African diaspora in Finland country of origin Africa
The African diaspora in Finland (Finnish: afrikkalaisten diaspora Suomessa) refers to the residents of Finland of full or partial African ancestry, mostly from Sub-Saharan Africa. According to Statistics Finland, the total number of people in Finland with a close African background (Africans in Finland; Suomen afrikkalaiset) was 57,496 in 2020.The distinct adjacent term Afro-Finns (afrosuomalaiset), also referred to as Black Finns (mustat suomalaiset), can be used for Finns whose lineages are fully or partly in the populations of Sub-Saharan Africa ("Black Africa"). Afro-Finns have lived in Finland since the 19th century, and in 2009, according to Yle, there were an estimated 20,000 Afro-Finns in Finland.History
Finns reacted to the first Africans in Finland with curiosity and amazement. During the 19th century, there were some Africans from the Americas who worked as servants for wealthy Russians in the Grand Duchy of Finland. The first known African who received Finnish citizenship was Rosa Lemberg who came to Finland from Ovamboland in 1888 and received Finnish citizenship in 1899.Between the 1900s and the 1970s, the few Africans in Finland were mostly either students (for example from Nigeria and Ethiopia), political exiles from South Africa or people married to Finns. In World War II (1939–1945), there were some Afro-Finnish soldiers, and among them were Private 1st Class Rudolf Prüss, who served as a ski patrol leader in the Karelian Isthmus and was killed in the Winter War, and Corporal Holger Sonntag, who was of African-American and German descent and served as a driver in both the Winter War and Continuation War.In 1990, during the Somali Civil War, the first Somali refugees arrived in Finland. After that, due to their high total fertility rate and the high number of Somali family reunifications, quota refugees and asylum seekers, they rapidly became the largest African group in Finland. During the 2003 FIFA U-17 World Championship held in Finland, most of the Sierra Leone national under-17 football team's players defected to Finland due to their country's poor conditions after a civil war that had ended a year earlier.Nowadays most people of African ancestry come to Finland from Africa, but many have also come from the United States, Latin America and other European countries. Especially Americans and British people of African ancestry have moved to Finland, mostly through marriage.Marriages and cohabitation
On 31 December 2020, there were 4,589 Finnish citizens who were either married to or registered as cohabiting with citizens of African countries. 2,809 (61.2%) of the Finnish citizens were women and 1,780 (38.8%) were men; for both sexes the largest groups of partners were Somalian, Moroccan and Nigerian citizens. The next largest groups for Finnish women were Gambian and Ghanaian citizens, and for Finnish men Ethiopian and Kenyan citizens. On the same date, there were 4,725 African-born people who were either married to or registered as cohabiting with people born in Finland; 3,718 (78.7%) of the people born in Finland were women, while 1,007 (21.3%) were men.
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