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African Australians areAustralians descended from any peoples ofSub-Saharan Africa, includingnaturalised Australians who areimmigrants from various regions in Sub-Saharan Africa and descendants of such immigrants. At the 2021 census, the number of ancestry responses categorised within Sub-Saharan African ancestral groups as a proportion of the total population amounted to 1.3%.[1][2] Note that Australian official statistics are based on country of origin not race; hence, Sub-Saharan African immigrants of European descent (such asWhite South Africans) and their descendants are included as African Australians.
Large-scale immigration fromSub-Saharan Africa to Australia is only a recent phenomenon, withEurope andAsia traditionally being the largest sources of migration to Australia. African Australians come from diverseethnic,cultural,linguistic,religious, educational andemployment backgrounds.
Large-scale immigration fromSub-Saharan Africa to Australia is only a recent phenomenon, with Europe and Asia traditionally being the largest sources of migration to Australia.[3]
Coins minted by theTanzanian medieval kingdom ofKilwa Sultanate have been found on theWessel Islands. They are the oldest foreignartefacts ever discovered in Australia.[4] Other people descended from African emigrants later arrived indirectly via theFirst Fleet and 19th century multicultural maritime industry. Notable examples areBilly Blue,John Caesar,[5][6] andBlack Jack Anderson.[7]
Migrants fromMauritius have also been arriving in Australia since before federation in 1901. They came as convicts, prospectors who soughtVictoria's goldfields, or skilled sugar workers who significantly helped to developQueensland'ssugar industry.[8]
Following the1823 Demerara Slave Rebellion inBritish Guiana, several hundreds of enslaved Africans who had participated in the rebellion were deported to Queensland, Australia.
The Special Commonwealth African Assistance Plan enabled students fromBritish Commonwealth African countries, including fromGhana, to travel to Australia during the mid-1960s. More than 70 percent of those from West African countries remained in Australia following militarycoup d'états in their countries of birth.[9]
However, immigration from Sub-Saharan Africa to Australia generally remained limited until the 1990s, thus compared to other established European and American countries, African Australian community remains new in the country itself.
In 2005–06, permanent settler arrivals to Australia included 4,000South Africans and 3,800Sudanese, constituting the sixth and seventh largest sources of migrants, respectively.
 | This section needs to beupdated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(October 2022) |
African Australians are Australians of direct Sub-Saharan African ancestry.[10][11][1] They are from diverse racial, cultural, linguistic, religious, educational and employment backgrounds.[12] The majority (72.6%) of African emigrants to Australia are from southern and eastern Africa.[13] TheAustralian Bureau of Statistics classifies all residents into cultural and ethnic groups according to geographical origin.[14]
Some of the most significant migration streams as of 2011-2012 were as follows:
Multicultural broadcasterSpecial Broadcasting Service (SBS) broadcasts in five African languages on radio, including Nuer andDinka ofSouth Sudan,Swahili of Tanzania and theAfrican Great Lakes region,Tigrinya of Eritrea andAmharic of Ethiopia.[15]Arabic broadcasting began with a 6am service by SBS in 1975, and from 2016, SBS began a year-long trial of SBS Arabic 24, a 24/7 digital radio station and website.[16] It continues today and includes an Arabic24podcast.[17] An English language program, simply called SBS African (nicknamed the African Hour) was broadcast until 2017, when it was cut from schedule.2ME Radio Arabic also broadcasts in Arabic throughout Australia.
