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African Diaspora - Top 10 Countries

Name the countries outside of Africa that have the highest number of people of sub-Saharan African descent.
Includes people of mixed descent
Percentages are estimates from various sources (mostly Wikipedia)
Quiz by Quizmaster
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Last updated: July 23, 2019
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First submittedNovember 20, 2016
Times taken59,370
Average score80.0%
Rating4.82
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#
%
Country
108 mil
50.7
Brazil
48.7 mil
14.8
United States
11.2 mil
99.9
Haiti
9.21 mil
83.8
Dominican Republic
5.18 mil
10.4
Colombia
#
%
Country
4.26 mil
6.5
France
4.13 mil
35.9
Cuba
2.68 mil
92.1
Jamaica
2.00 mil
3.0
United Kingdom
1.59 mil
1.2
Mexico
+12
Level ∞
Nov 20, 2016
I used this as a source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_diaspora

Honestly, the Wikipedia article is a bit of a mess. I used the percentage figures, and then calculated the absolute numbers using the current country population.

+4
Level 71
Sep 27, 2019
The 2019 Brazil census indicated that 92 million (48%) Brazilians were white, 83 million (44%) were brown, 13 million (7%) were black, 1.1 million (0.50%) were yellow and 536,000 (0.25%) were indigenous.
+1
Level 75
Oct 18, 2022
Categorizations like these are tricky. The same people might be classified differently in different countries. That said, I expected Venezuela to be on here.
+1
Level 82
Dec 19, 2023
The definition or perception of skin tone varies greatly between countries. E.g. a white Brazilian might be seen as black in US.
+12
Level 75
Nov 21, 2016
This doesn't make much sense to me - I thought everyone in the world was of African descent? I guess it must refer to only going back a certain number of generations but surely that number is totally arbitrary? Apologies if it is explained in the source you linked to, I didn't read it...
+80
Level ∞
Nov 21, 2016
Can't tell if you're being serious...
+6
Level 75
Nov 22, 2016
I'm afraid I am being serious, although probably with a touch of pedantry as well - I think I understand what is meant when people refer to people of African descent but at the same time I do feel like it is totally arbitrary that we say, for example, 'if 20 generations ago your ancestors were born and bred in Africa then you are of African descent but if you have to go back 50 generations then you aren't'.

Maybe my understanding of the term is incorrect.

Also, how do you make separate paragraphs when commenting? When I type comments, I can press enter twice to get a blank line but when I post it, it appears as a single block of text...

+10
Level 72
Nov 23, 2016
@roleybob. You have to write < br> (without the space between <, and b!) before the sentence which you want to be on new paragraph.

Then

you

get

this.

You can also make text bold or itallic if you put it < b>here< /b> or < i>here (again without the spaces).

+4
Level 75
Nov 23, 2016
Great

Thanks!

+2
Level 47
Dec 12, 2016
Wow.

I learned something.

+6
Level 84
Jan 3, 2017
Quizmaster, what about a quick course on HTML tags (focused on quiz comments) as the next entry of the JetPunk blog?

Surely it would bring joy and ease of mind to several people who can't get why their newlines don't appear after submitting their comments.

+1
Level 56
Jan 12, 2017
@angropber14 Yes, please! I can't wait to discover all the codes that some commenters use but I have no idea how. Using these one could change a block of text to something better-built.
+12
Level 66
Aug 25, 2017
This is one of those moments where technically you are right, but logically you know this quiz means something other than that. Are you that one person that when they taught you "Mount Everest is the tallest mountain in the world" and you said "Technically Mauna Kea is". Technically you are right... but everyone else doesn't care... Cause I am totally one of those people!
+1
Level 44
Mar 7, 2018
having studied geology in college it drives me nuts when people say the tallest mountain on earth is Mt. Everest, it is not.
+2
Level 75
Aug 17, 2018
I understand that you're talking about tallest in terms of difference in elevation from base to summit but isn't it true that the summit of Everest is the point on the surface of the Earth farthest from the centre of the planet?
+5
Level 75
Dec 19, 2018
Oh, apparently not - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimborazo
+22
Level ∞
Jul 23, 2019
If it were the difference between 20 generations and 50 generations, then yes that would be a silly distinction. But it is not. It is the difference between < 20 generations and > 1000 generations.
+2
Level 66
Sep 27, 2019
Html code is quite easy enough to find, just google it. That is what I did when I saw others with paragraphs. only takes a few seconds to type it into to google, no need for a tutorial on jetpunk. Otherwise, they might as well give a spelling course, lessons on punctuation, an English course, and above all a course in common courtesy.
+1
Level 70
Sep 28, 2019
Since you are including people of mixed descent, it would be very surprising if the great majority of people in most countries did not have an ancestor from sub-Saharan Africa in less than 1000 generations. As a "white" British person who doesn't know of any ancestors who weren't British, I am prepared to accept that I may not have had an ancestor from sub-Saharan Africa in 20 generations. But if you could show me evidence that I didn't have any in 50 generations, I would be very surprised. The reason for this is that it only takes one of over 1 000 000 000 000 000 lines of ancestry to lead there, and some of my ancestors that far back are bound to be very rich people who could afford to travel.
+2
Level 58
Oct 18, 2020
I

