African people

Flag of Africa, used to identify with a civic nationalist identity of African people
A globe centred on Europe
Map of the African continent (green)

African people or Africans are people who belong to any ethnic, racial, or national group with origins in Africa. Today, it primarily refers to people who are from Africa and reside in the continent, as well as the African diaspora.

As of 2024, Africa's total population is estimated to be 1.5 billion people. The most populous African country is Nigeria, which has over 237.5 million people as of 2025.

Population of Africa

Over 150 different ethnic groups are known to reside in Africa. In 2024, it was reported that 43 million African migrants live outside the country of their birth. In a 2020 report, New South Institute reported that Africa was hosting over 25 million international migrants.

Nigeria, which has a total population of 237.5 million, is the most populous country in Africa, followed by Ethiopia with 135 million.

African diaspora

Brazil is home to the largest African diaspora population, with between 20 million and 112 million people of full or partial African descent as of 2022. The United States has the second-largest African diaspora population, with 40 million people (including African Americans, Afro-Caribbean immigrants, Afro-Latinos, African immigrants) as of 2020.

See also

Notes

  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.

References

  1. ↑ "African". Cambridge Dictionaries Online. Cambridge University Press. Retrieved 6 March 2013.
  2. ↑ "(Blog) As Africa's Population Crosses 1.5 Billion, The Demographic Window Is Opening; Getting The Dividend Requires More Time And Stronger Effort | United Nations Economic Commission for Africa". www.uneca.org. Retrieved 2026-08-24.
  3. 1 2 "World Bank Open Data". World Bank Open Data. Retrieved 2026-08-24.
  4. ↑ Levinson, David (1998). Ethnic Groups Worldwide: A Ready Reference Handbook. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-57356-019-1.
  5. ↑ Goran Burenhult, Traditional Peoples Today: Continuity and Change in the Modern World Illustrated History of Humankind, vol. 5 (1994).
  6. ↑ Williams, Wendy. "African Migration Trends to Watch in 2024". Africa Center. Retrieved 2026-04-30.
  7. ↑ "An Analysis of Trends and Patterns of Migration in Africa" (PDF). nsi.org.za.
  8. ↑ "World Population Prospects". population.un.org. Archived from the original on 2020-05-20. Retrieved 2026-04-30.
  9. ↑ Reiter, Bernd; Sánchez, John Antón (2022-11-08). Routledge Handbook of Afro-Latin American Studies. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-000-68546-6.
  10. ↑ "Afro-Brazilians". Minority Rights Group International. Retrieved 2025-03-16. 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).
  11. ↑ "Maioria da população do Brasil se declara parda". Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte. Retrieved 2025-03-16. (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.
  12. ↑ "Race and Ethnicity in the United States: 2010 Census and 2020 Census". US Census Bureau. August 12, 2021. Archived from the original on October 7, 2021. Retrieved April 26, 2022.