11

African-Born Immigrants
in the United States

Although a handful of Africans studied in the United States beginning in

1906, when the first native South African lawyer and African nationalist Pix-
ley Ka Isaka Seme (1881–1951) graduated from Columbia University, the labor
needs for building the African postcolonial state from the late 1920s to the 1960s
urgently necessitated growth in university-level training for Africans. As a result,
the mid-1960s saw an increased desire for American higher education among
the new generation of Africans. Often the Africans who received American
schooling returned to apply the knowledge and benefits of their sojourns in the
United States to the socioeconomic and political developmental needs of their
respective home countries. However, not all of these students and their families
returned to Africa after graduation. For the small number of individuals who
decided to remain in America, the chief reasons for their decision were the in-
ability to complete their education, the increasing incidence of conflict on the
continent, and/or the attractions of an American lifestyle.
As the civil crises that plagued the postcolonial state increased in the late
1970s, reaching a climax in the 1980s—prompting Basil Davidson to call this
era “the decade of the AK-47”1—Africa witnessed what some observers today
refer to as a massive “brain drain,” the emigration of highly qualified profession-
als or intelligent people to countries where they would gain more profitable
and steady employment.2 Whether the Africans who emigrated were engineers,
doctors, dentists, teachers, nurses, or writers, two things are clear: first, the im-
migrants took along with them some members of their families as well as ele-
ments of their inherited cultures. Second, their presence in the United States
as visible minorities refreshed the long history of United States-Africa relations
and enriched the exchange of cultural ideas across the Atlantic. Following the

229
230 African Colonial Freedom

Immigration Act of 1990, when the U.S. Congress passed the Diversity Visa
Lottery program, more Africans and their families gained the opportunity to
resettle in America as legal residents.3 In 2015, the Pew Research Center esti-
mated that there were 2.1 million African-born immigrants living in the United
States (4.8 percent of the U.S. population).4 These migrants constituted them-
selves into thousands of African communities across the United States that
have instituted ethnic unions/associations, cultural events, and “national days”
across America. Additionally, churches founded by African-born clergy (other-
wise called African Instituted Churches, or AICs) have sprouted in the United
States as one of the most powerful conveyors of African identity and socializa-
tion. Through different events and counseling support, these agencies provide
their members with African foods, plays, music, religious practices, moonlight
songs, films, and so on. Thus, African culture is imported and transmitted to a
new generation of African Americans with African parents.
In the past two decades, scholars have shown a significant interest in the
exponential rise in African migration to Europe and North America that be-
gan in the late 1990s. Before this time, the majority of African migrants were
categorized as “economic migrants” and usually ended up in various Euro-
pean countries—particularly the metropoles of former colonial powers such
as Britain, France, Belgium, Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain.
However, recent studies of African emigration indicate that the latest trends
have produced one of the fastest growths in the African-born population in
America. The records show that this rising pattern occurred mostly in the past
two decades.5 For instance, in 1970, eighty Africans landed in the United States.
In 1980, the number rose to 200. Then it stood at 364 in 1990, 881 in 2000, and
2,060 in 2015.6
The bulk of the literature on cross-country, cross-regional migrations is more
preoccupied with the causes of the population movements than with their cul-
tural effects on the host societies.7 Specifically, current research on the Africa-
to-the-United States population flow generally focuses on the stream of skilled
labor and refugees from Africa to the United States.8 A more nuanced and infor-
mative study by Kevin Thomas in 2011 provides insights into three main areas:
first, an estimate of the relative size of the overall trend in African emigration
to the United States between 1992 and 2007, considering employment-related
or family-reunification migration; second, the extent to which country-level so-
cioeconomic and demographic factors determined the emigration trends; and
third, whether emerging trends in African emigration to the United States vary
across linguistic and developmental contexts.9
Some lacunas remain in the studies—among them are the cultural conse-
quences of the African-born immigrants on their American host communities.
 African-Born Immigrants 231

People move with their inherited culture and often try to reenact, although with
limited success, their native habits and ideas in their host societies. Thus, our
primary goal is to provide some perspective on how African-born immigrants of
the past two decades have enriched the American cultural nexus as Africans in
America strove to make the United States their new home and realize the Amer-
ican Dream. First, however, it is vital to outline the historical context in which
recent African population movements to the United States have occurred.

