title: Phonics

text: Later, international evaluations TIMSS and PISA showed a sharp improvement in the areas of math, reading and science from 2006 to 2015. Portuguese students results raised to above OECD and IEA averages, attaining the best results ever for Portugal. The PISA reading results moved from 472 to 498, above the United States at 497. However, by 2018 Portugal had dropped slightly to 492 and the United States had increased to 505. Some analysts explain these advances by the educational measures Portugal put in place: a more demanding curricula, the emphasis on direct teaching, standardized testing, less ability streaming, and explicit fluency training in reading and mathematics.


title: Phonics

text: In 2016, amongst 50 countries, Portugal achieved the 30th highest score in Reading Literacy for fourth graders according to the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS).


title: Phonics

text: According to one report in the Baltimore Sun, there is some debate in the Russian Federation about phonics vs. whole language, however Olga Viktorovna Pronina, an author and teacher in Moscow, allegedly said that today, most teachers in Russia would tell you they use phonics.


title: Phonics

text: The 2016 international PISA study states that the method widely used now to teach reading in the Russian Federation was developed by the famous psychologist Daniil Elkonin in the 1960s. It says, "students learn to define the sequence of sounds in a word and characterize each sound ... acquiring the knowledge of the phonetic system at an early stage" and "become better familiarized with the skills of reading".


title: Phonics

text: observers report that the Russian system in beginning reading is "strictly phonetic". However, there are no separate phonics lessons, drill periods, drill books, exercises or "gadgets" as you might see in typical American schools. Instead, each new letter-sound is introduced at once in meaningful words the children can pronounce as soon as they know the sound of the new letter. There are no "blending" of the sounds, or "crutches" such as equating the sound of /s/ with a snake. Instead, "all learning is by eye and ear in tandem", and the association is formed solely between the printed symbol and its sound. And finally, each lesson makes use of exercises to confirm comprehension.


title: Phonics

text: Amongst 50 countries, the Russian Federation achieved the highest score (581) in "Reading Literacy" for fourth graders according to the 2016 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS).


title: Phonics

text: Synthetic phonics in Scotland has its roots in the Clackmannanshire Report, a seven-year study that was published in 2005. It compared analytic Phonics with synthetic Phonics and advantaged students with disadvantaged children. The report found that, using synthetic phonics, children from lower socio-economic backgrounds performed at the same level as children from advantaged backgrounds in primary school (whereas with analytic phonics teaching, they did significantly less well.); and boys performed better than or as well as girls.


title: Phonics

text: A five-year follow-up of the study concluded that the beneficial effects were long-lasting, in fact the reading gains increased.


title: Phonics

text: Subsequently, Education Scotland concluded that explicit, systematic phonics programs, usually embedded in a rich literacy environment, give an additional four months progress over other programs such as whole language, and are particularly beneficial for young learners (aged 4–7). There is evidence, though less secure, that synthetic phonics programs may be more beneficial than analytic phonics programs; however it is most important to teach systematically.


title: Phonics

text: In the PISA 2018 reading results of 15-year-old students, Scotland's score was above average, 504 as compared to the OECD average of 487. Scotland does not participate in PIRLS.


title: Phonics

text: Singapore has a diverse language environment with four official languages including English which is the language of education and administration. Bilingualism is the "cornerstone" of the education system where students learn both English and their own mother tongue language in school. 99% of children attend preschool education (as early as 18 months of age) although it is not compulsory in Singapore.


title: Phonics

text: The 2001 English Language Syllabus of Singapore advocated "a balance between decoding and meaning-based instruction ... phonics and whole language". However, a review in 2006 advocated for a "systematic" approach. The subsequent syllabus, in 2010, had no mention of whole language and recommended a balanced, interactive and comprehensive reading programme. It refers to "Learning to Read: The Great Debate" by Jeanne Chall (1967) and the National Reading Panel (2000) both of which supported systematic phonics; and the International Literacy Association (2005) that supported balanced instruction saying phonics is "necessary but insufficient".


title: Phonics

text: The syllabus for 2010 advocates for a balance between "systematic and explicit instruction" and "a rich language environment". It called for increased instruction in oral language skills together with phonemic awareness and the key decoding elements of synthetic phonics, analytic phonics and analogy phonics. Specifically, it advocated for instruction in phonic's areas such as word families and rimes (e.g. jumps and jumped; bite and kite), segmenting and blending (e.g. , , = cat), vowels, consonants and syllables. And finally, it called for instruction in word study, grammar, vocabulary, writing and comprehension.


title: Phonics

text: Singapore received the second highest reading score (576) after the Russian Federation (581) in the 2016 PIRLS report on grade four students.


title: Phonics

text: Since the 1860s it was "taken for granted" that phonics is a major part of reading instruction in the first school years in Sweden. However, in the 1990s the National Agency for Education (Sweden) encouraged teachers to try other methods, including whole language.


title: Phonics

text: Sweden's performance in the international fourth grade reading assessments (PIRLS) dropped by 19 points from 2001 (561) to 2011 (542) and recovered by 13 points in 2016 (555), still lower than the 2001 results.


title: Phonics

text: In 2016 the European Literacy Policy Network (ELINET) published a report on literacy in Sweden saying there is an "urgent need" to address decreases in performance as measured by PIRLS and PISA.


title: Phonics

text: More than a century of debate has occurred over whether English phonics should or should not be used in teaching beginning reading.


title: Phonics

text: The use of phonics in education in the United States dates at least to the work of Favell Lee Mortimer, whose works using phonics includes the early flashcard set "Reading Disentangled" (1834) and text "Reading Without Tears" (1857). Despite the work of 19th-century proponents such as Rebecca Smith Pollard, some American educators, prominently Horace Mann, argued that phonics should not be taught at all. This led to the commonly used "look-say" approach ensconced in the "Dick and Jane" readers popular in the mid-20th century. Beginning in the 1950s, however, inspired by a landmark study by Dr. Harry E. Houtz, and spurred by Rudolf Flesch's criticism of the absence of phonics instruction (particularly in his book, "Why Johnny Can't Read", 1955) and Jeanne Chall (the author of "Learning to Read the Great Debate" - 1967–1995 phonics resurfaced as a method of teaching reading.


title: Phonics

text: In the 1980s, the "whole language" approach to reading further polarized the debate in the United States. Whole language instruction was predicated on the principle that children could learn to read given (a) proper motivation, (b) access to good literature, (c) many reading opportunities, (d) focus on meaning, and (e) instruction to help students use semantic, syntactic and graphophonic cues to "guess" the pronunciation of unknown words. Also, in practice children are often taught to use pictures to guess a word. For some advocates of whole language, phonics was antithetical to helping new readers to get the meaning; they asserted that parsing words into small chunks and reassembling them had no connection to the ideas the author wanted to convey.


title: Phonics

text: The whole language emphasis on identifying words using context and focusing only a little on the sounds (usually the alphabet consonants and the short vowels) could not be reconciled with the phonics emphasis on individual sound-symbol correspondences. Thus, a dichotomy between the whole language approach and phonics emerged in the United States causing intense debate. Ultimately, this debate led to a series of Congressionally-commissioned panels and government-funded reviews of the state of reading instruction in the U.S.


title: Phonics

text: In 1984, the National Academy of Education commissioned a report on the status of research and instructional practices in reading education, "Becoming a Nation of Readers". Among other results, the report includes the finding that phonics instruction improves children's ability to identify words. It reports that useful phonics strategies include teaching children the sounds of letters in isolation and in words, and teaching them to blend the sounds of letters together to produce approximate pronunciations of words. It also states that phonics instruction should occur in conjunction with opportunities to identify words in meaningful sentences and stories.


title: Phonics

text: In 1990, Congress asked the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to compile a list of available programs on beginning reading instruction, evaluating each in terms of the effectiveness of its phonics component. As part of this requirement, the ED asked Dr. Marilyn J. Adams to produce a report on the role of phonics instruction in beginning reading. This resulted in her 1994 book "Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning about Print". In the book, Adams asserted that existing scientific research supported that phonics is an effective way to teach students the "alphabetic code" – building their skills in decoding unknown words. By learning the alphabetic code, she argued, students can free up mental energy used for word analysis and devote this mental effort to meaning, leading to stronger comprehension. Furthermore, she suggested that students be encouraged "not" to skip words they find difficult. Instead they should take the time to study the challenging words and to reread sentences after they have succeeded in decoding them. She also concluded that while phonics instruction is a necessary component of reading instruction, it is not sufficient by itself. Children should also have practice reading text provided they do not make too many mistakes. In spite of her study, the argument about how to teach reading eventually known as "the Great Debate", continued unabated.


title: Phonics

text: In 1996 the California Department of Education took an increased interest in using phonics in schools. And in 1997 the department called for grade one teaching in concepts about print, phonemic awareness, decoding and word recognition, and vocabulary and concept development.


title: Phonics

text: In 1997, Congress asked the Director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health, in consultation with the Secretary of Education, to convene a national panel to assess the effectiveness of different approaches used to teach children to read.


