Afro-Asians
Afro-Asians, African Asians, Blasians, or simply Black Asians are people of mixed Asian and Sub-Saharan African ancestry. Primarily through past slave trade, Afro-Asians can be found in rural areas of China or Taiwan and to a lesser extent in Malaysia and Indonesia. Historically, Afro-Asian populations have been marginalised as a result of human migration and social conflict.
Africa
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Katanga Afro-Japanese
During the 1970s, an increased demand for copper and cobalt attracted Japanese investments in the mineral-rich southeastern region of Katanga Province. Over a 10-year period, more than 1,000 Japanese miners relocated to the region, confined to a strictly male-only camp. Arriving without family or spouses, the men often sought social interaction outside the confines of their camps. In search of intimacy with the opposite sex, resulting in cohabitation, the men openly engaged in interracial dating and relationships, a practice embraced by the local society. As a result, a number of Japanese miners fathered children with native Congolese women. However, most of the mixed-race infants resulting from these unions died soon after birth. Multiple testimonies of local people suggest that the infants were poisoned by a Japanese lead physician and nurse working at the local mining hospital. Subsequently, the circumstances would have brought the miners shame as most of them already had families back in their native Japan. The practice forced many native Katangan mothers to hide their children by not reporting to the hospital to give birth.Today, fifty Afro-Japanese have formed an association of Katanga Infanticide survivors. The organization has hired legal counsel seeking a formal investigation into the killings. The group submitted an official inquiry to both the Congolese and Japanese governments, to no avail. Issues specific to this group include having no documentation of their births since not having been born in the local hospital spared their lives. The total number of survivors is unknown.
Equatorial Guinea
The mid-19th century saw about 500 Chinese laborers and indentured servants, along with a handful from India stealthily imported to the island of Fernando Po through the once Portuguese owned Macau. While most of these servants returned to their homelands at the end of their servitude, a few remained, settling and marrying into the local population. One example is immigrant East Indian laborer Francisco Kashu Alimama who remained in Moka after the death of his last living relative. He married the daughter of one of the last Bubi kings, producing several Indo-Equatoguinean children.Gabon
Gabonese politician Jean Ping is the son of a Chinese father and Gabonese mother.Ghana
Many Chinese men who engaged in gold mining in Ghana married local Ghanaian women and had children with them, and then the Ghana government deported illegal miners, leaving the mixed race Chinese fathered children stranded in Ghana, while their fathers were sent back to China.Kenya
Zheng He's fleet
In 1999, Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times reported a surprising encounter on the island of Pate, where he found a village of stone huts. He talked to an elderly man living in the village who said that he was a descendant of Chinese explorers who were shipwrecked there centuries before. The Chinese had supposedly traded with the locals and had even loaded giraffes onto their ship to take back to China. However, the Chinese ran aground on a nearby reef. Kristof found evidence that confirmed the man's story. Such evidence included the Asian features of the people in the village, plus Asian-looking porcelain artifacts. These descendants of Zheng He's fleet occupy both Pate and Lamu Islands. Around 400 survivors of these 20 shipwrecked Chinese sailors settled and married with local women.New immigration
New interest in Kenya's natural resources has attracted over $1 billion of investment from Chinese firms. This has propelled new development in Kenya's infrastructure with Chinese firms bringing in their own male workers to build roads. The temporary residents usually arrive without their spouses and families. Thus, a rise of incidents involving local college-aged females has resulted in an increased rate of Afro-Chinese infant births to single Kenyan mothers.In Kenya there is a trend of the following influx of Chinese male workers in Kenya with a growing number of abandoned babies of Chinese men who fathered children with local women, causing concern.
Madagascar
Intermarriage between native Malagasy women and Chinese men was not uncommon. Several thousand Cantonese men intermarried and cohabited with Malagasy women. 98% of the Chinese traced their origin from Guangdong, specifically the Cantonese district of Shunde. For example, the census alone in 1954 census found 1,111 "irregular" Chinese-Malagasy unions and 125 legitimate, i.e., legally married, partnerships. Most offspring were registered by their mothers under a Malagasy name.More generally, the Malagasy as a whole are often described as the oldest Blasian population in human history, possessing varying degrees of Austronesian and Bantu ancestry. They indeed descend—to different degrees depending on the ethnic groups—from Bantu Africans and Banjar sailors.