just

wanna

try

this

out

+1
Level 59
Nov 28, 2020
@TWM03 he was saying that humanity was all basically in sub-saharan africa ~1000 generations ago, not that the range is up to ~1000 generations
+1
Level 70
Apr 19, 2022
is it

like this?

+1
Level 70
Apr 19, 2022
yes!
+1
Level 40
Jun 11, 2022
I think he means that all human life STARTED in Africa, then moved on to other places. Bit of a polyglot one that.
+1
Level 64
Jan 13, 2017
I think they (wikipedia) are using an euphemism for black people
+6
Level 82
Jan 27, 2017
But "black" people is even more a terrible ill-defined term than "people of African descent." Most ignoramuses who actually believe the term has some realistic or useful application would probably group in Moroccan Touaregs, people from Nigeria and South Africa and Ethiopia, "African Americans," and Australian aboriginees etc. in to the same all-encompassing group even though these people have about zero in common genetically, culturally, et cetera. Just dark skin. And then, even that incredibly stupid distinction falls apart when these same people will probably call Colin Powell or Michael Jackson "black," but not someone from southern India whose skin is many shades darker. (or they may call such a person "black," adding in another group of people who share nothing in common with the first many sets).
+3
Level 82
Jan 27, 2017
Compounding the problem, those same people most likely would not consider the "Arab" north African populations of Egypt, Libya, Algeria, etc. to be "black," though they are most certainly African.
+2
Level 82
Jan 13, 2017
bob is right. Literally every country on Earth has a population 100% of African descent. So... what does this actually mean?
+5
Level 45
Feb 5, 2017
I think it means where their ancestors most recently immigrated from within the historical record.
+3
Level 37
Jun 7, 2017
I can't help but smile whenever I read these convoluted attempts to "identify" what people are Black, based on ethnicity, geography, DNA, preferred cuisine, etc. etc. I simply don't hear the same angst and hysteria when it comes to identifying who is White.
+3
Level 82
Jun 20, 2019
diva, I've read similarly ridiculous explanations of who is or isn't "white" before. You must have missed them.
+3
Level 66
Sep 27, 2019
I don't see any angst at all, not more or less than trying to determine different types of trees or something. (yes it has the same serated leaves, but no it has different amount of leaves per twig) People argue all the time over how something fits in one botanical group or another and that doesnt have anything to do with angst.. let alone hysteria !

Just people liking to think in boxes, but cant agree what the box is or in which box something fits.

+3
Level 60
Oct 17, 2022
"Literally every country on Earth has a population 100% of African descent"

This probably isn't true. It's likely that both Neanderthals and Denisovans originated in Eurasia and there are substantial elements of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in modern humans, except for sub saharan Africans.

+1
Level 50
Oct 17, 2022
They should just call this quiz "purebred homo sapiens diaspora quiz"
+1
Level 82
Oct 20, 2022
Hector: it absolutely is true. The genetic evidence is not at all ambiguous. There is nobody alive today that is 100% Neanderthal. Some people have 2% Neanderthal DNA at best. That means the other 98% of their DNA is homo sapien and homo sapiens first evolved in Africa. Additionally, the earliest hominid species, who were the ancestors of Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo Sapiens, also evolved first in Africa... so... Neanderthals are also of African descent if you look back far enough.
+2
Level 71
Apr 19, 2017
Actually there have been archaeological finds now that show the Middle East as the original source as opposed to Africa. The earliest civilizations on earth were found in the Pre-Islamic Middle East, not Africa. In fact Damascus is the worlds oldest city.
+3
Level 62
May 2, 2017
He was talking about humanity as a whole, not civilization. Almost all of the oldest human fossils are found in East Africa, Ethiopia in particular.