title: Phonics

text: The National Research Council re-examined the question of how best to teach reading to children (among other questions in education) and in 1998 published the results in the "Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children." The National Research Council's findings largely matched those of Adams. They concluded that phonics is a very effective way to teach children to read at the word level, more effective than what is known as the "embedded phonics" approach of whole language (where phonics was taught opportunistically in the context of literature). They found that phonics instruction must be systematic (following a sequence of increasingly challenging phonics patterns) and explicit (teaching students precisely how the patterns worked, e.g., "this is "b", it stands for the /b/ sound").


title: Phonics

text: In 2000 the findings of the National Reading Panel was published. It examined quantitative research studies on many areas of reading instruction, including phonics and whole language. The resulting report "Teaching Children to Read: An Evidence-based Assessment of the Scientific Research Literature on Reading and its Implications for Reading Instruction" provides a comprehensive review of what is known about best practices in reading instruction in the U.S. The panel reported that several reading skills are critical to becoming good readers: phonemic awareness, phonics for word identification, fluency, vocabulary and text comprehension. With regard to phonics, their meta-analysis of hundreds of studies confirmed the findings of the National Research Council: teaching phonics (and related phonics skills, such as phonemic awareness) is a more effective way to teach children early reading skills than is embedded phonics or no phonics instruction. The panel found that phonics instruction is an effective method of teaching reading for students from kindergarten through 6th grade, and for all children who are having difficulty learning to read. They also found that phonics instruction benefits all ages in learning to spell. They also reported that teachers need more education about effective reading instruction, both pre-service and in-service.


title: Phonics

text: The State driven Common Core State Standards Initiative was developed in 2009, because of a lack of standardization of education principles and practices. The site has a comprehensive description of the specific details of the English Language Arts Standards that include the areas of the Alphabetic Principle, Print Concepts, Phonological Awareness, Phonics and Word Recognition, and Fluency. It is up to the individual States and School Districts to develop plans to implement the standards. As of 2020, 41 States had adopted the standards, and in most cases it has taken three or more years to have them implemented. For example, Wisconsin adopted the standards in 2010, implemented them in the 2014–2015 school year, yet in 2020 the state Department of Public Instruction was in the process of developing materials to support the standards in teaching phonics.


title: Phonics

text: The State of Mississippi passed the Literacy-Based Promotion Act in 2013 in part because of the States' poor showing in the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The Mississippi Department of Education provides resources for teachers in the areas of phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension and reading strategies. In 2019 Mississippi made a bigger advance in reading than any other State.


title: Phonics

text: In 2014 the California Department of Education stated "Ensuring that children know how to decode regularly spelled one-syllable words by mid-first grade is crucial". It goes on to say that "Learners need to be phonemically aware (especially able to segment and blend phonemes)". In grades two and three children receive explicit instruction in advanced phonic-analysis and reading multi-syllabic and more complex words.


title: Phonics

text: In 2015 the New York State Public School system began a process to revise its English Language Arts Learning Standards. The new standards call for teaching involving "reading or literacy experiences" as well as phonemic awareness from prekindergarten to grade 1 and phonics and word recognition from grade 1 to grade 4.


title: Phonics

text: In 2015 the Ohio Legislature set minimum standards requiring the use of phonics as a technique in teaching reading. It includes guidelines for teaching phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. In February 2017, the Ohio Department of Education adopted new learning standards for English Language Arts. They include "Reading Standards for Foundational Skills K–12" that clearly lay out a systematic approach to teaching "phonological awareness" in kindergarten and grade one, and "grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words" (including fluency and comprehension) in grades one through five.


title: Phonics

text: In 2016 the What Works Clearinghouse and the Institute of Education Sciences, an independent and non-partisan arm of the U.S. Department of Education, published an Educator's Practice Guide (with evidence) on Foundational Skills to Support Reading for Understanding in Kindergarten Through 3rd Grade. It contains four recommendations to support reading: 1) Teach students academic language skills, including the use of inferential and narrative language, and vocabulary knowledge, 2) Develop awareness of the segments of sounds in speech and how they link to letters (phonemic awareness and phonics), 3) Teach students to decode words, analyze word parts, and write and recognize words (phonics and synthetic phonics), and 4) Ensure that each student reads connected text every day to support reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. Some universities have created additional material based on this guide.


title: Phonics

text: In 2016, Colorado Department of Education updated their Elementary Teacher Literacy Standards with a comprehensive outline including standards for development in the areas Phonology; Phonics and Word Recognition; Fluent Automatic Reading; Vocabulary; Text Comprehension; and Handwriting, Spelling, and Written Expression. At the same time, the Department of Education in Delaware produced a plan to improve education results. It states that teachers' preparation programs must include evidence-based practices, including the five essential components of reading instruction (phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension).


title: Phonics

text: In 2017, research published in the "Journal of Experimental Psychology" has shown that learning to read by sounding out words (i.e. phonics) has a dramatic impact on the accuracy of reading aloud and comprehension. It concludes that early literacy education should focus on the systematic approach in "print-to-sound relationships" in alphabetic languages, rather than teaching "meaning-based strategies", in order to enhance both reading aloud and comprehension of written words.


title: Phonics

text: In 2018 The Association for Psychological Science published an article entitled "Ending the Reading Wars: Reading Acquisition From Novice to Expert". The purpose of the article is to fill the gap between the current research knowledge and the public understanding about how we learn to read, and to explain "why phonics instruction is so central to learning in a writing system such as English".


title: Phonics

text: In 2018 the Arkansas Department of Education, Literacy Support Unit, published a report about their new initiative known as R.I.S.E., Reading Initiative for Student Excellence, that was the result of The Right to Read Act, passed in 2017. The first goal of this initiative is to provide educators with the in-depth knowledge and skills of "the science of reading" and evidence-based instructional strategies. This includes a change of focus to research-based instruction on phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. Specific requirements are that reading instruction be systematic and explicit, and include decoding techniques. Part of the instruction involves the use of a book and study guide entitled Essentials of Assessing, Preventing and Overcoming Reading Difficulties, by David Kilpatrick.


title: Phonics

text: In 2018 the Minnesota Reading Corps (MRC) published impact evaluation reports of their reading programs for children in pre-kindergarten to grade three (2017–2018). MRC is a participating organization under Americorps in which volunteers tutor at-risk students who need extra support in reading and math. The tutors are trained to use research-based literacy activities and interventions as identified by the National Reading Panel, including phonological awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. The reports, presented by NORC at the University of Chicago, compare the results of students in the MRC program with students in control groups. They found that MRC kindergarten students achieved significantly higher scores in letter-sound fluency, and MRC first grade students achieved significantly higher scores in both nonsense word fluency and oral reading fluency.


title: Phonics

text: In 2019 the Minnesota Department of Education introduced standards requiring school districts to "develop a Local Literacy Plan to ensure that all students have achieved early reading proficiency by no later than the end of third grade" in accordance with a Statute of the Minnesota Legislature requiring elementary teachers to be able to implement comprehensive, scientifically based reading and oral language instruction in the five reading areas of phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.


title: Phonics

text: In 2019 the International Literacy Association released a report entitled Meeting the Challenges of Early Literacy Phonics Instruction The report clearly supports the use of phonics instruction that is explicit and systematic, stating that "phonics instruction is helpful for all students, harmful for none, and crucial for some". It also offers an opinion on the ten most common causes of Phonics Instructional Failure, namely: inadequate time devoted to mastering a new phonics skill such as blending (4–6 weeks recommended); lack of application to real reading instruction; inappropriate reading material to practice the skills; too much teacher instruction, and too little reading by the student; lost time during instructional transitions; the teacher's attitude and knowledge of phonics instructional material; lessons that are not fast-paced and rigorous; lack of assessments over an extended period of time; waiting too long to transition to multi-syllable words; and over-emphasis of phonics drills at the expense of other aspects such as vocabulary.


title: Phonics

text: In 2019, the Best Evidence Encyclopedia, part of Johns Hopkins University, released a review of research on 61 studies of 48 different programs for struggling readers in elementary schools. It concluded that:


title: Phonics

text: In 2019, 52.8% of Louisiana's third-graders scored at or above the State's reading benchmark. Also in 2019, 26% of grade 4 students were reading at a proficiency level according to the Nation's Report Card. In that same year, the Louisiana State Legislature passed resolution 222 urging the Department of Education to create the "Early Literacy Commission" to make recommendations to implement a system providing effective evidence-based reading instruction for children from birth through third grade. On March 8, 2019, the Louisiana Department of Education revised their curriculum for K–12 English Language Arts. Its "Reading Standards for Foundational Skills" includes requirements for instruction in the alphabetic principle, phonological awareness, phonics and word recognition, fluency and comprehension. Effective in 2020 The Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) screens for the following skills: Kindergarten-Phonemic Awareness; First Grade-Phonics; Second Grade-Oral Reading Fluency; and Third Grade-Reading Comprehension.


