page_title: White Africans of European ancestry
section_title: Egypt
hierarchical_section_title: White Africans of European ancestry / Greeks in Africa / Egypt
caption_attribution_description: English: Representation of Ptolemy. Previously published in Les vrais pourtraits et vies des hommes illustres grecz, latins, et payens recueilliz de leurs tableaux livres et medalles antiques, et modernes. Par Andre Thevet angoumoysin, premier cosmographe du roy., premier tome, livre II, chap. 41, "Claude Ptolemee Pelusien", p. 87. Published by Blanche Marantin and Guillaume Chaudiere, Paris, 1584.
context_page_description: White Africans of European ancestry are descendants of any of the white ethnic groups originating on the European continent. In 1989, there were an estimated 4.6 million white people with European ancestry on the African continent. Most are of Dutch, British, Portuguese, German, and French descent; and to a lesser extent there are also those who descended from Italians, Spaniards, and Greeks. The majority once lived along the Mediterranean coast or in Southern Africa.
  The earliest permanent European communities in Africa 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 settlers appeared when France and Great Britain colonized Africa. Before regional decolonization, white Africans may have numbered up to 6 million persons and were represented in every part of the continent.
  A voluntary exodus of colonials accompanied independence in most African nations. Portuguese Mozambicans, who numbered about 200,000 in 1975, departed en masse because of economic policies directed against their wealth; they now number 82,000.
context_section_description: Greeks have been living in Egypt since and even before Alexander the Great conquered Egypt at an early stage of his great 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.
  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.
  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.
caption: The geographer Ptolemy was a Greek born in Alexandria
exif: {}