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This study redirects attention from English-speaking African diaspora stand-up productions to French and German language expressions of purposively selected comedians with recent immigration history from Africa performing within mainland Europe. Through a socio-historical interrogation of specific colonial histories and joke themes, the paper comparatively explores the French language stage acts of Fary Lopez, Samia Orosemane (France) and Cécile Djunga (Belgium and France) and the German language works of Dave Davis (Germany), Charles Nguela (Switzerland), and Soso Mugiraneza (Austria). The aim is to show how the individuated colonial histories of the nations in which these comics reside and the chronicles of their relations with Africa(ns) and Black peoples feature in joke formulations and satiric jibes of the jokesters. Through these explorations, this essay studies how stand-up comedy's transformative power challenges societal norms and attitudes using the backdrop of the concurrently heterogeneous and dissimilar colonial histories of the African continent and its diasporas. Moreover, through its focus on non-English expressions, it presents the unique intersections of language, "race," ethnicity and colonial histories, as well as the geographic and linguistic spread of the African diaspora beyond European nations with direct colonial contact with the continent. Thus, the enquiry posits joke performances as platforms for cultural expression and critique as well as a site within which African peoples negotiate their presence in non-African environments. Plain language summary: Examination of African diaspora stand-up comedy in German and French The study explores African diaspora stand-up comedy performances outside the English-speaking areas of the West. It studies the acts of six comedians of African origin performing in Western Europe, with a view to showing how the co-opt the histories of marginalization and discrimination against Black peoples in commenting on present-day racializations going on in the world today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues that there are three senses of the term African diaspora – a continental, a cultural and a racial sense – which need to be distinguished from each other when conceptualising Black African diasporas in Europe. Although African Diaspora Studies is occupied with African diasporas in a racial sense, usually it has conceptualised these in terms of racial and cultural identities. This is also true of the past decades of African Diaspora Studies on Europe. This article makes an argument for a socio-political conceptualisation of Black African diasporas in Europe that includes, but goes beyond, matters of identity and culture. Résumé: L' article démontre que le terme de diaspora africaine renvoie souvent à trois sens – un sens continental, un sens culturel et un sens racial – qu' il est nécessaire de distinguer lorsque l' on conceptualise les diasporas africaines noires en Europe. Alors que les études sur la diaspora africaine s' intéressent à cette diaspora dans un sens racial, elles l' ont généralement conceptualisé en terme d' identités raciales et culturelles. C' est également vrai pour les études de la diaspora africaine menées en Europe lors de ces dernières décennies. Cet article plaide pour une conceptualisation socio-politique des diasporas africaines noires en Europe qui inclue, mais dépasse, la question identitaire et culturelle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europe is comprised of at least 46 nations with an estimated population of at least 770 million, a black population of more than 7 million, over 90% of whom live in just 12 nations. The black population in each nation reveals distinct differences, including national, religious and ethnic origins and gender dynamics. They also have striking similarities in their ambiguous visibility and endemic vulnerability; in political and scholarly explanations; and in black people’s expressed racial identity and social mobilization. I explore the research implications of centering these similarities in our analysis; and suggest several insights from thinking about these striking similarities in Black Europe as a whole, rather than focusing primarily on individual nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the meanings of blackness in Esi Edugyan's second novel, arguing that the text lends itself up to a multiplicity of readings. On one hand, this is achieved by exploring the historicity and geography of race, insofar as the text dwells on how the totalitarian German state and the Second World War concur to impose shifting and sometimes even antagonistic forms of racialization on all non-Aryans. On the other, it is the result of bringing together characters that, while phenotypically belonging to the same group, are yet altogether dissimilar as to origins, language and upbringing. Consequently, the novel showcases experiences and subjectivities across the spectrum of what Paul Gilroy has named "the Black Atlantic". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Cardiovascular risk factors are increasing in most developing countries. To date, however, very little standardized data has been collected on the primary risk factors across the spectrum of economic development. Data are particularly sparse from Africa.Methods: In the Modeling the Epidemiologic Transition Study (METS) we examined population-based samples of men and women, ages 25-45 of African ancestry in metropolitan Chicago, Kingston, Jamaica, rural Ghana, Cape Town, South Africa, and the Seychelles. Key measures of cardiovascular disease risk are described.Results: The risk factor profile varied widely in both total summary estimates of cardiovascular risk and in the magnitude of component factors. Hypertension ranged from 7% in women from Ghana to 35% in US men. Total cholesterol was well under 200 mg/dl for all groups, with a mean of 155 mg/dl among men in Ghana, South Africa and Jamaica. Among women total cholesterol values varied relatively little by country, following between 160 and 178 mg/dl for all 5 groups. Levels of HDL-C were virtually identical in men and women from all study sites. Obesity ranged from 64% among women in the US to 2% among Ghanaian men, with a roughly corresponding trend in diabetes. Based on the Framingham risk score a clear trend toward higher total risk in association with socioeconomic development was observed among men, while among women there was considerable overlap, with the US participants having only a modestly higher risk score.Conclusions: These data provide a comprehensive estimate of cardiovascular risk across a range of countries at differing stages of social and economic development and demonstrate the heterogeneity in the character and degree of emerging cardiovascular risk. Severe hypercholesterolemia, as characteristic in the US and much of Western Europe at the onset of the coronary epidemic, is unlikely to be a feature of the cardiovascular risk profile in these countries in the foreseeable future, suggesting that stroke may remain the dominant cardiovascular event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about the 2013 Callaloo Conference titled "The Transatlantic, Africa, and Its Diaspora" at the University of Oxford in Europe in November 2013 on the African and African American involvements in European history. Topics discussed include rapid development of transatlantic discourse, significance of the choice of Oxford, imperialism and slavery in Europe, transnational movements across the African diaspora and views of Charles Henry Rowell, editor of the periodical.