title: Phonics

text: In 2019, 30% of grade 4 students in Texas were reading at the "proficiency level" according to the Nation's Report Card, as compared to the National Average of 34%. In June of that same year the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 3 (HB 3 Reading Academies) requiring all kindergarten through grade-three teachers and principals to ""begin" a teacher literacy achievement academy before the 2022–2023 school year". The training is anticipated to be a total of 80 hours. The goal is to "increase teacher knowledge and implementation of evidence-based practices to positively impact student literacy achievement". The required content of the academies' training includes the areas of "Science of Teaching Reading, Oral Language, Phonological Awareness, Decoding (i.e. Phonics), Fluency and Comprehension."


title: Phonics

text: In 2016, amongst 50 countries, the United States achieved the 15th highest score in Reading Literacy for fourth graders according to the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). Of 78 countries, the United States ranked 14th in reading for the international PISA study for 15-year-old students. In 2019, with respect to the nation's grade-four public school students, 34% performed at or above the Nations Report Card "proficient level" (solid academic performance) and 65% performed at or above the NAEP "basic level" (partial mastery of the proficient level skills).


title: Phonics

text: In 2021, the State of Connecticut passed an act concerning the "right to read" that will take effect in 2023. It requires education standards that are evidenced-based and scientifically-based and focused on competency in the five areas of reading: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary development, and reading fluency, including oral skills and reading comprehension. In the same year, the state of North Carolina passed a bill requiring that the teaching of reading be based on the science of reading.


title: Phonics

text: Between 2013 and 2022, 30 States have passed laws or implemented new policies related to evidence-based reading instruction. In some instances, this requires the teaching of phonics in an explicit and systematic manner. However, these requirements are not uniform and may prove difficult to implement as "old practices prove hard to shake".


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: White Africans of European ancestry refers to people in Africa who can trace full or partial ancestry to Europe. In 1989, there were an estimated 4.6 million white people with European ancestry on the African continent. Most are of Dutch, Portuguese, British, German and French origin; and to a lesser extent there are also those who descended from Italians, Spaniards, Greeks, and Scandinavians. The majority once lived along the Mediterranean coast or in Southern Africa.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: The earliest permanent European communities in Africa during the Age of Discovery were formed at the Cape of Good Hope; Luanda, in Angola; São Tomé Island; and Santiago, Cape Verde through the introduction of Portuguese and Dutch traders or military personnel. Other groups of white settlers arrived in newly established European settlements in Africa. Before regional decolonisation, white Africans may have numbered up to 6 million persons at their peak and were represented in every part of the continent.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: A voluntary exodus of colonists accompanied independence in most African nations because of the close economic and political linkages between colonial states and large sections of the white colonist business class; colonisation was primarily an economic programme built around extractive industries in mining and agriculture, buttressed by varying policies of racial separation or segregation between European and African colonial residents. Portuguese Mozambicans, who numbered about 200,000 in 1975, departed en masse because of discriminatory economic policies directed against them; they now number 82,000. In Zimbabwe, recent white exodus was spurred by an aggressive racialized land reform programme introduced by late President Robert Mugabe in 2000 and the parallel collapse of that country's economy. In Burundi, the local white community was expelled by the racist post-colonial government upon independence.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: The African country with the largest European descendant population both numerically and proportionally is South Africa, where White South Africans number 4.3 million people (7.7% of the population). Although white minorities no longer hold exclusive political power, some continue to retain key positions in industry and commercial agriculture in a number of African states.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: During the Colonisation of Africa, European settlement patterns generally favoured territories with a substantial amount of land at least above sea level, an annual rainfall of over but not exceeding , and relative freedom from the Tsetse fly. In contrast to Western and Central Africa, the milder, drier climates of Northern, Eastern, and Southern Africa thus attracted substantial numbers of permanent European immigrants. A modest annual rainfall of under 1020 mm was considered especially suitable for the temperate farming activities to which many were accustomed. Therefore, the first parts of Africa to be populated by Europeans were located at the northern and southern extremities of the continent; between these two extremes, disease and the tropical climate precluded most permanent European settlement until the late nineteenth century. The discovery of valuable resources in Africa's interior and the introduction of quinine as a cure for malaria altered this longstanding trend, and a new wave of European colonists arrived on the continent between 1890 and 1918.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Most European colonists granted land in African colonies cultivated cereal crops or raised cattle, which were far more popular among the immigrants rather than managing the tropical plantations aimed at producing export-oriented crops such as rubber and palm oil. A direct consequence of this preference was that the territories with a rainfall exceeding 1020 mm developed strong plantation-based economies but produced almost no food beyond what was cultivated by small-scale indigenous producers; drier territories with large white farming communities became more self-sufficient in food production. The latter often resulted in sharp friction between European colonists and black African tribes as they competed for land. By 1960, at least seven British, French, and Belgian colonies—in addition to the Union of South Africa—had passed legislation reserving a fixed percentage of land for white ownership. This allowed colonists to legitimise their land seizures and began a process that had the ultimate consequence of commodifying land in colonial Africa. Land distribution thus emerged as an extremely contentious issue in those territories with large numbers of permanent European colonists. During the 1950s, black Africans owned about 13.7% of the land in South Africa and a little under 33% of the land in Southern Rhodesia. An inevitable trend of this factor, exacerbated by high rates of population growth, was that large numbers of black farmers as well as their livestock began to be concentrated in increasingly overcrowded areas.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Before 1914, colonial governments encouraged European settlement on a grand scale, based on the assumption that this was a prerequisite to long-term development and economic growth. The concept lost popularity when it became clear that multinational corporations financed by overseas capital, coupled with cheap African labour, were far more productive and efficient at building export-oriented economies for the benefit of the metropolitan powers. During the Great Depression, locally owned, small-scale businesses managed by individual whites suffered immense losses attempting to compete with large commercial enterprises and the lower costs of black labour (South Africa being the sole exception to the rule, as its white businesses and labour were heavily subsidised by the state).


