and approximate progeny born and their descendants based on historical migration and birth statistics.
Netherlands Netherlands 731,444 4.2% 2021 First or second generation migration background from Africa. No classification according to skin colour given.
Portugal Portugal ~230,000 2.2% 2023 Extrapolated using statistics on ethnicity of Portuguese people aged 18–74 for the entire population of 10.3 million.
Sweden Sweden ~200,490 1.9% 2020 Sub-Saharan Africans and their descendants, alongside any by racial or mixed race of African heritage are counted. Consists mostly of recent immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. Most of them are from Somalia, Eritrea and countries around. Some French and British nationals of African descent can be found in Malmö and Stockholm, as well as many African-Americans in the country playing diverse sports like Basketball that stand in the country for all life. This is a precise census number.

The remaining (excluding Spain that is not listed above) 14 states of the European Union have fewer than 100,000 individuals of Sub-Saharan African descent all together. As countries such as Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Romania and Greece have received little to no immigration from Sub-Saharan Africa or interaction that would have caused the formation of black or mixed race communities. Black populations, inclusive of descendants, mixed race people, and temporary students, number fewer than 10,000 in each of these states.

Other European countries

The United Kingdom has approximately 2.5 million black people, inclusive of mixed race, according to the 2011 Census. Black people from the EU who have settled in the UK are also included such as the Black Anglo-Deutsch. Switzerland and Norway have 114,000 and 115,000 people of Sub-Saharan African descent, respectively; primarily composed of refugees and their descendants, but this is only the numbers for first generation migrants and second generation migrants with two parents from a different country. There are no official numbers in Norway regarding Afro-Norwegians, as Norway does not have census regarding race or ethnicity. However, Norway collects data on migrants up to the second generation, which can be used to accurately estimate the effective Black population.

According to state-owned Anadolu Agency, government data suggests that there are 1.5 million Africans living all across Turkey as of 2017, with 25% of them in Istanbul. Other studies state the majority of Africans in Turkey lives in Istanbul and report Tarlabaşı, Dolapdere, Kumkapı, Yenikapı and Kurtuluş as having a strong African presence. Estimates of the number of Africans living in Istanbul varies between 50,000 and 200,000. Ankara also has a sizeable Somali community. In addition to this African migrant population, there are 20,000 Afro-Turks.

More than 1,000,000 sub-Saharan Africans had settled in Europe between 2010 and 2017.

List of subgroups

See also