H ISTORIC A L C ON TEXT

The history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which uprooted millions of Afri-
cans to the New World, has been covered in detail in the preceding chapters.
With the effective end to the human trade in the nineteenth century, a paltry
463 Africans arrived in the United States on average per year between 1861 and
1961.10 Although there may have been other studies whose conclusions are not
available, Walter Williams’s seminal study of the ethnic relations of African stu-
dents in the United States from 1870 to 1900 highlights that sixty-seven Africans
attended seventeen American schools between 1870 and 1900. Williams reveals
that the geographical origins of these students in Africa were diverse: thirty-
two were from Liberia, seventeen from South Africa, eleven from Sierra Le-
one, four from the Gold Coast (modern Ghana), and one each from Ethiopia,
Gabon, and Nyasaland. American missionaries sponsored nearly all of these
students, and the goal was to train the Africans in the United States for mission-
ary work in Africa. The American missionary bodies believed that converted
and educated Africans would be more effective missionaries among their own
people than outsiders would be. Above all, the belief was that indigenous Afri-
cans would remain healthy in a tropical climate infested with morbid disease
vectors like mosquitoes and would have no language or cultural barriers with
their congregations.11
The records of the U.S. Census Bureau further show that just 350 Africans
arrived in the United States between 1891 and 1900.12 Among them were twenty
African students at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, founded in 1854 by the
Northern Presbyterians. Sixteen of these students were from Liberia. Other
African immigrants included five students at Fisk University in Tennessee, a
school sponsored by the American Missionary Association, an agency that had
aided freed slaves in the South after the Civil War. One of the five students was
of Mendi ethnic extraction in Sierra Leone.13 The 2015 Pew Research Center
study corroborates the fact that very little African migration across the Atlantic
occurred in the century prior to the end of colonial rule in 1960. The research
shows that in 1960, 84 percent of immigrants living in the United States were
232 African Colonial Freedom

individuals born in Europe or Canada, about 6 percent were from Mexico,

3.8 percent from South and East Asia, and 3.5 percent from the rest of Latin
America. Immigrants from other areas, including Africa, South and East Asia,
and the Middle East, comprised 2.7 percent of the total.14
In contrast, the turn of the twenty-first century saw a significant change. The
data from the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that about 60,000 African-born
individuals arrived in the United States annually from 2000 to 2005.15 In other
words, the majority of the African-born population in the United States today
came in the past two decades. In their separate studies, A. Gordon and Mary
Kent concluded that the pre-1965 U.S. immigration laws that drastically cur-
tailed African immigration to the United States for most of the twentieth cen-
tury were responsible for the low or near absence of African-born movement
to the United States before the late 1990s.16 Indeed, the restrictions were so
stringent that by the mid-1960s, African-born immigrants accounted for just 1
percent of all immigrants allowed into the country.17
Nonetheless, the unfavorable immigration laws enacted by the U.S. govern-
ment were not solely responsible for the low immigration flow of Africans to the
United States. A couple of other historical factors played decisive roles in this
trend. First, the end of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the Americas created
a new situation in the late nineteenth century in which the priority of those
involved in the Atlantic exchanges, particularly the U.S. government, was to re-
patriate as many Africans as possible to Africa. Most of these returnees resettled
in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and other coastal enclaves in West Africa. Second,
European colonial intrusion in Africa, which came on the heels of the thrust of
Christian missionary evangelism in the late nineteenth century, effectively re-
stricted the emigration of the Africans. In fact, from the late eighteenth century
to the 1960s, Africa was the favored destination of global migrations as outside
adventurers, colonial officials, Western missionaries, fortune hunters, and Eu-
ropean settlers descended on the continent in search of its abundant natural
and human resources.
The low or near absence of African-born emigration to the United States con-
tinued in the immediate postcolonial period despite the 1965 U.S. immigration
reforms, which overturned the previous quota system that discriminated against
individuals from certain countries. By the 1980s, however, African emigration
to the United States began to pick up for the first time since the late nineteenth
century. In their 2006 study, Kwadwor Konadu-Agyemang and Baffour Takyi
discovered that the number of Africans arriving in the United States in the de-
cade from 1982 to 1992 represented a whopping 500 percent increase on the to-
tal number of Africans who moved to the United States in the century between
 African-Born Immigrants 233