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Unlike other former colonies such as those in the Americas and Australia, Europeans and their descendants on the African continent never outnumbered the indigenous people; nevertheless, they found ways to consolidate power and exert a disproportionate influence on the administrative policies of their respective metropolitan countries. Some lost their sense of identification with Europe and created their own nationalist movements, namely in South Africa and Rhodesia (now known as Zimbabwe). Permanent white residents were regarded as an increasing liability by colonial administrations as they sought to dominate their adopted African homelands. They were also likely to involve the government in conflict with Africans, which required expensive military campaigns and inextricably damaged relations between the latter and the metropolitan powers. This was a common trend throughout African colonies from the late eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. In the Dutch Cape Colony for instance, governor Joachim van Plettenberg demarcated the territory's boundaries around 1778 with approval from the Xhosa chiefdoms; the following year Dutch colonists violated the border and attacked the Xhosa, sparking the bloody Xhosa Wars. Disputes between German colonists and the Matumbi and Ngoni peoples contributed significantly to the Maji Maji Rebellion of 1905–07. During the same period, Colonial Kenya's European residents were largely responsible for provoking a revolt by the Masai.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: White settlers wielded enormous influence over many colonial administrations; for example, they often occupied influential positions on elected legislatures and held most of the senior administrative posts in the civil service. Due to the relative poverty of most black Africans, whites of European ancestry also controlled the capital for development and dominated the import and export trade as well as commercial agriculture. They often represented a disproportionate percentage of the skilled workforce due to much higher educational attainment. This was heightened by the discriminatory practices of the colonial authorities, which devoted more public funding to their education and technical training. For example, in Tanganyika, the colonial authorities were estimated to have allocated up to twenty-six times more funding per year for white schools than black schools. In most of colonial Africa, local whites sought employment with foreign companies, often in technical or managerial positions, or with the public service. The exception were those colonies with large white farming populations, such as Kenya and Southern Rhodesia. The white residents there were likelier to form their own business communities and invest heavily in the economies of their adopted homelands.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: The advent of global decolonisation ushered in a radical change of perspectives towards European settlement in Africa. Metropolitan governments began to place more emphasis on their relations with the indigenous peoples rather than the progressively independent colonist populations. In direct opposition to the growing tide of African nationalism, whites of European descent in colonies such as Algeria began to forge new nationalist identities of their own. Attitudes towards rapid decolonisation among individual white African communities were hardened by fears of irresponsible or incompetent postcolonial governments, coupled to a parallel decline in public infrastructure, service delivery, and consequently, their own standards of living.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: On some occasions the granting of independence to African states under majority rule was influenced by the desire to preempt unilateral declarations of independence or secession attempts by white nationalists. Nevertheless, Rhodesia's white minority did succeed in issuing its own declaration of independence in 1965 and later retain power up until 1979. Less successful was an attempted by white Mozambicans in 1974, which was forcibly crushed by Portuguese troops. White rule in South Africa ended with the country's first non-racial elections in 1994.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: A "white flight" phenomenon accompanied regional decolonisation and to a lesser extent, the termination of white minority rule in Rhodesia and South Africa. A considerable reverse exodus of former colonials returning to Western Europe occurred; because they had controlled key sectors of many African economies prior to independence, their abrupt departure often resulted in devastating economic repercussions for the emerging states. Consequently, some African governments have made a concerted attempt to retain sizable white communities in the interests of preserving their capital and much-needed technical skills.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: A few colonies had no permanent white populations at all, and in such cases the European powers preferred to construct forts rather than large settlements accordingly. Transient administrators and soldiers were posted there initially as deterrents to rival governments attempting to effectuate treaties concerning land and other resources with local African populations. Their numbers were sometimes bolstered by civilian expatriates employed as missionaries, public servants, or employees of large transnational companies with headquarters located aside the African continent. Few of these expatriates came to immigrate permanently, and typically worked in the colonies for a short period before returning to Europe. This made them less embedded in the economy and social structure, less interested in influencing local politics, and less likely to form cohesive communities than the colonist populations elsewhere.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: In most of colonial Africa, Europeans accounted for under 1% of the population, except for the colonies in Northern and Southern Africa, which had the highest proportion of European colonists.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: It is impossible to verify the number of white Africans of European ancestry, as a number of African nations do not publish census data on race or ethnic origin. In 1989, the Encyclopædia Britannica editorial team estimated the size of Africa's total white population of European descent at 4.6 million, with the vast majority residing in coastal regions of North Africa or in the Republic of South Africa.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: The white population of Zimbabwe was much higher in the 1960s and 1970s (when the country was known as Rhodesia); about 296,000 in 1975. This peak of around 4.3% of the population in 1975 dropped to possibly 120,000 in 1999, and had fallen to under 50,000 people by 2002.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: In the late sixteenth century, the Dutch East India Company (known more formally as the "Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie", or VOC) began routinely searching for sites on the African continent where its trading fleets could obtain fresh water and other supplies while en route to the Orient. Dutch ships began calling at the Cape of Good Hope as early as 1595, since the shoreline was not treacherous and fresh water could be easily obtained by landing parties without venturing too far inland. In 1651, the company built a storage facility and watering station, which included a vegetable garden to resupply its passing ships, at the Cape. Under the direction of Jan van Riebeeck, a small Dutch party also constructed a fort known as the Castle of Good Hope. Van Riebeeck obtained permission to bring Dutch immigrants to the Cape, and resettle former company employees there as farmers. The colonists were known as ""vrijlieden"", also denoted as (free citizens), to differentiate them from bonded VOC employees still serving on contracts. Since the primary purpose of the Cape colony at the time was to stock provisions for passing Dutch ships, the VOC offered grants of farmland to the on the condition they would cultivate crops for company warehouses. The were granted tax-exempt status for twelve years and loaned all the necessary seeds and farming implements they requested.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: The VOC initially had strict requirements which the prospective had to fulfill: they were to be married Dutch citizens, of good character, and had to undertake to spend twenty years at the Cape. During the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, however, many foreigners were amongst those who boarded ships in the Netherlands to settle in the Dutch sphere. As a result, by 1691 a third of the vrijburger population of the fledgling colony was not ethnically Dutch. The heterogeneous European community included large numbers of German military recruits in the service of the VOC, as well as French Huguenot refugees driven into overseas exile by the Edict of Fontainebleau. As the size of the vrijburger population expanded, the colonists began expanding deeper into the interior of Southern Africa; by 1800 the size of the fledgling Dutch Cape Colony was about 170,000 square kilometers; about six times the area of the Netherlands.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: The vast size of the colony made it almost impossible for the VOC to control the population, and the colonists became increasingly independent. Attempts by the company administration to reassert its authority and regulate the vrijburgers' activities was met with resistance. Successive generations of colonists born in the colony became localised in their loyalties and national identity and regarded the colonial government with a mixture of apathy and suspicion. In the early 1700s, this emerging class of people began identifying as "Afrikaners", rather than Dutch subjects, after their adopted homeland. Afrikaners who settled directly on the colony's frontiers were also known collectively as "Boers", to describe their agricultural way of life.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: In 1769, the northward migration of Boers was met by a southward migration of Xhosa, a Bantu people which laid claim to the Cape region north of the Great Fish River. This triggered a series of bloody frontier conflicts which raged until 1879, known as the Xhosa Wars. Both the Boers and Xhosa organised raiding parties that frequently crossed the river and stole livestock from the other group. Meanwhile, the VOC had been forced to declare bankruptcy and the Dutch government assumed direct responsibility for the Cape in 1794. After Napoleon's occupation of the Netherlands during the Flanders Campaign, Great Britain captured the Cape Colony to prevent France from laying claim to its strategic harbour. Although the Dutch authorities were permitted to administer the Cape again for a brief interlude between 1803 and 1806, the British launched another invasion of the colony as a result of political developments in Europe and became permanent. Relations between the new colonial leadership and the Boers soon began to deteriorate when the British refused to subsidise the Cape Colony, insisting that it pay for itself by levying larger taxes on the white population. In addition to raising taxes, the British administration abolished the burgher senate, the only Dutch-era form of government at the Cape. It also took measures to bring the Boer population under control by establishing new courts and judiciaries along the frontier.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Boer resentment of the British peaked in 1834, when the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 was passed, outlawing slavery throughout the British Empire. All 35,000 enslaved people registered with the Cape governor were to be freed and given rights on par with other citizens, although in most cases the slavers could retain them as paid apprentices until 1838. Many Boers, especially those involved in grain and wine production, had enslaved people at the time, and the number of people they had enslaved correlated greatly to their production output. The British government offered preexisting slavers compensation for the freeing of enslaved people, but payment had to be claimed in person in London, and few Boers possessed the funds to travel there. The abolition of slavery, along with Boer grievances over taxation and the perceived Anglicisation of the Cape judiciary, triggered the Great Trek: an eastward migration of 15,000 Boers determined to escape British rule by homesteading beyond the Cape Colony's frontiers. The Great Trek brought the migrating Boers, known as "voortrekkers", into direct conflict with the Zulu Empire, upon which they inflicted a decisive defeat at the Battle of Blood River in February 1838. The voortrekkers eventually established several independent Boer republics deep in the southern African interior, the most prominent of which were the Natalia Republic, the Orange Free State, and the South African Republic (also known simply as the "Transvaal").