This introductory essay places the contributions to this special number in a larger context of Nordic debates and research on African and Black diaspora. In particular this essay presents a critical discussion of the Nordic region as a specific kind of geopolitical categorization and branding which allows certain kinds of stories to be told as well as erased and silenced. Rather than ‘case studies’, the articles in this special number should be seen as interventions which complicate and challenge the hegemonic branding of the Nordic region that have posited colonialism, and engagement in the trans-Atlantic slave economy and racist categorizations in particular, as an external, continental European problem and legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Museums in Europe have a tradition of marginalizing the image and narrative of persons from the African Diaspora. This is often evident in the frequency of appearances and the quality of these scarce productions. Another point of interest is the manner in which these productions are presented. On the one hand, several questions arise regarding the representation of the African after the abolishment of chattel slavery right up to this present age of emancipation. Who gathers and presents these cultural artifacts? Which criteria are applied during the gathering and production of these presentations? Which sorts of museums are inclined to present the African Diaspora in their productions? On the other hand, the participation of persons from the African Diaspora in museums in Europe is problematic. Persons of African Diaspora are not by definition employed as administrators, curators and other stakeholders in these museums. Interest in Europe about Africa and the African Diaspora has always been partial, distorted or deficient. In the cases where attention has been paid to the African Diaspora, it has been by and large of a negative nature. A central point of inquiry is why this state of affairs has been perpetuated for such long a period of time? In this paper, the author focuses on several aspects of representation of the African Diaspora in European museums in relation to power construction, which goes hand in hand with racism and social exclusion. The main points of departure in this paper are the articulation and location of representation of the African Diaspora especially from the 19th century to the present day. Additionally, the author raises questions about the ways in which NiNsee (The National Institute of Dutch Slavery Past and Legacy) is developing its own distinctive image of the Dutch slavery past and its heritage and how it is attempting at the same time to foster an alternative representation of the African Diaspora. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europe as terminus of Black dispersal holds much significance for the study of Black identity in the Diaspora due to its role in colonizing the African continent. More specifically, England was a major contender in the race to take control of human and natural resources in Africa and the Caribbean prior to and after the European slave trade. During the first 50 years of the twentieth century, Great Britain successfully lured Black West Indians to its shore with hopes of social, cultural, and economic freedom denied them in their homelands. This article explores the dilemma of Blackness and formation of African Diasporan identities in London during the twentieth century. It also examines the complexities of transnationalism and the impact of cultural memory and globalization on identity formation in Beryl Gilroy's novel Boy Sandwich (1989) through the experiences of Tyrone Grainger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African presence in Europe can be traced back to Roman times, yet African peoples within European spaces are continually perceived and often treated as new migrants with no sense of an historical attachment to European soil. This paper seeks to understand and challenge this conception of black migrants to Europe by focusing on the community and political activities of black subjects in European spaces. Using Britain as a primary reference point, the paper argues that the unfolding nature of black political activity in European spaces emerges as a result of dynamic interactions between black protagonists and the state. The nature of these interactions it is argued are racialized in character and that black community organizations and individuals play a crucial role in determining the forms and nature of political activity and outcomes that operate under the guise of minority ethnic mobilization. This paper argues a point that is often overlooked in the literature that focuses on African and other immigrants to Europe as recent migrants with problems. The paper uses a refined political opportunities approach and focuses on state practices and black community organizational practices between the First and Second World Wars to outline the varied nature of black community and political activity in an era of state antagonism towards black populations at home and abroad. The paper argues that context, state power and action, and the activities and ideas of black community organizations interact in dynamic ways to account for the changing nature of black political activity in European spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this research was to find out what the most popular films among the Akan in southeast Amsterdam (The Netherlands) are and how these films are used by this West African diaspora in the formation of a new religious identity after their migration to Europe. The outcome of this research is