1861 and 1961.18 The primary reason for this remarkable rise was in connection
with the labor needs of the Africans as European colonial dominions unraveled
without creating opportunities in universities for the colonized people to train
the critically needed African labor. In other words, most of the African migrants
going to the United States in this period sought college education and skills
needed to fill sectors of the postcolonial economy. Yet, in relation to immigrant
groups from other parts of the world, the African-born population of the United
States remained very small.19
A feature that separates Africans from other immigrant groups in the United
States is their sharp growth rate, which spiked after 2000. The underpinning
of this growth goes back to the mid-1980s, when the economies of many Afri-
can states began to falter. The neoliberal reforms inspired by the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank in Africa, as in Asia and Latin America,
brought into purview the continent’s debt crises following the worldwide eco-
nomic recessions in the early 1980s and the consequent collapse of world com-
modity prices. To support their weakening economies and increase production
capacities, many African countries sought sanctuary in external loans from the
IMF, World Bank, International Finance Corporation (IFI), European Invest-
ment Bank, and the Paris Club (Club de Paris in French) comprising officials
from major creditor nations who decide on solutions for delinquent debtor
countries. They also sought help from individual Western nations. In response,
these governments and creditor institutions imposed strict conditions requiring
conformity to neoliberalism for their loans and credits. The set of economic
policies designed to enforce sanity in the troubled economies and to accelerate
development in sub-Saharan Africa was labeled structural adjustment programs
(SAPs). Between 1980 and 1993, thirty-six sub-Saharan African debtor nations
implemented SAPs under other names, such as “economic survival programs”
and “economic recovery plans.”20
In general, the policies recommended by the Western credit institutions
failed to help the African economies, and often the blame lay with the IMF.
The plans offered by the IMF completely sidestepped the developmental needs
of Africa and questions about what forms of integration were most suitable for
the people. Making matters worse, African leaders engaged in gross mismanage-
ment and corruption. Here resides the socioeconomic milieu in which, from
the 1980s onwards, highly skilled African workers started to look for opportuni-
ties outside the continent.
The economic basis of African mass emigration from the late twentieth cen-
tury accords with neoclassical migration theory, which conceptualizes migration
as a product of wage differentials between origin and destination countries.21
234 African Colonial Freedom

Exponents of the neoclassical theory, initially formulated to explain population

movements within a country, posit that migration on the international level is a
product of the desire of the migrants from low-wage or labor-surplus countries to
move to high-wage or labor-scarce countries. This tendency means that the ap-
parent economic failures of the 1980s and 1990s created an income differential
between the United States and Africa, which led to the appeal of the neoclassi-
cal paradigm’s role in contemporary African migration research. In this regard,
Jill Wilson and Shelly Habecker concluded that economic failures compelled
African professionals to look for better opportunities outside the continent.22
A study by Amy Hagopian and others published in 2004 revealed that a major-
ity of the roughly 5,334 African doctors then in the United States had come from
the poorest African countries, with 86 percent coming from Nigeria, Ghana,
and South Africa.23 This revelation corroborates an earlier study by Carrington
and Detragiache published in the IMF’s quarterly periodical Finance and De-
velopment in 1999, which showed that 74 percent of all African immigrants in
the United States are college graduates.24 The Pew Research Center has drawn
a similar conclusion that African-born immigrants in the United States are more
educated than both the native-born U.S. population and migrants from other
countries, and are more likely to gain profitable employment in the United
States and the United Kingdom.25
The neoclassical paradigm is inclined toward Immanuel Wallerstein’s World
Systems theory, which claims that Western economic exploitation in the pe-
riphery gives rise to resource drain and, by implication, the “brain-drain.” Care-
fully interpreted, the flow of human and material resources from more impov-
erished regions of the world to more prosperous areas is a product of both the
permeation of capitalist economic relationships into developing countries and
cultural and ideological linkages between the mother countries and the ex-co-
lonial territories.26 Monica Boyd emphatically contends that these colonial net-
works facilitate most international migrations drifting from the less-developed
countries to the industrially advanced Western nations.27
To conclude, it is apparent from the preceding discussion that individuals
and families emigrate from their original homelands to distant places primarily
because of their economic necessities. Some scholars, among them A. R. Zol-
berg, have argued that the state’s control of migration processes provides another
perspective that explains recent African population movements to the United
States.28 The idea is that nations like the United States, Canada, Australia, and
Britain can impose certain limits on the number of immigrant admissions and
determine the characteristics of immigrants allowed to live within their borders.
While this is true, it is fundamental to add that individuals, under normal con-
 African-Born Immigrants 235

