{{Short description|Umbrella term for people in Africa or of African descent}} {{Redirect|Africans|other uses|African (disambiguation)}} [[File:Flag of the African Union.svg|thumb|Flag of Africa, used to identify with a civic nationalist identity of African people]] [[File:Africa (orthographic projection).svg|thumb|Map of the African continent (green)|alt=A globe centred on Europe]]
'''African people''' is an umbrella term for 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.<ref>{{cite web |title=African |url=http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/african_1?q=african |accessdate=6 March 2013 |work=Cambridge Dictionaries Online |publisher=Cambridge University Press}}</ref>
{{As of|2017}}, Africa's total population is estimated to be 1.2 billion people,<ref name=UN2017>{{Cite web|url=https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Publications/|title=World Population Prospects - Population Division - United Nations|website=esa.un.org|access-date=2017-11-29|archive-date=2018-01-24|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180124201358/https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Publications/|url-status=live}}</ref> with nearly 87 million international migrants in 2020.<ref name=":2">{{Cite web |title=Europe |url=https://worldmigrationreport.iom.int/what-we-do/world-migration-report-2024-chapter-3/europe |access-date=2025-10-05 |website=World Migration Report |language=en |archive-date=2025-10-08 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20251008064155/https://worldmigrationreport.iom.int/what-we-do/world-migration-report-2024-chapter-3/europe |url-status=live }}</ref> The most populous African country is Nigeria, which has over 170 million people as of 2017.<ref name="UN20172">{{Cite web |title=World Population Prospects - Population Division - United Nations |url=https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Publications/ |access-date=2017-11-29 |website=esa.un.org |archive-date=2018-01-24 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180124201358/https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Publications/ |url-status=live }}</ref>
== Population of Africa == {{Main|Demographics of Africa}}
Over 150 different ethnic groups are known to reside in Africa.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Levinson |first=David |url=https://archive.org/details/ethnicgroupsworl00levi |title=Ethnic Groups Worldwide: A Ready Reference Handbook |publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group |year=1998 |isbn=978-1-57356-019-1 |url-access=registration}}</ref><ref>Goran Burenhult, ''Traditional Peoples Today: Continuity and Change in the Modern World'' Illustrated History of Humankind, vol. 5 (1994).</ref> In 2024, it was reported that 43 million African migrants live outside the country of their birth.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Williams |first=Wendy |title=African Migration Trends to Watch in 2024 |url=https://africacenter.org/spotlight/african-migration-trends-to-watch-in-2024/ |access-date=2026-04-30 |website=Africa Center |language=en-US}}</ref> In a 2020 report, New South Institute reported that Africa was hosting over 25 million international migrants.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://nsi.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/An-analysis-of-trends-and-patterns-of-migration-in-Africa.pdf |title=An Analysis of Trends and Patterns of Migration in Africa |website=nsi.org.za}}</ref>
Nigeria, which has a total population of 220 million, is the most populous country in Africa, followed by Ethiopia (128 million).<ref>{{Cite web |title=World Population Prospects |url=https://population.un.org/wpp/ |access-date=2026-04-30 |website=population.un.org |archive-date=2020-05-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200520064106/https://population.un.org/wpp/ |url-status=live }}</ref>
== African diaspora == {{Main|African diaspora}}
Brazil is the country with the highest proportion of African diaspora, with figures to reported to be between 20 million to 112 mlilion in 2022.{{efn|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.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Reiter |first1=Bernd |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=idyIEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT275|title=Routledge Handbook of Afro-Latin American Studies |last2=Sánchez |first2=John Antón |date=2022-11-08 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-1-000-68546-6 |language=en}}</ref><ref name="Afro-Brazilians">{{Cite web |title=Afro-Brazilians |url=https://minorityrights.org/communities/afro-brazilians/ |access-date=2025-03-16 |website=Minority Rights Group International |quote=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).}}</ref><ref name="ufrn.br">{{Cite web |title=Maioria da população do Brasil se declara parda |url=https://www.ufrn.br/imprensa/noticias/77639/maioria-da-populacao-do-brasil-se-declara-parda |access-date=2025-03-16 |website=Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte |quote=(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.}}</ref>}} They are followed by the United States (40 million) in 2020.<ref>{{cite web |date=August 12, 2021 |title=Race and Ethnicity in the United States: 2010 Census and 2020 Census |url=https://census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/race-and-ethnicity-in-the-united-state-2010-and-2020-census.html |access-date=April 26, 2022 |publisher=US Census Bureau |archive-date=October 7, 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211007112207/https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/race-and-ethnicity-in-the-united-state-2010-and-2020-census.html |url-status=live }}</ref>
== See also == * Asian people * European people * Indigenous peoples of the Americas * Indigenous peoples of Oceania
== Notes == {{notelist}}
== References == {{Reflist}} Category:African people