African diasporas and communities thrive in cities from New York over Paris and London to India and China. Meanwhile, a new generation of Africans in the disapora are reconnecting with their ancestral roots, forging bridges between contintents and contribute to a renewed sense of Pan-African identity. But the way there was a harsh Safari – as the Swahili word for journey is.
The Siddi are an African minority of which about 250,000 live in the Pakistani provinces of Makran and Karachi and between 25 and 70,000 in the Indian provinces of Karnataka and Gujarat. They originally come from Southeast Africa, from where they first landed on the Indian subcontinent through Arab conquests and later through Portuguese slave traders. Particular pride is Malik Ambar, who made it to the first minister of the Indian Sultanate of Ahmadnagar.(Source: Nagarjun Kandukuru/wikicommons, 2015)
Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian martial art that was developed in Brazil by slaves from various regions of Africa in the 17th century to resist their overseers. The Africans combined attack techniques with dance elements and rhythmic music to disguise the exercises as dance. The Portuguese conquerors recognised the potential and banned its practice. (Source: Johann Moritz Rugendas/wikicommons, 1835)
With about 100,000 Africans mainly from Nigeria, the coastal city of Guangzhou is the largest African enclave in China. Under strict lockdown, however, only 5,000 were still in the city in 2020. Many, however, moved on, for example to Jinhua, a tranquil city by Chinese standards with 2 million inhabitants, which is also known as the City of Christmas – two-thirds of all Christmas articles sold worldwide are made in Jinhua. For African traders, it is therefore attractive because of its importance as the largest market in the world for small, cheap goods that they can sell as traders in their African home countries. (Source: Michael Chua/SUNU, 2016)
Like many other Africans, the two Gambians Osman and Hussein have settled in the Kumkapı district of Istanbul. Like many others, they enter Turkey, where they do not need a visa. From here they try to get through to Europe – if they don’t, their visa expires and they can’t afford the penalties for every day they are in the country without permission. So they are stuck. Osman openly admits that they don’t sell anything here. So the business is just a fig leaf to avoid begging too obviously. (Source: own, 2016)
Hali, an Ethiopian, is passing through Sudan. He earns some money in the Nubian bean fields for his onward passage. However, Sudan and Egypt are only stopovers. From there, the journey continues to Libya and finally across the sea to Europe. (Source: own, 2017)
After the American Civil War in 1865, many of the now freed slaves were still not allowed to acquire land. With a first wave of migration to other states towards Kansas. Many of the former slaves worked on farms and knew how to handle cattle. They hired themselves out as cowboys and made up about a quarter of the workforce. (Source: Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, ca. 1900)
African-Americans board a ship back to Africa in 1896. After their liberation, however, many freed slaves are drawn back to Africa. More precisely: to the Republic of Liberia in West Africa, founded in 1847 on the model of the US Constitution. But these rights also applied to black people there. (Source: The New York Public Library. Digital Collections, 1896)
African-American women produce spats in a textile factory in New York City. But the journey was not over for the African-Americans who stayed behind in the United States either. Under the name “Great Migration”, about six million African-Americans migrated between 1910 and 1970 from the rural southern states of the USA, such as Louisiana, South Carolina, Mississippi to the urban industrial cities, such as New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles or Philadelphia. They mainly found work in factories and in the trades. This was one of the largest and fastest migrations within the USA. But it also led to ethnic tensions in northern cities, for example when armed groups of blacks and whites clashed during the Atlanta race riots of 1906. (Source: National Archives Catalog, 1918)
But even in their own country, they were not masters in their own house for a long time. Although hardly any European settlers remained in the country for a long time and the fluctuation of European inhabitants in what was then Rhodesia was high, it was not until 1978, after a gruelling bush war, that the inhabitants of what is now Zimbabwe fought for their right to co-determination in their country. The white settlers around Ian Smith were mainly supported by the neighbouring apartheid regime in South Africa. (Source: Ministry of Information, Immigration and Tourism, Government of Rhodesia, 1978)