ditions, would not leave their home countries regardless of favorable or unfavor-
able immigration laws. This caveat provides the basis for understanding the Di-
versity Visa (DV) Lottery program, through which more Africans have gained
entry to the United States in the past twenty years than in the decades before the
program’s inception.29 Barbara Dietz has noted that under the DV Lottery pro-
gram, family-reunification policies tend to create more migrant networks and
further strengthen familial ties between immigrants and their relatives in their
origin countries.30 Other auxiliary factors, such as improved means of commu-
nication and the increasing globalization of cultures, have helped to promote
this pattern of immigration. Among other things, there are, however, limited
studies on the role of kinship networks and African-born social institutions in
easing the challenges that confront new African immigrants, and on their ef-
fects on identity formation and cultural productions to the United States.
In sum, the extant research on the recent movement of the African-born
population to the United States is preoccupied with the factors behind this phe-
nomenon. Scholars and policymakers have given little or no attention to the
effects of the presence of the new migrant communities on the development of
new habits and cultural practices in the United States. It is, therefore, important
to examine how well the new African immigrants have successfully fused into
U.S. society while lending aspects of their inherited culture to the host society.
The sources for the discussion that follows include minutes of activities of eth-
nic unions such as the Nigerian, Igbo, Yoruba, Ghanaian, Sierra Leonean, and
Liberian associations in various American cities, including Houston, Dallas,
Austin, Baltimore, the District of Columbia, New York, and Louisville. Visual
displays and textual accounts from popular magazines and newspaper sources
from the United States and Africa provide an even more compelling story of the
ongoing American consumption of African cultural inventions. Additionally,
we have drawn on the Constitution of Association of Congolese Community in
Los Angeles; the Constitution of Mandingo Descendants Association in Wash-
ington, D.C.; and African Times USA, which lists more than 100 African ethnic
associations, clubs, and/or unions operating in the United States.

AG E NC IES O F CU LTU RA L EXPR ES S ION AND TRANS MIS S ION

Comparable to other foreign-born groups in alien societies, African-born mi-

grants in the United States try to keep their home traditions alive in several
ways. These include visits back to their countries of origin; purchasing and
distributing African films, particularly Nollywood movies; involvement in sport-
ing activities; education; exchange of gifts; and foodways. All of these activities
236 African Colonial Freedom

help maintain social relations. Religious worship, which builds trust in social
relations, and memberships in village/ethnic/national associations also keep
traditions alive. Among these and other agencies that connect friendship, mar-
riage, and other forms of social and cultural expressions, the church and ethnic
associations are the most popular and effective. In fact, among the African mi-
grants, it is within these two agencies that their family, identity, habits, and so-
cial networks cohere. It is, however, important to state that not all African-born
immigrants have belonged to these associations and churches.
Similar to hundreds of African ethnic associations in the United States, the
Quardu-Gboni Mandingo Association in the United States, a kinship forum
that represents U.S. African-born residents from Lofa County in Liberia, opens
the preamble to its constitution with the statement: “Mindful of our obligation
to uphold the virtues of our forefathers . . . as well as our own recent past history
and our obligation to present and future generations; have resolved to organize
ourselves for the purposes of promoting unity, peaceful co-existence, tolerance,
equality, our traditional values and progress among ourselves and our compatri-
ots and the world at large.”31
Similarly, the constitution of the Houston-based Ghana Association purports
to: “(1) foster a spirit of friendship, mutual understanding, and respect among
the people of Ghana and the United States. (2) Act as a vehicle for the chan-
neling of charitable contributions and donations from the public and business
community to hospitals, and educational institutions in Ghana. (3) Act as the
representative body and mouthpiece of people with interest in Ghana affairs,
and living in the Houston Metropolitan area.”32 What immediately catches one’s
attention in these associations’ documents is the interface among the members’
inherited African culture, their historical connection with their native land,
and their declared intent to use African symbols and value systems to promote
unity and progress on both sides of the Atlantic. In this context, the ethnic as-
sociations have become a socialization agency with a Pan-African ideology.
Among other things, the Quardu-Gboni Mandingo Association uses its vari-
ous committees to execute its numerous activities and developmental projects.
However, top on its agenda is the promotion of Quardu-Gboni consciousness
in America through organizing monthly and annual social events. Like the Si-
erra Leonean Youth Association in Philadelphia and the Achi Association USA,
the Quardu-Gboni Association routinely provides medical and sanitary relief
assistance to relatives in Liberia, including the purchase and shipment of medi-
cal supplies, drugs, equipment, and so on. The association also supports the
educational needs of the Quardu-Gboni District of Lofa County in Liberia by
 African-Born Immigrants 237