that the most popular films among the Akan are those with Pentecostal-Charismatic proselytizing messages. The Akan use these films to create an 'imagined diasporic community' to remain culturally connected to West Africa. The second most popular films are those of an Akan indigenous religious nature. However, because the name of these films does not fit with the newly acquired European Christian identity of the Akan people in the diaspora, they have slightly changed the name of these movies to 'cultural films' in order to overcome the contradiction between over three centuries of 'Akan spirits of migration' to Europe with the recent 'migration of spirits' via Ghanaian films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article relates the concept of the tabot, the central symbol of divine presence in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church to the European Diaspora experience. The tabot represents the arc of the covenant in Solomon's Temple, and is likewise associated with Noah's arc. Thus the Church is conceptualised as facilitating the traversing of the 'ocean of troubles' to reach the 'safe haven' of the divine presence. This is experienced in an especially intense way in the diaspora context. Beginning with the concept of diaspora the article gives an overview of the history of the establishment of Ethiopian Orthodox churches in Europe and explores related trajectories. The Church is experienced as a place of memories, and is also a place where the sojourner can feel at home and belong. It facilitates preserving identity and culture, re-creating morals and values, and through aesthetics creates a hermeneutic frame of experience, satisfying the 'fourth hunger'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the moral economy of the African Diaspora through the illicit activities of secret Ghanaian gamblers in Europe. It follows a Ghanaian, Mr. Baba, a gambler, from North West England, who looks to the most unlikely of sources of information and certainty in a fast networked society, the Akan anti-witchcraft shrine located not in Ghana but in the eastern suburbs of Paris, as global bookmaker extraordinaire. In this environment, the anti-witchcraft shrine rather than being a traditional, obsolete relic of a superstitious past is in its supersonic element. It is able to transmit 'hidden' data, a valuable exchange commodity in an uncertain and insecure age, about betting odds on an infinite range of topics. At the same time, simultaneously, it protects this commodity from the grasp of witches – immoral, female figures who link fraudulent facts to the relations that people have with one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While past discussions of female genital excision concentrated on its incidence in Africa, attention of late has been shifting to the emergence of the tradition in the African diaspora. This essay examines how four authors of African descent explore the migration of female genital excision to Europe. It compares a remarkable passage in the novel Abessijnse Kronieken (Abyssinian Chronicles) by Moses Isegawa with the auto-biographical writings of two anti-'FGM' (female genital mutilation) activists, Mutilée by Khady Koita and Desert Children by Waris Dirie, and with the novel Rebelle by Fatou Keïta. Although these authors share a critical outlook on the practice, the discursive and narrative strategies they adopt differ greatly. A close reading of the four texts reveals that Isegawa fails to contextualize adequately the practice of female genital excision; this contrasts with his three female colleagues, who do acknowledge the conventional cultural and religious discourses on female genital excision yet remain adamant in their abolitionist stance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines 'black diaspora writings' and European discourses; the critical excursus concludes by reaffirming the need to rely on complex, flexible, and context-oriented categories in a perspective "that both 'provincializes Europe' and 'globalizes Africa'." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African migration to Europe is commonly seen as a tidal wave of desperate people fleeing poverty and warfare at home trying to enter the elusive European el Dorado. Typical 'solutions' proposed by politicians include increasing border controls or boosting African 'stay-at-home' development. However, such apocalyptic views are based on fundamentally flawed assumptions about the (limited) magnitude, historicity, nature and causes of this migration. Dominant discourses obscure the fact that African migration to Europe and Libya is fuelled by a structural demand for cheap migrant labour in informal sectors. This explains why restrictive immigration policies have invariably failed to stop migration and have had various perverse effects. African development is also unlikely to curb migration as it will enable and inspire more people to migrate. Despite lip service being paid to 'combating illegal migration' for political and diplomatic reasons, neither European nor African states have much genuine interest in stopping migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of selected aspects of how the economic security of growing numbers of Africans is linked to international migration. It first examines the emergence since 2005 of a new international policy discourse emphasizing the positive economic benefits of migration through remittance flows, the transfer of ideas and inward investment by migrants. The article outlines European policy responses to the recent upsurge in illegal Africa migration across the Mediterranean and examines