The African continent is seeing a very rapidly growing number of Chinese immigrants coming to the continent for economic opportunities. Many of the first Chinese people on the continent were brought as contract labourers, similarly to the Indian community.
Over 1 million Chinese workers currently live in Africa. There are about 700,000 Chinese in Ghana and known to be the African country with most Chinese, meaning approximately 2.4% of her population are Chinese, ~ 400,000 Chinese live in South Africa, 100,000 in Madagascar, 100,000 in Zambia, 74,000 in Sudan, 60,000 in Ethiopia, 50,000 in Angola, 50,000 in Kenya, 50,000 in Nigeria, 50,000 in Uganda, 40,000 in Algeria, 40,000 in Chad, 130,000 in Namibia, 35,000 in Mauritius, 30,000 in Tanzania, 25,000 in the Republic of the Congo, 20,000 in Lesotho, 12,000 in Mozambique and 10,000 in Egypt.
Thousands of other Asians, like Indians and Japanese, also live in DR Congo. 9,000 Chinese live in Zimbabwe, 6,000 in Botswana, 5,000 in Cameroon, 5,000 in Equatorial Guinea, 5,000 in Guinea, 3,000 in Djibouti, 3,000 in Malawi, 3,000 in Mali, 3,000 in Togo 2,000 in Senegal 1,000 in Niger and 1,000 Chinese live in South Sudan. Most of the estimated 50,000 Chinese people in the DRC live in Kinshasa or work for the mining companies of Haut-Katanga Province.
National Geographic also published an article by Frank Viviano; in July 2005, he visited Pate Island. During the time he stayed on Lamu, ceramic fragments had been found around Lamu which the administrative officer of the local Swahili history museum claimed were of Chinese origin, specifically from Zheng He’s voyage to east Africa. The eyes of the Pate people resembled Chinese and Famao and Wei were some of the names among them which were speculated to be of Chinese origin.
Their ancestors were said to be from indigenous women who intermarried with Chinese Ming sailors when they were shipwrecked. Two places on Pate were called “Old Shanga”, and “New Shanga”, which the Chinese sailors had named. A local guide who claimed descent from the Chinese showed Frank a graveyard made out of coral on the island, indicating that they were the graves of the Chinese sailors, which the author described as “virtually identical”, to Chinese Ming dynasty tombs, complete with “half-moon domes” and “terraced entries”.