awarding scholarships to qualified students at institutions of higher education

at home.
The Ways, Means, and Financial Committee of the Quardu-Gboni Associa-
tion is charged with raising funds for developmental projects such as “construc-
tion of schools, clinics/hospitals, feeder roads, etc.”33 Annually, the association,
whose main chapters are located in New York and New Jersey, organizes Val-
entine’s Day parties for members, families, and friends. During the occasion,
all celebrants dress in African attire and offer their American guests and friends
African dishes such as dumboy (or fufu), along with palm butter, palava sauce,
meat, stew, jollof rice, and country chop. African music and dance provide
entertainment for the guests. Such annual events afford opportunities for the
members to raise money for the association’s various projects. The two-day 2012
Valentine’s Day “Black and Red” parties of the Quardu-Gboni held at the Sikira
Night Club in Philadelphia and the Village Social Club in Newark, New Jer-
sey, sold admission tickets for $20 per person.34
The Congolese community predominantly resettled in Los Angeles and New
York because of the endless civil war in the Republic of the Congo, which
has claimed nearly 5.4 million lives.35 The Congolese Community of Southern
California’s program “An Evening of Healing and Hope,” on April 30, 2005, was
organized in partnership with KPFK Radio, Women for Women International,
CARE International, and the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Af-
fairs. As announced on the webpage of UCLA’s African Studies Center, the
program featured a live concert with “La Rumba, an Africana Oye Band, featur-
ing Shimita, Dodo, Deesse, Nene, Chantal, Jado, Parigo, and dancers.”36 The
event, organized by Jules Boyele and Ben Mandela, sold tickets for $10 and $15
in advance and at the gate, respectively. The festivities also featured a fashion
show and a fundraising dinner to benefit the female victims of the Congolese
civil war. Other aims of the occasion were to promote education among Afri-
cans and to increase awareness of the dangers of HIV/AIDS in the Democratic
Republic of Congo.
Yet, some of the glitziest and most progressive African ethnic associations in
the United States are found among the Nigerian (Igbo, Yoruba, Ibibio, etc.)
ethnic communities. The reason for this goes beyond the large size of the Nige-
rian-born migrant population in the United States. The strength and efficiency
with which the Nigerian ethnic associations operate and maintain historical
linkages to their village communities in Nigeria go back to the African colonial
period, when these associations sprouted up in the colonial cities and served as
harbingers of development in their villages. The Nigerian ethnic associations
238 African Colonial Freedom

in the United States sometimes include separate women’s organizations such

as the Umuada Ndi Igbo in the diaspora, which is based in Houston. Peter
Ekeh has argued persuasively that under colonialism the notion of kinship was
expanded considerably into the construction of ethnic groups.37 Indeed, the
Nigerian colonial cities saw a profusion of an expanded and complex practice
of kinship belongingness. This culture was not limited to the Igbo or the Yoruba
alone. In their attempts to create modern people and communities, other eth-
nic groups in colonial Nigeria, like the Calabar, Ibibio, Urhobo, Edo, and Efik,
also established progressive unions; other such groups are found in both the
eastern and midwestern regions of the United States. Most of these associations
and their subnationalities not only rallied to help members who had come from
the countryside to urban centers in search of new opportunities for social mo-
bility, but also sponsored the overseas education of their indigenous sons.
Historian Austin Ahanaotu asserts that the leading Igbo lineage organizations
in colonial Nigeria were founded in about 1920.38 However, this might not be
entirely true because Christopher Fyfe’s study of James B. Africanus Horton
(1835–1889), the Igbo-born Sierra Leonean medical doctor and intellectual, re-
veals that Horton was a member of the Igbo union in Freetown, Sierra Leone,
where he lived and died.39 This fact means that the Igbo union was already in
existence at least four to five decades before its Nigerian colonial antecedents,
as noted by Ahanaotu. In the colonial cities, the smallest Igbo “lineage” was the
village group, and this expanded kinship network, or “brotherhood,” provided
the basis for organizing group action.40 The lineage organizations later flow-
ered into formal patriotic and improvement unions. They eventually became
a defining part of Igbo life and culture in the third and fourth decades of the
colonial era.41
For the Igbo, like their Nigerian neighbors, these colonial organizations rep-
resented Igbo forms of mobilization and communal expression. While mem-
berships in the Igbo lineage/improvement unions were hypothetically volun-
tary, the truth is that individuals who declined to identify with the kinship were
perceived as social and ethnic outcasts. For the Afikpo Association, for example,
“membership shall only be terminated by death, permanent insanity or expul-
sion.”42 The ethnic organizations also pressured their members to make finan-
cial contributions to community projects. The Igbos carried over this invented
tradition from the colonial era to the postcolonial order, and from there to the
various African diasporas in the Americas and elsewhere today.
Like the other numerous ethnic and national unions of African origin, con-
temporary Nigerian ethnic associations in the United States perform identical
functions, which include socialization among members and promotion of com-
 African-Born Immigrants 239