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: British expansion of the Cape Colony into South Africa's interior followed the Boer migration within the subsequent decades; in 1843 Britain annexed the Natalia Republic, and in 1877 it annexed the Transvaal. The Transvaal Boers subsequently went to war with the British in 1880, which became known as the First Boer War. The war was resolved with the Pretoria Convention, by which Great Britain restored independence to the Transvaal and withdrew from the territory. However, relations between the Boer republics and the British administration at the Cape remained poor, with the latter concerned that Boer independence was a lingering threat to the Cape's strategic security. In 1899, the Second Boer War broke out when the British rejected an ultimatum by the Transvaal to remove its military presence from the latter's borders. The first stages of the war consisted of several unsuccessful Boer sieges of British colonies, followed by a British push into the two Boer republics. The last stage of the war consisted of Boer guerrillas, termed "bitter-enders", who refused to lay down their arms and took several years to defeat. In early 1902, the Boers finally surrendered under the terms of the Treaty of Vereeniging, which annexed the Transvaal and Orange Free State into the Cape (forming the Union of South Africa) in exchange for allowing the former Boer republics some form of political autonomy and granting financial assistance to aid in postwar reconstruction.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: The postwar years saw the dramatic rise of Afrikaner nationalism, as many of the former Boer military leaders turned to politics and came to dominate the legislatures of the Transvaal and Orange Free State. An Afrikaner party was also elected for the first time in the Cape Colony in 1908. Afrikaner politicians heavily promoted the use of Afrikaans, a language derived from the Middle Dutch dialect spoken by the colonial vrijburger population, as a fundamental part of Afrikaner identity and national consciousness. In 1908 and 1909, a constitutional convention was held for the establishment of a self-governing dominion which incorporated the old Boer republics into a unitary state with the Cape Colony and the Natal. This emerged as the Union of South Africa in 1910. Due to the fact that the electorate was limited predominantly to white South Africans, Afrikaners–which composed over half the white population at the time–quickly achieved political ascendancy. Afrikaners occupied the top political positions in South African government from 1910 until 1994, when the country held its first multiracial elections under a universal franchise. Prior to 1994, the Afrikaner ruling party with the longest tenure in South Africa was the National Party, which was noted for introducing a strict system of racial segregation known as apartheid in 1948, and declaring the country a republic in 1961.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: The size of the Afrikaner population in South Africa was estimated at 2.5 million people in 1985. According to the country's 2011 census, there were about 2.7 million white South Africans who spoke Afrikaans as a first language, or slightly over 5% of the total population.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: In the mid to late 19th century and beforehand, South African trekboers found their way into Namibia (then South-West Africa) during separate quests to escape British rule at home. A significant number even penetrated as far north as Angola during the Dorsland Trek. Others established an independent republic at Upingtonia in 1885, although this proved to be short-lived.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: The South-West became a German colony during the late 19th century, and with the onset of the First World War a number of local Boers volunteered to serve with the imperial authorities against invading Allied troops. After that conflict left the territory under South African occupation, thousands of fresh Afrikaner migrants poured into the region to occupy available plots of prime stock-farming land and exploit untapped resources. Their government further encouraged new colonists by offering easy loans, necessary infrastructure, and more expropriated land to white newcomers. This policy was generally considered a success, as South-West Africa's white population more than doubled between 1913 and 1936.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Current estimates for the Afrikaner population in Namibia range from 60,000 to 120,000; they continue to make up the majority of the country's white citizens. 45% of the best ranging and agricultural land is presently owned by Namibians of European background, mostly Afrikaner ranchers.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: As early as 1815, individual Afrikaners had begun to arrive in what is today modern Botswana, mainly traders and ivory hunters from the Cape of Good Hope. By the mid nineteenth century, some of these itinerant Afrikaners had settled in Molepolole. In 1852, the Transvaal Boers organised a failed expedition against the Northern Tswana people which included several relatively large engagements such as the Battle of Dimawe. As a result of this raid, the Tswana launched a series of retaliatory raids into the northern Transvaal which forced the Boers to evacuate Swartruggens. In 1853, Transvaal President Paul Kruger signed an armistice with Tswana chief Sechele I, ending the state of war and checking further Boer expansion into Botswana for decades.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: A notable voortrekker community was established inadvertently near Ghanzi in 1877. Ghanzi was settled by migrating Boers from the Dorsland Trek who had lost their wagons and supplies in the central Kalahari, and were forced to seek sanctuary near the water source there.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: After the establishment of the Bechuanaland Protectorate in the 1880s, the British colonial authorities and the British South Africa Company (BSAC) designated several parts of the region as freehold farming areas, open to white farmers of any nationality. This induced hundreds of Boer migrants to resettle there.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: In 1894 the BSAC made a concentrated attempt to recruit Boers from the Transvaal and Orange Free State to settle the area around Lake Ngami. This was an attempt to control the large numbers of wandering trekboers in both regions by diverting them into territory already under British control rather than risk them establishing new Boer republics further abroad. The British also hoped that a large Boer population along the frontiers of Bechuaneland would serve as a potential buffer to German colonial expansionism from the west. From 1898 until the early 1900s, a small but steady stream of Boers began trekking towards Lake Ngami from South Africa, with the vast majority concentrating around the previously established Afrikaans-speaking community at Ghanzi. In 1928, the size of Ghanzi's population was bolstered by the arrival of a number of Boer exiles from Angola, who had departed that territory due to disputes with the Portuguese colonial government there. Most of the Boers were engaged in cattle ranching, using the vast, unpopulated lands around Ghanzi as a massive range to drive their herds. For a number of years, one of Botswana's most prominent white politicians was Christian de Graaff, who represented Ghanzi's southern district in the National Assembly.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Aside from those engaged in ranching and farming, a small number of recent Afrikaner migrants have moved to Botswana in the postcolonial era to manage small businesses.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: While Afrikaners were always a small minority in Zimbabwe's population, some did arrive with the early pioneer columns and permanently settled, especially in the Enkeldoorn farming areas. After 1907, an increasing number of dispossessed Boers arrived in what was then the British territory of Southern Rhodesia, seeking better economic opportunities. They soon found themselves discriminated against by the other Europeans, who expressed alarm at an "invasion" of "poor Dutch" and what they described as the "human wreckage of the Union". This aversion was condemned by elements in the South African press, which charged that "the settlement of Afrikaners in Rhodesia is being emphatically worked against".


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: During World War I, the Maritz Rebellion in South Africa caused consternation among Rhodesian authorities, prompting them to conclude that their colony's Afrikaner inhabitants could not be relied upon against the German Empire. In the following decades a sharp cleavage continued to divide Afrikaners from their English-speaking countrymen, reflecting entrenched divisions in class and culture. The former generally earned lower incomes, and never advanced far in capital, education, and influence. They were also considered to be Rhodesia's single most conservative white community, almost unanimously opposing a multiracial school system and any concessions to black Africans regarding land apportionment.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: With the ensuing Rhodesian Bush War and Zimbabwean independence under Prime Minister Robert Mugabe by 1980, over one-fifth of white Rhodesians, including most resident Afrikaners, emigrated from the country.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: During and following the Boer Wars some Afrikaners chose to leave South Africa. The first 700 Afrikaner colonists that migrated to British East Africa were supporters of the British during the various conflicts. This first wave settled in the fertile Rift Valley. The community founded the colony of Eldoret in 1903 and played an important part in establishing agriculture in the region. An additional 100 Afrikaners arrived in 1911. At the height of British rule in the colony, the population composed of several thousand Afrikaners farming around Eldoret. The Mau Mau Rebellion sparked great panic among the white community in the country and much of the Afrikaner community left the country and mostly returned to South Africa. However some continued to farm in the region long after independence, and were very successful in doing so.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: There were originally around 2,000 Afrikaners in Angola, descendants of those who had survived Namibia's unforgiving Dorsland Trek. For fifty years they formed a distinct enclave in the underdeveloped Portuguese territory, joined by new Afrikaner migrants in 1893 and 1905. By 1928, however, the South African authorities arranged to have 300 such households repatriated to Outjo, where they settled comfortably into farming. The few Afrikaners who remained fled their homes during Angola's subsequent colonial and civil wars.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: In the early 20th century a number of Afrikaners trekked into German Tanganyika, where they were parceled land by colonial authorities then attempting to boost agricultural production. After Tanganyika became a British trust territory on Germany's defeat during World War I, London reaffirmed such grants as they existed. Few Afrikaners stayed beyond the eve of Tanzanian independence in 1961.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: With the retreat of European colonialism, Afrikaner communities outside South Africa and its immediate neighbours generally diminished in size and a significant number of colonists returned to their countries of origin during the decades which followed the Second World War.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Although there were small British colonies along the West African coast from the 18th century onwards, mostly consisting of trading posts and castles, British colonisation of Africa began in earnest only at the end of the 18th century, in the Cape of Good Hope. It gained momentum following British annexation of the Cape from the Dutch East India Company, and the subsequent encouragement of migrating colonists in the Eastern Cape in an effort to consolidate the colony's eastern border.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: In the late 19th century, the discovery of gold and diamonds further encouraged colonisation of South Africa by the British. The search for gold drove expansion north into the Rhodesias (now Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Malawi). Simultaneously, British colonists began expansion into the fertile uplands (often called the "White Highlands") of British East Africa (in Kenya). Most of these colonies were not planned by the British government, with many colonial officials concluding they upset the balance of power in the region and left the long-established British interests vulnerable.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Cecil Rhodes utilized his wealth and connections towards organizing this ad hoc movement and colonisation into a unified British policy. This policy had as its general aim the securing of a Cairo to Cape Town railway system, and colonising the upper highlands of East Africa and the whole of Southern Africa south of the Zambezi with British colonies in a manner akin to that of North America and Australasia.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: However, prioritization of British power around the globe in the years before World War I, initially reduced the resources appropriated toward colonisation. World War I and the Great Depression and the general decline of British and European birthrates further hobbled the expected colonist numbers. Nonetheless, thousands of colonists arrived each year during the decades preceding World War II, mostly in South Africa, where the birthrates of British Africans increased suddenly. Despite a general change in British policy against supporting the establishment of European colonies in Africa, and a slow abandonment in the overall British ruling and common classes for a separate European identity, large colonial appendages of European separatist supporters of continued colonial rule were well entrenched in South Africa, Rhodesia, and Kenya.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: In keeping with the general trend toward non-European rule evident throughout most of the globe during the Cold War and the abandonment of colonial possessions in the face of American and Soviet pressure, the vestigial remnants of Cecil Rhodes' vision was abruptly ended, leaving British colonists in an exposed, isolated, and weak position. Black Nationalist guerrilla forces aided by Soviet expertise and weapons soon drove the colonists into a fortress mentality which led to the break-off of ties with perceived collaborationist governments in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: The result was a series of conflicts which eventually led to a reduced presence of White Africans due to emigration and natural death. Many were murdered, tens of thousands driven off their lands and property, with many of those remaining being intimidated and threatened by the government and political and paramilitary organizations. However, what soon followed was a mass immigration to the safety and white rule of South Africa, which is the African country known to have the largest white population, currently with 1,755,100 British-South Africans. During the mid 20th-century, most British-South Africans were mostly keen on keeping and even strengthening South Africa's ties with the United Kingdom. However, they were largely outnumbered by the Afrikaners, who preferred a republic, and in a referendum voted to abolish the monarchy.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Hundreds of thousands of British-South Africans left the nation to start new lives abroad, settling in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, United States, Canada, and the Netherlands. In spite of the high emigration rates, a large number of white foreign immigrants from countries such as United Kingdom and Zimbabwe have settled in the country. For example, by 2005, an estimated 212,000 British citizens were residing in South Africa. By 2011, this number may have grown to 500,000. Since 2003, the numbers of British immigrants coming to South Africa has risen by 50%. An estimated 20,000 British immigrants moved to South Africa in 2007. South Africa is ranked as the top destination of British retirees and pensioners in Africa.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: There was also a significant number of arrivals of white Zimbabweans of British ancestry, fleeing their home country in light of the economic, political problems which faced the country and persecution at the hands of the ZANU government. As well as recent arrivals, a significant number of white Zimbabweans of British descent emigrated to South Africa after the independence of Zimbabwe in 1980. The greatest white British populations in South Africa are in the KwaZulu-Natal province and in cities such as Johannesburg and Cape Town.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: At the brink of the country's independence in 1964, there were roughly 70,000 Europeans (mostly British) in Zambia (Northern Rhodesia before independence), making up roughly 2.3% of the 3 million inhabitants at the time. Zambia had a different situation compared to other African countries. It included segregation, similar to South Africa, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and South-West Africa (Namibia); but as the Europeans constituted a smaller fraction of the population they did not dominate politics. There were a few cities in Northern Rhodesia that had British place names, but all except one (Livingstone) were changed when the country became independent or soon after. These included:


