African diaspora
African-descended peoples living outside Africa
The African diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities that descended from people from Africa. The term most commonly refers to emigrants of people of African heritage but could also refer to descendants of enslaved Africans. Scholars typically identify "four circulatory phases" of this migration out of Africa.
The phrase African diaspora gradually entered common usage at the turn of the 21st century. The term diaspora originates from the Greek word διασπορά (diaspora, "scattering") which gained popularity in English in reference to the Jewish diaspora before being more broadly applied to other populations. Less commonly, the term has been used in scholarship to refer to more recent emigration from Africa.
The African Union (AU) defines the African diaspora as consisting: "of people of native or partial 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".
History
In the late 20th century, Africans began to emigrate to Europe and the Americas in increasing numbers, constituting new African diaspora communities.
In the Americas, the confluence of multiple ethnic groups from around the world contributed to multi-ethnic societies.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “African diaspora” is african-descended peoples living outside Africa. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through African, diaspora and African-descended, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “african-descended peoples living outside Africa” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q385967. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “African diaspora” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.