Mauritius
Approximately 68% of the population has some Indian ancestry. About 25% of the population is Creole and there are small numbers of people of Franco-Mauritian and Chinese descent.Nigeria
Since the 1970s, Nigeria has seen a slow, but steady, increase in the immigrant Filipino population drawn by the oil industry. Established in 1973, the Philippine Barangay Society of Nigeria addresses issues specific to over 1,700 Nigerized Filipinos living in the country. This acculturation has resulted in a small but growing, number of biracial Nigerian Filipinos births. Most of these children are parented by Filipino mothers and Nigerian fathers.A Chinese man abandoned his Nigerian Ogun girlfriend Tope Samuel with their child in Ogun state.
Reunion
The native Kaf population has a diverse range of ancestry stemming from colonial Indian and Chinese peoples. They also descend from African slaves brought from countries like Mozambique, Guinea, Senegal, Madagascar, Tanzania and Zambia to the island.Most Réunion Creoles are of mixed ancestry and make up the majority of the population. Interracial marriages between European men and Chinese men with African women, Indian women, Chinese women and Madagascar women were also common.
Seychelles
More than 70% of the native population has Afro-Asian ancestry stemming from African, Malagasy, Indian and Chinese peoples, combined with additional British and French origins. However, the demographic is specifically proud of their African/Malagasy heritage and have formed an institute promoting their identity and cultural tolerance.South Africa and Namibia
The Cape Coloured population descend from the indigenous Khoisan and Xhosa peoples, European immigrants and Malagasy, Ceylonese and Southeast Asian laborers and slaves brought by the Dutch from the mid-17th century to the late 18th century. The majority of people of Colour, particularly in the Western Cape and Northern Cape, speak Afrikaans as a first language, while those in other parts of South Africa tend to speak English as well. People of Colour with Javanese or other Indonesian ancestry may often be regarded as Cape Malay and are primarily Muslims, while the majority of people of Colour are Christian or agnostic. Due to similar social adversities experienced under the Apartheid regime from the late 1940s to the late 1980s, Coloured and indigenous South African communities generally fall under the black social category when it comes to employment and affirmative action policies.Uganda
There was a widespread migration of Indians to Southeast Africa, during the time of the construction of the East African/Uganda railway. The Asian migrants married local Ugandans and gave rise to generations of Afro-Asians.New immigration
In the past decades, Chinese male workers, investors, contractors, traders, and entrepreneurs from China have been pouring into Uganda. In hopes of gaining residency, an increasing number of Chinese men are marrying Ugandan women, with many being sham marriages. A number of children of Chinese fathers and Ugandan mothers were born as a result.
An official from Uganda's directorate of citizenship and immigration control who were concerned with the marriages between Chinese men and Ugandan women, told the committee.
Americas
Central and South America
In Central and South America, significant numbers of Chinese first started arriving in the mid-19th century as part of the Coolie slave trade. By the mid-20th century, Cuba and Peru had the largest Chinese populations. By the end of WWII, there were considerable high numbers of Central and South America descended from local women and Chinese fathers. There are also small numbers of Central and South American residents of Asian and African descent in countries like Puerto Rico, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.Cuba
About 120,000 Cantonese laborers, all males, entered Cuba under contract for 80 years; most did not marry, but Hung Hui cites there was a frequency of sexual activity between black women and Cantonese coolies. According to Osberg the free Chinese conducted the practice of buying slave women and freeing them expressly for marriage. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Chinese men engaged in sexual activity with both White and Black Cuban women and from such relations many children were born.In the 1920s an additional 30,000 Cantonese and small groups of Japanese also arrived; both immigrations were exclusively male and there was rapid intermarriage with white, black and mulato populations. The CIA World Factbook Cuba, in 2008, claimed a population of 114,240 Chinese-Cubans, with only 300 being pure Chinese.
In the 1920s, an additional 30,000 Chinese arrived; the immigrants were exclusively male. In 1980, 4000 Chinese lived there, but by 2002, only 300 pure Chinese were left.
1.6% of Cuban population have direct East Asian male paternal ancestor.
One of Cuba's most known Afro-Asians is the artist Wifredo Lam.