British diaspora in Africa

British diaspora in Africa
Total population
(2–2,5 million)
Regions with significant populations
South Africa	1,600,000
Zambia	40,000
Kenya	32,000
Zimbabwe	30,000
Languages
First language South African English · English Second or third language Afrikaans · Bantu languages · European languages
Religion
Anglicanism · Protestantism · Roman Catholicism · Judaism
Related ethnic groups
British · English · Scottish · Irish · Coloureds · Afrikaners

The British diaspora in Africa is a population group broadly defined as English-speaking white Africans of mainly (but not only) British descent who live in or come from Sub-Saharan Africa. The majority live in South Africa and other Southern African countries including Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Lesotho and Swaziland. There are also sizable numbers in Kenya, Nigeria and Ghana. Their first language is usually English, South African English in the case of South Africans. Although the majority of white Africans who speak English as a first language are of British and Irish ancestry, their numbers also include people of Portuguese, Italian, German, Jewish, Dutch and French Huguenot ancestry among others.

Although there were earlier British settlements along the West African coast to facilitate the British Atlantic slave trade, British settlement in Africa only began in earnest at the end of the eighteenth century, at the Cape of Good Hope. British settlement in the Cape gained momentum following the second British occupation of the Dutch Cape Colony in 1806, and the subsequent encouragement of British settlers in Albany ("Settler Country") in order to consolidate the British Cape Colony's eastern frontier during the Cape Frontier Wars against the Xhosa.Natal in southeastern Africa was proclaimed a British colony in 1843. Following the defeat of the Boers in the Second Boer War in 1902, Britain annexed the Boer Republics of the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State.