munity and ethnic consciousness. The Association of Nigerians in the Capi-

tol District (ANCD) of the State of New York in New Albany, established in
1999, fulfills similar identity and socialization functions. The constitution of the
ANCD professed its purpose as follows: “(1) To dedicate ourselves to the unity,
progress, and strength of our Association and the community, and to promote
the general welfare of members. (2) To keep the community clearly and reliably
informed about Nigeria and its people. (3) To organize and implement social,
cultural, and educational activities that meet the needs and interests of mem-
bers. (4) To work in collaboration with public and private agencies, business, in-
dustry, and community organizations to share information, exchange ideas on
issues of interest to members and the community.”43 Within this constitutional
framework, the members prioritize the following goals: enhancing cultural
awareness of Nigerians through active participation in the community; assisting
new immigrants to acclimate in the Capitol District; promoting volunteerism
among members; instilling positive values, civic responsibility, and skills for
good citizenship in adult and youth community members; and strengthening
the educational/career aspirations of young people through mentoring.44
The ANCD usually holds annual cultural and social celebrations in Sep-
tember and in October, when Nigeria celebrates its independence anniversary.
According to the association, the overall “strategic purpose is to foster a sense
of community among diverse ethnic and racial groups and build lasting rela-
tionships through cultural performances and historical presentations for area
schools and community-based organizations.”45 The ANCD’s annual events,
which continuously draw good attendance, consist of invited speakers who de-
liver keynote addresses on diverse topics of interest to members and the com-
munity at large. The “event also features Nigerian cultural shows, including
fashions and cultural dances. In most cases, the association displays Nigerian
cuisine and dance at the occasions.”46
Often, the various Nigerian ethnic unions in the United States organize free
family summer picnics for young people and their American friends. In Louis-
ville, Kentucky, for example, the Community of Nigerians in Kentuckiana
(CONK) holds picnics every July for members and their families, and their
American friends are strongly encouraged to join the association. The associa-
tion also uses the annual U.S. Independence Day celebration to raise money for
various community projects. At the end of the school year, the Nigerian-born
populations in Louisville and southern Indiana organize social events around
graduation ceremonies and other occasions. Similarly, times of marriage and
bereavement bring together members who support the families affected in both
financial and emotional ways. During each of these events, Nigerian foodways,
240 African Colonial Freedom

fashion, dancing, and shows, such as masquerade plays and folk music, are pre-
sented for the entertainment of the audience.
We can go on to highlight similar functions and activities of other African-
born ethnic unions or associations, but it will amount to repetition, for they
all perform the same role in the lives of members and their children, most of
whom were born in the United States and are identified as African Americans.
This group of African Americans is unique in the sense that they straddle two
worlds: the Africana and the United States. Their values and habits follow these
two paths.
It is no surprise, then, that the strong commitment of the African diaspora to
their kith and kin in Africa, especially in the form of remittances, has become
an enormous source of economic development in the mother continent.47
World Bank data shows that in 2017, the African diaspora remitted $37.8 billion
to Africa. This amount increased to $39.2 billion in 2018, and was projected
to rise to $39.6 billion in 2019.48 Of these totals, remittances from Nigerians
accounted for $22.3 billion, and payments from Liberians living overseas ac-
counted for a whopping 25 percent of the home country’s GDP. Remittances
from the African diaspora, which are projected to be about 140 million globally,
help “to reduce poverty and grow the economy.”49 In fact, many agree that this
kind of soft money is far “better than foreign aid funds.”50
The other institutions that have helped to mold the lives of this group of Afri-
can Americans are the African churches brought to the United States by the
parents of the new generation of African Americans. In his classic study of reli-
gion as a cultural system, Clifford Geertz explains that religion serves as a guide
to action for the group that professes the belief system. It is “a system of symbols,
which acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motiva-
tions in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and
clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and
motivations seem uniquely realistic.”51 Geertz’s anthropological definition of
religion is vital to this discussion because it highlights how those who subscribe
to a particular mode of cosmology may see every other thing in life through
that religious prism. Religion has the potency to create a group within a group.
It comes with a certain kind of emotion, which influences the social order. As
Max Weber noted, a collective religious identity forges bonds of the sort that
opposing belief systems cannot appropriate.52
The preceding offers a background to a deeper appreciation of the new-
generation Christian churches (those that are not affiliated with the colonial
churches from Western Europe) established by Africans as one of the most
powerful vehicles through which the African-born community in the United
 African-Born Immigrants 241