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Vice President Guy Scott served as acting president of Zambia after the death of Michael Sata, the first (and so far only) white head of state of an African country since FW de Klerk in 1994, and the first outside South Africa since Henry Everard in 1979.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: A good example of segregation in Zambia before independence was in the city of Livingstone, on the border with Zimbabwe. This featured a white town, with black townships, which were also found in South Africa and Namibia. In Zambia, however, Livingstone was one of the few places in the country that used this system and was close to the Rhodesian border. British influence was reflected in town and city names. Livingstone (which is currently the only town left with a British name) was nearly changed to "Maramba", but the decision was later dismissed. When Zambia became independent in 1964, the majority of white colonists left for Rhodesia, just by crossing the border. An almost identical town of Victoria Falls lies on the other side.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: There were 60,000 mostly Anglophone white people living in Kenya in 1965. However, encouraged by the fear brought by the Mau Mau Uprising, nearly half of Kenya's European population emigrated out of the country after Kenya's independence from colonial rule. Today, they are estimated to be around 30,000. Well known white people born in Kenya include road racing cyclist Chris Froome, Richard Dawkins, and evolutionary scientist Richard Leakey.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: In contrast to the rest of Central Africa, Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) was once intended to become a "white man's country" – to be settled and ruled by European colonists who would remain there permanently. Until Zimbabwean independence in 1980, White Rhodesians prevailed over the nation politically, socially, and economically. They numbered some 240,000 by late-1979. Most were fairly recent immigrants, particularly blue collar workers attracted by the promise Rhodesia's economic opportunities offered. Throughout the 1960s they were joined by White South Africans and white colonists fleeing independent colonies elsewhere.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: The white population in Zimbabwe dropped from a peak of around 300,000 in 1975 to 170,000 in 1982 and was estimated at no more than 50,000 in 2002, possibly much lower.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: When Angola won independence from Portugal in 1975, most British people in Angola resettled in the United Kingdom, South Africa, Namibia (South-West Africa), Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), Portugal or Brazil. Meanwhile, most from Mozambique left for either Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), South Africa or the UK. However, even before 1975, the number of British people in Angola and Mozambique was small, especially compared to the inhabiting Portuguese population.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: When Mozambique gained independence from Portugal in 1975, most British people left for either Rhodesia or South Africa, while others resettled in Portugal and Brazil. However, just like Angola, the British population in Mozambique is/was tiny compared to both their share of the nation's population and in comparison to the Portuguese.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Sizable numbers of people of British descent are also nationals of Ghana, Namibia, Tanzania, Swaziland (3% of the population), Nigeria, and Botswana. In addition, nearly 10,000 white Ugandans of British extraction were living under the regime of Idi Amin as recorded by "Time" Magazine in 1972. Due to the subsequent deterioration of conditions under Amin (Including the constant threat of forced expulsion), most of the local British diaspora emigrated to the United Kingdom and South Africa. 2,500 people from the United Kingdom currently live in Uganda.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: The Scots played an enormous part in British overseas colonisation, alongside the English and Welsh. Scotland supplied colonial troops, administrators, governors, prospectors, architects, and engineers to help construct the colonies all over the world.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: From the 1870s, Scottish churches began missionary work in Nyasaland/Malawi, in the wake of their illustrious predecessor, David Livingstone. Their pressure on the British Government resulted in Nyasaland being declared a British Protectorate. A small Scottish community was established here, and other Scots immigration occurred in Southern Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, Northern Rhodesia/Zambia, and South Africa. The table below represents how small their numbers were compared to other sections of the future Central African Federation.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: The largest city and commercial capital of the country, Blantyre, is named after a town in Scotland and birthplace of David Livingstone. The reason for the small number of Europeans was mainly the lack of mineral resources (Northern Rhodesia had copper and Southern Rhodesia has gold).


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: After Nyasaland became independent (and upon adopting a new name, Malawi), many Scots returned to Scotland or moved to South Africa or Rhodesia (formerly Southern Rhodesia and later known as Zimbabwe). Despite this, Scots had an enormous South African community (compared to that of Nyasaland).


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: To this day most Scots in Africa reside in South Africa and until the 21st century, also in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia). Most Scottish colonists from Rhodesia left for South Africa after Rhodesia's independence and after economic and political problems in 2001. Evidence of the continued Scottish influence is seen in the continuing traditions of Highland games and pipe bands, especially in Natal. Ties between Scotland and Malawi also remain strong.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Large numbers of French people settled in French North Africa from the 1840s onward. By the end of French rule in the early 1960s there were over one million European Algerians, mostly of French origin and Catholic (known as "pieds noirs", or "black feet"), living in Algeria, consisting about 16% of the population in 1962.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: French law made it easy for thousands of "colons", ethnic or national French from former colonies of Africa, French India and French Indochina, to live in mainland France. After Algeria became independent in 1962, about 800,000 "Pieds-Noirs" of French nationality were evacuated to mainland France while about 200,000 chose to remain in Algeria. Of the latter, there were still about 100,000 in 1965 and about 50,000 by the end of the 1960s. 1.6 million European "colons" migrated from Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: As of December 31, 2011, there were 94,382 French citizens in all three countries, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Unlike Algeria, permanent European colonisation in most of France's tropical African colonies was not especially successful; during World War II the entire white population of French West Africa numbered only about 22,000. Immigration to French West Africa spiked after the war due to an influx of French people seeking to escape depressed economic opportunities at home. In June 1951, there were 49,904 whites of French origin in French West Africa, as well as an undetermined number of Europeans of other nationalities. The total number of white residents in these colonies never exceeded 0.3% of the population, and was predominantly urban: two-thirds of them lived in one of French West Africa's nine administrative capitals. Their most popular destination was Senegal, where over half the French-speaking whites resided. Nevertheless, French West Africa's white population remained subject to a high turnover rate; in 1951 78% of this group had been born in France, and the number of European families which had lived in Dakar for more than a generation was described as "negligible". The postwar influx also introduced the phenomenon of unemployed whites in French West Africa, who were mostly unskilled workers that secured only temporary jobs or were not engaged in any specific profession, and found themselves having to compete with a growing skilled black workforce. It also contributed to a rise in housing segregation as exclusively white neighbourhoods became more common.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Following the dissolution of French West Africa and the independence of its constituent states, sizable white minorities survived in Gabon and the Ivory Coast. 2,500 French people reside in Chad. 4,500 French soldiers reside in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. 3,000 French reside in Mali and 1,000 French soldiers reside in Niger.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: In 1917, Djibouti (then French Somaliland) had a European population of 294, of which 107 were French. In 1974, 10,255 Europeans lived in the colony, which gained independence just 3 years later.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: A sizeable number of French people reside in Madagascar, many of whom trace their ties to Madagascar back to the colonial period. An estimated 20,000 French citizens lived and worked in Madagascar in 2011. The numbers make Madagascar the home of the largest ethnic French population in terms of absolute numbers in Sub-Saharan Africa, other than the French "département" Réunion.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: In Réunion, a French island in the Indian Ocean, white islanders, mostly of ethnic French origin, are estimated to make up approximately 30% of the population. 260,000 white people live in Réunion.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: A large number of French Huguenots settled in the Cape Colony, following their expulsion from France in the 17th century. However, the use of the French language was discouraged and many of their descendants intermarried with the Dutch. This early contact is visible in the Francophone names of a few historic towns in Western Cape such as Courtrai and in the surnames of some Afrikaners and Cape Coloureds, such as Marais, Joubert, de Lille, and du Plessis. The Huguenot-descended South African community is the largest in France's African diaspora.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Franschhoek (meaning "French Corner" in Dutch) is a large town in the Western Cape, so named for the French Huguenots, who traveled and settled there. There is a striking French influence in the town, which can be found firstly in street names which include La Rochelle Street, Bordeaux Street, Huguenot Street, Roux Malherbe Street, and Cabriere Street.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Nearby farms, hamlets, and villages often hold French names such as "La Roux"; a township north of Franschhoek, "Chamonix Estate", and so forth. Many Huguenot-dedicated buildings have been erected in Franschhoek, the major one being the Huguenot Monument.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: The first Portuguese colonies in Africa were built in the 15th century. The descendants of the soldiers who accompanied Christopher da Gama expedition to support the Ethiopian throne in the 16th century continued to exert a significant influence in that country's history over the next two centuries; for example, the Empress Mentewab was extremely proud of her Portuguese ancestry. In the late 17th century, much of Portuguese Mozambique was divided into "prazos", or agricultural estates, which were settled by Portuguese families. In Portuguese Angola, namely in the areas of Luanda and Benguela, there was a significant Portuguese population. 20,000 people from the former Portuguese colony of Brazil currently live in Angola. In the islands of Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe, besides Portuguese colonists, most of the population was of mixed Portuguese and African origin. The descendants of the Portuguese colonists who were born and raised locally since Portuguese colonial time were called "crioulos."


