page_title: White Africans of European ancestry
section_title: Overview
hierarchical_section_title: White Africans of European ancestry / Overview
caption_attribution_description: English: Farmers visiting on a fruit farm in Southern Rhodesia (present Zimbabwe), early 1920s. Photograph taken by the British South Africa Company for an advertisement, presumably to attract new European settlers to its territories in Southern Africa. The BSAC is now defunct.
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: European settlement patterns in Africa generally favoured territories with a substantial amount of land at least 910 metres (3,000 ft) above sea level, an annual rainfall of over 510 millimetres (20 in) but not exceeding 1,020 millimetres (40 in), 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 immigrants arrived on the continent between 1890 and 1918.
  Most European settlers 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 settlers 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 unscrupulous settlers 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 only 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 larger and larger numbers of black farmers as well as their livestock began to be concentrated in increasingly overcrowded areas.
  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 peasant production (South Africa being the sole exception to the rule, as its white businesses and labour were heavily subsidised by the state).
  Unlike other former settler colonies such as those in the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand, 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 (Zimbabwe). Permanent white settlers were regarded as an increasing liability by colonial administrations as
caption: White farmers in Southern Rhodesia, early 1920s.
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