Afro-Italian - Italians of African descent

[Villa]

This past summer 2009 and 2007 I met a lot of people in Italy who are from Sub-Sahara Africa.

The related term "Afro-Italian" is also at times used to describe people of mixed African and Italian descent.
The term specific to those who are citizens of Italy.

Italians of African descent are Italian citizens or people of the Italian nationality who are of African descent.

The term African in this case sometimes applies only to Sub-Saharan Africans or Black Africans, especially when
North Africans are categorized separately as Arabic. Immigrants from Africa officially residing in Italy
currently number about 755,000.

North Africans and Sub-Saharan Africans
The largest group from Africa are from North Africa, numbering about 525,000 official residents in 2006. By
country of origin, the greatest number of immigrants are from Morocco (343,000), Tunisia (89,000), Egypt (66,000)
and Algeria (22,000). Unofficial estimates are considerably higher. Italy has also a number of Libyans, most of
these came after their country's independence in 1947.

Compared to North Africans, the percentage of Sub-Saharan Africans within all the people who recently migrated to
Italy is relatively small (around 7.5%). Black Africans from Central Africa represent the majority of Afro-Italians,
who number around 230,000, mostly coming from Senegal (60,000), Nigeria (38,000) and Ghana (37,000).