White Africans of European ancestry

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White Africans of European ancestry refers to citizens or residents in Africa who can trace full or partial ancestry to Europe. They are distinguished from indigenous North African people who are sometimes identified as white but not European.^[1] In 1989, there were an estimated 4.6 million white people with European ancestry on the African continent.^[2]

Most are of Dutch, Portuguese, British, German and French origin; 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.^[2]

The earliest permanent European communities in Africa during the Age of Discovery were formed at the Cape of Good Hope;^[3] Luanda, in Angola; São Tomé Island; and Santiago, Cape Verde^[4] through the introduction of Portuguese and Dutch traders or military personnel. Other groups of white settlers arrived in newly established French, German, Belgian, and British settlements in Africa over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Before regional decolonisation, whites of European ancestry may have numbered up to 6 million persons at their peak^[5] and were represented in every part of the continent.^[6]

An exodus of colonists accompanied independence in most African nations.^[7] Over half the Portuguese Mozambican population, which numbered about 200,000 in 1975,^[8] departed en masse because of discriminatory economic policies directed against them.^[9] In Zimbabwe, recent white exodus was spurred by an aggressive land reform programme introduced by late President Robert Mugabe in 2000 and the parallel collapse of that country's economy.^[4] In Burundi, the local white population was blatantly expelled via a decree issued by the post-colonial government upon independence.^[10]

The African country with the largest population of European descendants both numerically and proportionally is South Africa, where white South Africans number 4.3 million people (9% of the population).^[11] The second-largest European population proportionally is in Namibia, at about 150,000 or 8%,^[12][13] while the second-largest European population numerically is in Angola with about 200,000 people but only comprising 1% of the population.^[14][15] Smaller European-descended populations exist in Madagascar, Morocco, Kenya, Senegal, Tunisia, Zambia, Zimbabwe and elsewhere. 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.^[16]