States has enhanced its identity, character, and strength and transmitted African
cultural troupes in the host society. Although not all African-born immigrants
living in the United States are members of these new-generation churches,
their membership includes diverse migrant countries such as Nigeria, Ghana,
Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, and the Demo-
cratic Republic of the Congo.53
Found in diverse sizes in almost every nook and cranny of the country to-
day, most African immigrant churches in the United States are located in ma-
jor metropolitan areas with large African-born populations. Among them are
Baltimore and Lanham, Maryland; New York City and throughout New York;
Houston and Dallas, Texas; Everett, Washington; Atlanta, Georgia; Los An-
geles, California; Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota; Louisville, Kentucky; and
Chicago, Illinois.54 Among these Christian churches, the most prominent are
the Redeemed Christian Church of God, the African Christian Fellowship,
the Church of God Mission International Inc., Christ Chosen Church of God,
Christ Embassy, the Synagogue Church of All Nations, Mountain of Fire and
Miracles, Living Faith Church Worldwide, Deeper Christian Life Ministry,
Christ Apostolic Church (or Assemblies of God), and numerous others. There
are at least 150 African immigrant congregations in New York City alone. The
Washington Post has noted that “the greater Washington area is home to an
estimated 250,000 Ethiopians, many of whom worship in 35 different Ethiopian
churches.”55
We will use the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG), a Pentecostal
ministry established in Nigeria in 1952 by Rev. Josiah Akindayomi, to illustrate
the dominant influence of the African-born churches on the African communi-
ties in the United States. In his study “African Immigrants and Their Churches,”
Adebayo Oyebade writes that African countries have established these “indig-
enous” Christian churches to serve the needs of their respective communities.
As the study reveals, “more people in the African-born community are drawn
to these churches than to any other social and cultural institutions they have
established.”56 Worshippers include regular members, as well as occasional visi-
tors in search of answers or solutions to a myriad of problems that sometimes
transcend the ordinary fulfillment of the individuals’ spiritual needs.
As the example of RCCG demonstrates, the African-born churches are con-
duits of social and cultural identity across national and regional boundaries.
The constant national and international travels of religious leaders and church
members facilitate the flow of information and communication between the
homeland and host countries. Afe Adogame has characterized this exchange
of religious ideas and material culture as “spiritual remittance.”57 Itinerant
242 African Colonial Freedom

church leaders and ordinary members connect extensive transnational net-

works in a solid reciprocal exchange between the mother church and the global
branches.
In short, the African immigrant church has served as a multipurpose institu-
tion not just for the African immigrants but also for the predominantly Ameri-
can Christian population. The influential U.S. magazine The Atlantic reported
in 2017 that studies conducted in the past two decades reveal that “Americans—
long known for their piety—were fleeing organized religion in increasing num-
bers. The vast majority still believed in God. But the share that rejected any re-
ligious affiliation was growing fast, rising from 6 percent in 1992 to 22 percent in
2014. Among Millennials, the figure was 35 percent.”58 In a related commentary
in 2013, Wesley Granberg-Michaelson of the Washington Post noted: “Much
has been written about the way that growing numbers of ‘millennials’ are walk-
ing away from the church. Yet while millennials are walking out the front door
of U.S. congregations, immigrant Christian communities are appearing right
around the corner, and sometimes knocking at the back door. And they may
hold the key to vitality for American Christianity.”59
These reports underline the relevance of the African Instituted Churches
brought by African-born immigrants in modern America.
In the United States, the aspirations of the RCCG embody what Ibigbolade
Aderibigbe has described as “an apocalyptic movement.”60 Oyebade has argued
that the goal of the Redeemed Church is to “plant churches like Starbucks,” the
popular American coffeehouse that has proliferated across the nation. Indeed,
this observation is literally correct.61 The extensive studies of the RCCG show
that it is one of the fastest-growing new-generation churches in the world. Its
core mission is to plant a member in “every family of all the nations” of the
world, and to establish parishes “within five minutes’ walking distance” of every
inhabitant “in every city and town of developing countries.” In the developed
parts of the world, the church plans to establish branches “within five minutes’
driving distance” of every city and town dweller.62 The RCCG has pursued this
extraordinary goal through fervent evangelism and extensive church planting.
As of 2018, the church has established about 5,000 branches worldwide, includ-
ing more than 2,000 in Nigeria. The overseas branches cover 150 countries in
Africa, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas.63
The growth and expansion of hundreds of African Christian churches in the
United States, serving millions of African-born immigrants and their friends
and families, is a reliable indication of the growing presence of the Africans in
contemporary America. As they face the everyday challenges new immigrants
face in every region of the world, these churches, like the immigrants’ ethnic
 African-Born Immigrants 243