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: In the early 20th century, the Portuguese government encouraged white migration to the Portuguese territories of Angola and Mozambique, and by the 1960s, at the beginning of the Portuguese Colonial War, there were around 650,000 Portuguese colonists living in their overseas African provinces, and a substantial Portuguese population living in other African countries. In 1974, there were up to 1,000,000 Portuguese colonists living in their overseas African provinces. In 1975, Angola had a community of approximately 400,000 Portuguese, while Mozambique had approximately more than 350,000 colonists from Portugal.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Most Portuguese colonists were forced to return to Portugal (the ) as the country's African possessions gained independence in the mid-1970s, while others moved south to South Africa, which now has the largest Portuguese-African population (who between 50 and 80% came from Madeira), and to Brazil. When Mozambican Civil War (1977–1992) began suddenly, large numbers of both Portuguese-born colonists and Mozambican-born colonists of Portuguese blood went out again.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: However, after the war in Mozambique, more Portuguese colonists returned and the newer ones settled Mozambique while White Brazilians, especially those of Portuguese descent, moved to Mozambique to work as aid workers and investors and have adopted Mozambique as their home. It is estimated the population of Portuguese people in Mozambique has increased to over 20,000 since the peace settlement of Mozambique in 1992. Notable demographics of Portuguese Mozambicans could be found in cities like Maputo, Beira, and Nampula with Maputo accumulating the highest percentage. In recent years, some Portuguese have migrated to Angola for economic reasons, mainly the country's recent economic boom. In 2008, Angola was the preferred destination for Portuguese migrants in Africa. 300,000 white people with Portuguese heritage currently live in Angola. 3% of the population of Angola, 1 million people, are mixed race, half white and half black. 4% of the population of Angola is white or half white. The majority of Angolan whites live in Luanda, the capital of Angola. They represent 260,000 from the 2.5 million inhabitants (over 10%) of Luanda.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: South Africa largely featured two Portuguese waves of immigration, one was a constant but small flow of Portuguese from Madeira and Portugal itself, while the second was ethnic Portuguese fleeing from Angola and Mozambique after their respective independences. The reason behind the immigration of Madeirans to South Africa was both a political and economic one. After 1950, prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd encouraged immigration from Protestant northern Europeans, such as his own ethnic group the Dutch, to bolster the white population. He later began to approve immigration policies also favouring Southern Europeans, including Madeirans, who were facing high unemployment rates. Many Madeirans and other Portuguese who immigrated were at first isolated from other white populations due to their differences, such as the fact that few could speak English or Afrikaans and were Roman Catholic. Eventually they ended up setting up businesses in Johannesburg or coastal fisheries, and a substantial number intermarried with other white South African groups.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: One known Portuguese South African creation was the restaurant chain Nando's, created in 1987, which incorporated influences from former Portuguese colonists from Mozambique, many of whom had settled on the south-eastern side of Johannesburg, after Mozambique's independence in 1975. Currently there's a 300,000-strong Portuguese community in South Africa.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Libya had some 150,000 Italian colonists until World War II, constituting about 18% of the total population in Italian Libya. The Italians in Libya resided (and many still do) in most major cities like Tripoli (37% of the city was Italian), Benghazi (31%), and Hun (3%). Their numbers decreased after World War II. Most of Libya's Italians were expelled from the North African country in 1970, a year after Muammar Gaddafi seized power (a "day of vengeance" on 7 October 1970), but a few hundred Italian colonists returned to Libya in the 2000s (decade).


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Somalia had over 50,000 Italian Somali colonists during World War II, constituting more than 5% of the total population in Italian Somaliland. The Italians resided in most major cities in the central and southern parts of the territory, with around 22,000 living in the capital Mogadishu. Other major areas of colonisation included Jowhar, which was founded by the Italian prince Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi. Italian used to be a major language, but its influence significantly diminished following independence. It is now most frequently heard among older generations and the educated. 1,000 Italian Somalis currently live in Somalia.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Although Italians did not immigrate to South Africa in large numbers, those who have arrived have nevertheless made an impact on the host country.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Before World War II, relatively few Italian immigrants arrived, though there were some prominent exceptions, such as the Cape's first Prime Minister John Molteno, who was of Anglo-Italian descent. South African Italians made big headlines during World War II, when Italians captured in Italian East Africa needed to be sent to a safe stronghold to be kept as prisoners of war (POWs). South Africa was the perfect destination, and the first POWs arrived in Durban, in 1941.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Despite being POWs, the Italians were treated well, with a good food diet and friendly hospitality. These factors, along with the peaceful, cheap, and sunny landscape, made it very attractive for Italians to settle down, and therefore, the Italian South African community was born. Although over 100,000 Italian POW were sent to South Africa, only a handful decided to stay. During their capture, they were given the opportunity to build chapels, churches, dams, and many more structures. Most Italian influence and architecture can be seen in the Natal and Transvaal area. Esselenpark (Railway College) is particularly notable.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: During the Italian occupation of Ethiopia, roughly 300,000 Italians settled in Italian East Africa (1936-1947). Over 49,000 lived in Asmara in 1939 (around 10% of the city's population), and over 38,000 resided in Addis Ababa. After independence, many Italians remained for decades after receiving full pardon by Emperor Selassie, as he saw the opportunity to continue the modernization efforts of the country. However, due to the Ethiopian Civil War in 1974, nearly 22,000 Italo-Ethiopians left the country. 80 original Italian colonists remained alive in 2007, and nearly 2000 mixed descendants of Italians and Ethiopians. In the 2000s, some Italian companies returned to operate in Ethiopia, and a large number of Italian technicians and managers arrived with their families, residing mainly in the metropolitan area of the capital. 3,400 Italians still live in Ethiopia. and 1,300 British people live in Ethiopia.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: The Italians had a significantly large, but very quickly diminished population in Africa. In 1926, there were 90,000 Italians in Tunisia, compared to 70,000 Frenchmen (unusual since Tunisia was a French protectorate). Former Italian communities also once thrived in the Horn of Africa, with about 50,000 Italian colonists living in Italian Eritrea in 1935. The Italian Eritrean population grew from 4,000 during World War I to nearly 100,000 at the beginning of World War II. The size of the Italian Egyptian community had also reached around 55,000 just before World War II, forming the second-largest expatriate community in Egypt. 100,000 people in Italian Eritreans living in Eritrea have at least one Italian ancestor, accounting for 2.2% of its total population.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: A few Italian colonists stayed in Portuguese colonies in Africa after World War II. As the Portuguese government had sought to enlarge the small Portuguese population through emigration from Europe, the Italian migrants gradually assimilated into the Angolan Portuguese community.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Greeks have been living in Egypt since and even before Alexander the Great conquered Egypt at an early stage of his journey of conquests. Herodotus, who visited Egypt in the 5th century BC, wrote that the Greeks were the first foreigners that ever lived in Egypt. Diodorus Siculus attested that Rhodian Actis, one of the Heliadae, built the city of Heliopolis before the cataclysm; likewise the Athenians built Sais. While all Greek cities were destroyed during the cataclysm, the Egyptian cities including Heliopolis and Sais survived.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: In modern times the official 1907 census showed 62,973 Greeks living in Egypt. The expulsion of 2.5 million Greeks from Turkey saw a large number of those Greeks move to Egypt and by 1940 Greeks were numbered at around 500,000. Today the Greek community numbers officially about 3,000 people although the real number is much higher since many Greeks have changed their nationality to Egyptian. In Alexandria, apart from the patriarchate, there is a patriarchal theology school that opened recently after being closed for 480 years. Saint Nicolas church and several other buildings in Alexandria have been recently renovated by the Greek Government and the Alexander S. Onassis Foundation.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: During the last decade, there has been a new interest from the Egyptian government for a diplomatic rapprochement with Greece and this has positively affected the Greek diaspora. The diaspora has received official visits of many Greek politicians. Economic relationships have been blossoming between Greece and Egypt. Egypt has been recently the centre of major Greek investments in industries such as banking, tourism, paper, and oil. In 2009, a five years cooperation memorandum was signed among the NCSR Demokritos Institute in Agia Paraskevi, Athens and the University of Alexandreia, regarding Archeometry research and contextual sectors.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: The Greeks have had a presence in South Africa since the late 19th century. After the flight of the Greeks from Egypt in reaction to Nasser's nationalization policy the Greek population of South Africa dramatically increased to around 250,000. Today the number of Greeks in South Africa is estimated between 60,000 – 120,000.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: The Greek community in Zimbabwe numbered between 13,000 and 15,000 people in 1972 and once comprised Rhodesia's second largest white community after individuals of British origin. Today the Greek community in Zimbabwe numbers under 3,000. Zimbabwe currently hosts eleven Greek Orthodox churches and fifteen Greek associations and humanitarian organizations.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: The Greeks have a presence in a number of African countries such as Cameroon (1,200 people), Zambia (800 people), Ethiopia (500 people), Uganda (450 people), Democratic Republic of Congo (300 people), Kenya (100 families), Nigeria (300 people), Tanzania (300 people), Sudan (200 people), Botswana (200–300 people), Malawi (200 people), and Morocco (150 people).