Sure, the oldest civilizations did begin in the Indus Valley, but those people migrated there from Africa

+4
Level 82
Jun 20, 2019
Oldest civilization began in Mesopotamia, not the Indus Valley. The Indus Valley civilization was thousands of years after Mesopotamia and came after China, as well. But humans first evolved in Africa, and all humans alive today outside of Africa have ancestors who migrated out of Africa.
+1
Level 66
Sep 27, 2019
@gzx5 that is not some new discovery/idea/concept/theory. As far as I can remember the consensus have been, civilisation started in the mesopotamia, and our ancestors came from africa.

(@kalbahamut, thousands of years is not correct, it definitely was not after 1 AD...) even one thousand years is more than I see described everywhere, usually about 500 years is given between them. it does depend what requirements you use for civilisation. A writing system, laws, agriculture advanced structures. )

+1
Level 75
Sep 27, 2019
^ depending on how you define it, civilisations could be said to have developed in the fertile crescent ~10,000 BC - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle_of_civilization#Rise_of_civilization
+1
Level 82
Oct 17, 2022
Agriculture began in the Fertile Crescent some 12,000 years ago. It began in China some 9-10 thousand years ago. It began in the Indus River Valley some 7 or 8,000 years ago. Thousands of years is accurate.
+2
Level 37
Mar 18, 2018
You say in the instructions that it includes racially mixed individuals yet you leave out virtually all of the Caribbean countries, Panama in Central America, Guyana and Surinam in South America, but include Mexico and Colombia? Is this a joke or what?
+6
Level 66
Sep 27, 2019
the quiz is about ALL countries that have atleast 1 person of african descend in them. It is about who has the MOST people of african descend.

The entire population of suriname does not even reach 600.000 so there is no way it could make it on this list. and if you would take the percantage that is atleast partially from african descend (not just subsaharan) you would ony be at about 200k. The netherlands would be on there before suriname, it has more than 2,5x as many (and panama and guyana are also below that. The same goes for everything in the Caribbean, the total population is lower than the lowest number on this list, so no way they could be on it.)

Mexico and usa are huge, so they only need a tiny % to make the list. It is not a joke at all, it makes perfect sense..

+1
Level 68
Sep 27, 2019
@diva The Caribbean and Central American countries came to my mind as well. But seeing as this is just the top 10 and the population of the tenth country is 1.5mil, you will find that most of those countries don’t have populations that even reach 1 million, let alone the % that are of African descent.
+1
Level 49
May 4, 2021
ahh yes, and we are all fish also. we are living in a fish world.

actually thats a bit arbitrary, we are all actually bacteria

+1
Level 59
Nov 21, 2016
Awesome idea, thanks!
+3
Level 69
Jan 12, 2017
It's shocking that the Caribbean countries have the percentage that high. It's more shocking that the reason for this is that their native people were slaughtered to extinction...
+2
Level 57
Jan 12, 2017
Actually, the indigenous peoples of South and Central America are classified as black. If you look at a Demographics pie chart of, for example, the US, you will always see that Hispanic (black) and Hispanic (white) are two separate categories, and are defined by how much they mixed with the Europeans.
+3
Level 69
Jan 12, 2017
Yes but this quiz indicates people of African descent. I don't think non-African black people are included here.
+4
Level 82
May 1, 2017
Depends on who is classifying them, since "black" is a classification without any real meaning.
+1
Level 66
Sep 27, 2019
This is a quiz about african descand, not "black people" which as is mentioned somewhere before, is a weird concept, some black people are less black if you take it literally and look at the skintone than others that arent considered black.
+1
Level 51
Apr 17, 2020
It's not shocking at all if you know anything about Caribbean history. After the indigenous populations were mostly wiped out, enslaved Africans were brought over to the Caribbean (and North, Central and South America) en masse.
+1
Level 63
Jan 12, 2017
The top two are countries that used them for slaves.
+2
Level 66
Jan 12, 2017
Corrective addendum: the top 5 and 8 of the top 10
+5
Level 51
Apr 17, 2020
All 10 are countries that enslaved Africans. And the people being counted here, for the most part, are descendants of those enslaved Africans.
+3
Level 38
Jan 12, 2017
Wouldn't think Mexico would be on there.
+2
Level 66
Sep 27, 2019
It only needed 1% of its people
+3
Level 62
Jan 12, 2017
I'm pretty, pretty, pretty sure Brazil has a lot more
+2
Level 55
Jan 12, 2017
Didn't expect Mexico on the list.
+3
Level 43
Jan 13, 2017
Nice quiz! It's funny how only 1% of Mexico is of African descent and it's still in the top 10
+1
Level 75
Jan 23, 2017
I should have looked to the percentages, would have thought of the DR!
+1
Level 33
Feb 1, 2017
Let me try this new paragraph thing.