the reaction of African governments and the Africa Union to increased migration and the enhanced dependence of African economies on remittance flows. The final section highlights the way in which the accelerated settlement of Africans in the UK prefigures longer term changes in the UK's relationship with Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, an attempt is made to examine the ways in which an African city (Lagos) is written about in the works of African writers in Europe. The paper relies on the templates provided by selected short stories of the London-based Nigerian writer (Ben Okri) and Chika Unigwe, the Nigerian writer who lives with her Flemish husband in Turnhout, Belgium. In the main, the paper critically elucidates how the two migrant writers appropriate the city of Lagos in their respective texts. The analysis of the selected stories has revealed that Lagos has been used as a topos, a theme, a trope, a metaphor and a symbol by the writers. The city has been used in the stories as a pervading metaphor for insecurity, neglect, anonymity and perversion of the ideal. Thus, in the texts, the reader witnesses a tacit critique of urban regulatory mechanisms and all forms of neocolonial decadence in modern African states. It is also revealed that the stories appeal to readers due to the writers' adroit blend of matter and manner, that is, there is a skilful interface between literary aesthetics and social realities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the expansion of African religions in Europe. Categories of African Christian religious groups; Characteristics of African initiated churches; Factors contributing to transnational migration of Africans; Role of communication and information technology in the enhancement and facilitation of migration between Europe and Africa.

Focuses on the impact of African migration into Europe on the migrants. Effect of the African diaspora on the European society; Analysis on the concept of religion; Multidimensionality of religion; Relationship between religion, society and the individual; Characteristics of African migrants; Role of religion in the society.

Focuses on issues addressed in the conference entitled 'Open Space: The African Christian Diaspora in Europe and the Quest for Human Community.' Ways of strengthening unity between African Christian communities separated by language and geography; Empowerment of minority women; Formulation of spirituality that defies bureaucracy and fosters communication.

Highlights several conventions regarding the significance of African Christian migration in Europe. 'The Significance of the African Religious Diaspora in Europe' in Leeds, England; 'Significance of Cultural Unity in Diversity' in Sweden; Annual meeting of the French missiological society CREDIC; 'The African Religious Diaspora in Germany.'

Editorial. Provides an overview of the African Christian migration to Europe. Composition of the African community; Importance of issues on human rights, religious freedom, racial equality and social justice; Influence of Black and African-influenced Christianity on Western religion; Global impact of Pentecostalism.

Background: Despite numerous campaigns and interventions to end female genital mutilation (FGM), the practice persists across the world, including the European Union (EU). Previous interventions have focused mainly on awareness raising and legislation aimed at criminalizing the practice. Limited evidence exists on the effectiveness of interventions due in part to the lack of systematic evaluation of projects. This paper presents an evaluation of the REPLACE Approach, which is a new methodology for tackling FGM based on community-based behaviour change and intervention evaluation., Methods: We developed, trialed and evaluated the REPLACE Approach through extensive engagement with eight FGM affected African diaspora communities in five EU countries. We employed qualitative and quantitative tools to obtain data to inform the development, implementation and evaluation of the Approach. These included community-based participatory action research, questionnaires and community readiness assessments. The research took place between 2010 and 2016., Results: Findings suggested that the Approach has the capability for building the capacities of FGM affected communities to overturn social norms that perpetuate the practice. We observed that community-based action research is a useful methodology for collecting data in FGM intervention settings as it allows for effective community engagement to identify, educate and motivate influential community members to challenge the practice, as well as obtaining useful information on the beliefs and norms that shape the practice. We also found that community readiness assessments, pre and post intervention, were useful for tailoring interventions appropriately and for evaluating changes in attitudes and behaviour that may have resulted from the interventions., Conclusion: This evaluation has demonstrated that the REPLACE Approach has the potential, over time, to bring about changes in norms and attitudes associated with FGM. Its strengths lay in the engagement with influential community members, in building the capacity and motivation of community members to undertake change, in recognising contextual differences in the barriers and enablers of FGM practice and in tailoring interventions to local community readiness to change, and then evaluating interventions to re-inform implementation. The next steps would therefore be to implement the Approach over a longer time frame to assess if it results in measurable change in behaviour.