As sub-Saharan Africans only began to migrate to Australia in larger numbers much later than sub-Saharan Africans were brought to the United States as slaves, and those who settled in parts of Europe, African Australian status is largely a new challenge for Australian authorities, and it is acknowledged that widespread racism against sub-Saharan Africans is not uncommon in Australia.[18][19]
The concept of how the American notion of "blackness" was adopted and adapted byAboriginal civil rights activists has been little known or understood in the US. In 2011, theMuseum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts inNew York mounted an exhibition ofIndigenous Australian art, concerned with making connections between the currentcivil rights and spiritual movements ofIndigenous Australians and that ofblack people in America and elsewhere.[20]
A 2012 study looked at attitudes towards African immigrants inWestern Australia, based on a survey of 184 Australians, examining the quantitative data for use in developing strategies to combat prejudice, and the media's role in the development of negative attitudes. It compared the results of the study with those previously found in looking at attitudes towards Indigenous andMuslim Australians.[21]
Natasha Guantai, in response toRoxane Gay's initial implication that the only "black people" in Australia would be of sub-Saharan African descent, wrote "In the dominant Australian narrative, blacks are regarded as Aboriginal. This is a narrative with little space for non-Indigenous black Australians". Guantai goes on to highlight some differences in the experience of the various groups -Indigenous Australians, immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa, the black descendants of settlers, and black people who arrive from other white-majority countries such as the UK or the US.[22]
In 2018 Kaiya Aboagye, a PhD student of Ghanaian, Aboriginal, South Sea andTorres Strait Islander heritage,[23] underlined the African connection to Aboriginal Australians, citing "long histories of African/Indigenous relationships both inside and outside Australia", despite the many and varied origins and experiences of blackness among peoples in theGlobal South.[24]
In 2021, it was reported that African Australians, predominantly of South Sudanese descent, comprised 19 percent of young people in custody in Victoria, despite making up less than 0.5 percent of the overall population. Previously, in 2013Victoria Police settled a racial profiling complaint lodged by members of the African community by agreeing to review its procedures. A 2020 study in theAustralian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology found that South Sudanese-born individuals were significantly overrepresented in as perpetrators of "crimes against the person", such as robbery and assault, but that "rates for less serious crimes, such as public order and drug offences, have remained stable and relatively low for South Sudanese-born youth".[25]
In 2016, the Liberal Party began to campaign against what it identified as "South Sudanese gangs" inMelbourne, following riots at theMoomba Festival in the city. This campaign was criticised by local community leaders, and theAustralian Greens MPAdam Bandt said it was using "race to win votes and whip up hatred".[26]South Sudanese Australians commit around 1% of crime in Melbourne, which is higher than their share of the population (0.14%), but is not adjusted for the low average age of the South Sudanese-born population, which can account for their over-representation in the statistics.[26]
In 2018, then-Prime MinisterMalcolm Turnbull described the supposed presence of South Sudanese gangs in Melbourne as a "real concern", with then-Home Affairs MinisterPeter Dutton claiming that Melburnians were afraid to leave their homes at night due to gang-related violence. Then-Victorian PremierDaniel Andrews rejected Turnbull's comments.[27]
The debate on "African gangs" in Melbourne was a key part in theVictorian Liberal Party's campaign for the2018 state election under then-Opposition LeaderMatthew Guy.[28][29][30]
Criminologists and the police commissioners of Melbourne say that episodes of youth criminality occurring in Melbourne do not amount to "gang activity" or organised crime, according to the definition used by law enforcement.[31][32] The debate around so-called "African gangs" was highly racialised and resulted in many examples of racist discourse on social media, leading Anthony Kelly, executive officer of Melbourne's Flemington and Kensington Community Legal Centre, to describe it as a "racialised moral panic".[31] The aftermath of the panic caused black people in Melbourne to fear that they would be arrested simply for congregating in public spaces, with South Sudanese people reporting high levels of targeting by police.[32]African Australian identity is the objective or subjective state ofperceiving oneself as anAfrican Australian and as relating to being African Australian. As a group identity, "African Australian" can denote pan-African ethnic identity, as well as a diasporic identity in relation to the perception of Africa as a homeland.[33]
This list includes only individuals who immigrated directly from sub-Saharan Africa to Australia, plus those who had an immediate ancestor who made such a migration. Individuals of sub-Saharan African origin who migrated from non-African countries, or those whose entire sub-Saharan African ancestry stems from such migration, are not included.
In recent years, African Australiansoccer players have been prominent in men'ssoccer in Australia, with 34 players making an appearance in the2020-2021 A-League season, up on 26 the previous year. These includeKusini Yengi and his brother,Tete Yengi, fromSouth Sudan, and their friends, brothersMohamed andAl Hassan Toure.[34]
It is a common misconception that people from African backgrounds are one and the same. While the strong African spirit and pride certainly unifies, people from African backgrounds represent tremendous diversity in ethnicity, race, language, culture and religion. After all, the African continent comprises more than 50 countries. The impression of homogeneity is only one of many misconceptions about African Australians.
At the time of the 2006 census...
Text from this source is available under aAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.Review: Growing Up African in Australia, edited byMaxine Beneba Clarke, Magan Magan and Ahmed Yussuf
Professor Wood, of Melbourne University, told Fact Check: "The South Sudanese population in Victoria is very young, with 42 per cent under the age of 25 compared to a third of the Australian general population."
Externally Africans are collectively known as 'African Australians'. This label displays a generalised image for all African descent people. The colloquial phrase can be interpreted in two ways: first as group identity that signals pan-African ethnicity; and second as Diasporic identity appealing to reconnect back to their motherland.
An oral history project recording the migration journeys and settlement experiences of southern Sudanese refugees now living in Blacktown, Western Sydney.
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| Secondary Afro-American diaspora |
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