Let's see if it works...

+1
Level 33
Feb 1, 2017
Huh... it didn't.
+1
Level 86
Jul 19, 2018
If you use one < br>,

the text will drop down to the next line.

If you want a blank space in between,

use 2 < br>s.

+1
Level 72
Sep 27, 2019

you could also wrap each paragraph in < p> and < /p>

That's how I did this

+1
Level 26
Mar 23, 2017
Almost missed the European countries!
+1
Level 74
Apr 30, 2017
Saudiarabia is said to have approx. 10% of Afro-Asian descent, which translates into 3 million as well. See demographics of Saudiarabia on Wikipedia.
+1
Level 74
Apr 30, 2017
Like someone already pointed out, most of us are of African descent, the descendants of Lucy. I guess what the quiz is calling for are the descendants of the unfortunate people who were victims of the slave trade. That is what spread the African people all over the Western Hemisphere. Then there is France of course who has had a fair share of immigrants from their former colonies.
+1
Level 71
Apr 30, 2017
I'm a descendant of Haplogroup U Ursula
+4
Level 82
Sep 27, 2019
Not most of us. Literally all of us.
+1
Level 68
Oct 13, 2022
A sizeable share of Blacks in France are not recent immigrants, but also descendants of slaves brought to colonies : Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyane, Réunion, Saint Martin.

Mayotte is also part of this although a more complex case.

+1
Level 34
Apr 30, 2017
cool
+4
Level 41
Aug 6, 2017
According to Wikipedia, 10% of Saudi Arabia's population are Afro-Arab, which would be 3.3 million, which still counts as diaspora.
+1
Level 64
Jan 30, 2018
You have a source, but Brazil is a peculiar case. In here we have pardos, the brazilian race (caucasian/black, caucasian/indian, black/indian), and most of them identifies themselves as black. Last statistics

Also, we have a colonial hierarchy in which almost 80% of poor brazilians are black, so race is much of a social construct.

I know that this is a world problem, but in Brazil we see it with bigger eyes.

(read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardo_Brazilians)

+2
Level 37
Sep 7, 2018
Venezuela has a greater percentage of Blacks than Colombia. The Netherlands should be included here (again, from former colonies), and there's a great influx of Africans into Germany as well, again from former colonies and immigrants from across the border [the Netherlands], as well as biracial products of inter-racial marriages (though the percentages are probably not yet high enough to make it on this quiz). Then again, perhaps Europeans aren't as quick to label someone who is biracial as Black as Americans are.
+7
Level 83
Sep 27, 2019
The pedants are really out in force here. As an anthropologist, I can say there's a huge difference between having African descent < 25 generations ago, and having African descent ~60,000 years ago. QM's right, and you all know what the quiz means. Stop trying to pick holes in it where there are none. End.
+1
Level 72
Sep 27, 2019
I wonder where a country like Jordan would fall in this list, I would expect there to be a lot of people of African decent just based on proximity, but it is a smallish country.
+2
Level 49
May 4, 2021
the description says subsaharan african decent, so that excludes any maghrebis/egyptians
+3
Level 76
Feb 25, 2020
I am one of those 48.7 million people in the United States!
+1
Level 66
Jun 22, 2020
wonder why
+2
Level 66
Jun 17, 2021
Wonder why the majority of the countries here are Caribbean and South American

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

+1
Level 59
Apr 19, 2022
this is some 1 drop rule bs
+1
Level 82
Oct 17, 2022
Hey thanks for stopping by, Mr. Duke. Though this isn't true. If it were, then this would simply be a mirror of the highest population countries of the world, since literally 100% of all human beings alive on Earth are African descended.
+1
Level 49
Oct 17, 2022
What about Bahamas, Barbados and Trinidad?
+1
Level 82
Dec 19, 2023
Too small. High percentage but less than 1.6 million in absolute numbers.