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Germany was late to colonize Africa (or to have an empire), mainly due to it not being a unified country until the late 19th century. However, many Germans settled in South West Africa (modern day Namibia) as well as South Africa. Those Germans who migrated to South West Africa retained German culture, religion, and even language, while those in South Africa often had to learn English or Afrikaans as a first language and adopt another culture.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Unlike other Europeans in Africa, when many African states gained independence, the Germans (along with the English and Dutch/Afrikaners) stayed in Southern Africa because they retained political dominance (now being a mandate under South African control). The country was administered as a province of South Africa during the apartheid era (though South African rule was not widely recognized internationally.) German influence in Namibia is very strong and noticeable. Because Namibia has not changed any town names since independence, many of the largest cities in the country retain their German names. These include Lüderitz, Grünau, Maltahöhe, Wasser, Schuckmannsburg, and even the capital city has a German name (Windhuk). In the southern Regions of Karas and especially Hardap, the vast majority of town names are German, or a mixture of German, Afrikaans and English. In the Hardap region, some 80% of colonies have a name of German origin.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Namibia is also the only nation outside Europe to have a Lutheran majority. This is due to many German missionaries during the 19th century who converted the Ovambo and Damara people to Christianity. Until 1990 German was an official language of Namibia, and is now a recognized regional language (the only one of its kind for the German language outside of Europe).


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Today there are roughly 20,000–50,000 ethnic Germans in Namibia (32% of the white population, and 2% of the nation's population), and they greatly outnumber those of English and many Black ethnic origins. Their precise numbers are unclear because many Namibians of German ancestry no longer speak German, and sometimes would rather be classified as Afrikaners.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: When mainland Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi were under German control they were named German East Africa and received some migration from German communities.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: A number of locations in Tanzania formerly bore German names. The city of Tabora was formerly named "Weidmannsheil" and Kasanga was known as "Bismarckburg". Mount Kilimanjaro was known as Kilimandscharo, a German way of spelling it. Despite virtually all German names being reverted since World War I, some places still hold German names. These include the majority of Glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro, such as Rebmann Glacier and Furtwängler Glacier.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Some colonial German-style buildings still exist in some of Tanzania's largest cities and former German strongholds, but they are in bad condition and need extensive renovation. Current estimates for the German population in Tanzania put it at 8,500, more than double the peak population under German colonial rule.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Kamerun was a German colony in present-day Cameroon between 1884 and 1916. During German control, few German families migrated in comparison with Germany's other colonies, but plantations, trading posts, and infrastructure projects were built to aid the growing German Empire with goods, such as bananas and important minerals. These trading posts were most abundant around the former capital city, and largest city in Cameroon: Douala.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Douala itself was known as "Kamerunstadt" (German for 'Cameroon City') between 1884 and 1907. Most trading took place with Hamburg and Bremen, and was later made easier by the construction of an extensive postal and telegraph system. Like all German colonies (except South West Africa), after World War I, many Germans left for Europe, America, or South Africa.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: After World War I, the colony of Kamerun was split between British and French administrations. Once Germany was admitted to the League of Nations, the new colonial administrations were forced to allow German colonists and missionaries to return and repossess their land beginning in 1925. The German-run factories and plantations in Southern Cameroon employed over 25,000 Cameroonians at this time. Sentiment among native Cameroonians at the time remained overwhelmingly pro-German, which was made most evident when only 3,500 Cameroonians enlisted to fight for the British at the outbreak of World War II. By the 1930s, Germans accounted for more than 60% of the white population in British Cameroon and owned more than 300,000 acres of cocoa plantations in both the French and British Cameroons.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: A number of German colonists stayed in Portuguese African colonies as World War II refugees when the Portuguese government tried to request Europeans of other nationalities to increase the very tiny Portuguese population and during the war, although that plan of the Portuguese government was unsuccessful. Prior to the Angolan Civil War, the German population in Benguela and Moçâmedes was very active and had a German-language school in Benguela. The German families remaining in Angola today live mainly in Luanda and Calulo.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: There is a German community within South Africa, many of whom have been absorbed into the Afrikaner community, but some still maintain a German identity. Migration to South Africa from Germany has existed since the establishment of the first refreshment station in 1652. German missionaries were present throughout the region. Under British rule, there was increased immigration from Germany with significant numbers settling in the Natal and in the Eastern Cape. Under apartheid much of the land given to German colonists was confiscated so many dispersed throughout the country.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: The Spanish have resided in many African countries (mostly former colonies), including Equatorial Guinea, Western Sahara, South Africa, and Morocco. 94,000 Spaniards chose to go to Algeria in the last years of the 19th century; 250,000 Spaniards lived in Morocco at the beginning of the 20th century. Most Spaniards left Morocco after its independence in 1956 and their numbers were reduced to 13,000.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: The Spanish have resided in Equatorial Guinea (when under Spanish rule known as Spanish Guinea) for many years and first started as temporary plantation owners originally from Valencia, before returning to Spain. Few Spaniards remained in Spanish Guinea permanently and left only after a few years. At independence in 1968 Spanish Guinea had one of the highest per capita incomes in Africa (US$332). The Spanish also helped Equatorial Guinea achieve one of the continent's highest literacy rates and developed a good network of health care facilities.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Many left Spanish Guinea when the colony gained independence in 1968. After independence, many Spanish-named cities and places in Equatorial Guinea were changed to more African names, the most obvious one being the capital city, Malabo (formerly "Santa Isabel"), and the island it is located on, Bioko (formerly "Fernando Pó"). 80,000 Mexicans live in the country.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Despite a large loss of Spanish residents during the rule of Masie Nguema Biyogo, their numbers have somewhat increased after he was overthrown. They almost exclusively speak Spanish as their first language; French or Portuguese, which are official languages, are often spoken as second languages, sometimes alongside the indigenous Bantu languages. Their religion is almost entirely Catholic, and this can be reflected by the population, which also remains Catholic. Since the discovery of oil, and an economic 'boom', a large number of Europeans of other ancestries have also migrated the country for business and in Malabo, they are located in the western half of the city and in new housing estates.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Belgian colonials and their descendants have been especially represented in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, although post-colonial instability in these states has led to exodus.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: In the Belgian Congo, Belgium's largest overseas possession, European missionaries, corporations, and officials had entrenched a comprehensive political, social, economic, and cultural hegemony. This was disrupted as 1955 drew to a close, however, as mild proposals for a form of Congolese self-government provoked furious protests across the Belgian Congo. A Belgian-appointed study commission subsequently recommended a complicated formula which would lead to gradual self-government for the Congo by 1985, although this was opposed by the most militant nationalists, who demanded immediate and full independence.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: On 5 July 1960, five days after the new Republic of the Congo gained independence from Belgium, members of the "Force Publique" (Dutch: "Openbare Weermacht") garrison near Léopoldville/Leopoldstad mutinied. African soldiers, resentful over the fact that independence had brought little change to their status, ousted 1,000 of their Belgian officers from the command structure. The new government was slow to react, allowing a state of panic to develop among the 120,000 colonists still resident in the territory as roving bands of mutineers attacked numerous European targets, assaulting and killing with impunity. Belgium's attempt to defend her nationals with military force only aggravated the situation; within ten days of independence white civil servants were emigrating en masse. As Congo's infamous crisis developed further, the predominantly white magistrate corps also fled the growing chaos, dealing a severe blow to their nation's basic judicial apparatus – considered by several prominent observers to be "the worst catastrophe in this series of disasters".


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Many Flemish colonists in Rwanda were targeted for extermination as part of the Rwandan genocide. This seemed to be largely because Belgian colonists had offered better education and employment opportunities to Tutsi tribesmen under colonial rule than the Hutus, who controlled the government during the genocide. Many of those remaining today are of Flemish descent, and part of the large "reverse diaspora" currently occurring in Rwanda.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: Radio messages broadcast by Hutu extremists advocated the killing of white Rwandans should they be of Belgian ancestry, despite the fact that Belgium itself attempted to remain neutral during the 1994 conflict. Furthermore, one of the main radio propagandists was a white Belgian man who moved to Rwanda, Georges Ruggiu.


title: White Africans of European ancestry

text: 3,000 Belgians are living in Burundi, and 14,000 Belgians are living in Burundi, DR Congo and Rwanda together.