associations, have served as a bridge in the transitions from the homeland to

American society. The older members of the African-born churches often play
a significant role in helping Africans integrate into the American social fabric
by providing temporary shelter, food, and employment opportunities. Thus, the
African-born immigrants have successfully created their own social, cultural,
and religious institutions to meet their needs. Of the many civic institutions
established by African immigrants, the church appears to be the most vibrant
because of its high level of patronage among the community.
In her study of African-born migrant youth and assimilation in the United
States, Shelly Habecker concludes that “immigrant youth, particularly those
living in smaller U.S. cities, regularly cross, reinforce, and blur social bound-
aries among a range of social groups in a process better described as hybrid
assimilation, which often causes feelings of identity confusion as well as oppor-
tunities for daily navigating, contesting, and adding new meaning to an African
American identity.”64 Indeed, as the study discovered, children of African-born
immigrants either born in America or raised as children in the United States
have mixed feelings about balancing the American culture in which they were
raised against the African culture inherited from their parents.
In a provocative piece in the Globalist on November 16, 2013, Joseph Conteh,
a Sierra Leonean immigrant to the United States, describes what he has per-
ceived as “a huge chasm between African-Americans and African immigrants
in the United States.” According to Conteh, the problem “has widened over the
years,” causing “deep animosity between many African-Americans and their
African immigrant cousins.”65 On the one hand, this discord has prevented Afri-
can American investors from taking advantage of the current economic boom
in Africa. On the other, many African immigrants find it difficult to access the
available opportunities for economic advancement in the United States.
The animosity between African-born immigrants and African Americans
draws attention to underlying misconceptions that are sometimes fueled by
misunderstandings of African and African American history, primarily related
to the Atlantic slave trade. Additionally, the U.S. media promotes the view that
Africans are backward, and many African Americans have accepted this view
unquestioningly. As a result, African Americans often make jokes about Afri-
cans, who retaliate with the erroneous notion that African Americans are lazy
and violent. What is evident from Conteh’s study is that Africans on both sides
of the Atlantic have passed through a similar experience of slavery, economic
exploitation, and racial discrimination.
The opportunities available today for mutual dialogue and exchange between
Africans and African Americans must not be sacrificed on the altar of inter- and
244 African Colonial Freedom

intra-Black bigotry. In Chicago, for instance, where Black-on-Black violence has

reached epidemic proportions, African American and African-born collabora-
tion in civic engagement has the potential to curb uncivil behaviors among the
Black community. Instead, as the Chicago Tribune reported in 2013, the African
immigrant population, one of the city’s fastest-growing immigrant groups, now
“seeks a Chicago community on par with Chinatown, the Hispanic enclave
at 26th Street.”66 Segregation of this nature has the potential to cause ethnic
groups to retreat into their inner selves. Unity, rather than separation, has always
been the spirit of Pan-Africanism, which has saved the Black race from the chal-
lenges of slavery, colonialism, and other forms of oppression.
Intermarriage among new immigrants from Africa and African Americans of-
fers a substantial opportunity to repair the damage that slavery and racism have
caused to the Black family. Also, when the Nigerian community in the United
States recently announced its plans to create a community bank to serve the
needs of Nigerians both in the United States and in Nigeria, one quickly sees
an area for collaboration between African American investors and Nigerian and
other African-born businesspeople.67
The high educational drive and achievements identified with the African-
born immigrants and their families could serve as a source of motivation for
African American youth. Even more, opportunities exist for African Americans
and African-born immigrants to further promote Black music with new ideas
from Africa. This opportunity inspired Makinde Adeagbo, the Nigerian-born
genius and founder of People of Color in Tech (POCIT), who has worked with
Facebook, Dropbox, Pinterest, and other successful high-tech firms. In found-
ing his not-for-profit company, Adeagbo cited the need to help mentor people
of color in the American high-tech professional field as the primary motivation
behind his business. “I thought to myself, why is it just me doing this? I know
other people who could be doing this, and they want to, but they just don’t have
any setup or system in which to do it. They also need help from people more
senior than them. Again, there’s no easy way to find that. That was the start of
it, was figuring out what community I would want to be a part of and how do
we build that?”68
In the field of sports, the sky remains the limit for Africans and African Ameri-
cans. There are no successful programs in college basketball and track and field
today that do not have at least one African American athlete of African parent-
age. For example, the University of Notre Dame’s 2018 Women’s Basketball
victory could not have been possible without Arike Ogunbowale’s clutch shots
in the final seconds of the 2018 semifinals and championship matches against
the University of Connecticut and Mississippi State University, respectively.
 African-Born Immigrants 245

Upcoming stars from high school sports are Chinma Njoku of Century High
School, Pocatello, Idaho, and Sudanese-born Bul Ajang of Patrick High School
in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Udoka Azubuike of the elite University of Kansas
basketball team has dominated its center position for three years. These young
Africans are following the records set by their African and African American
idols in the National Basketball Association such as Michael Jordan, Hakeem
Olajuwon, Dikembe Mutombo, Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwayne Wade,
Serge Ibaka, and other superstars. Above all, the emphasis on the church as a
compelling force in character molding and civic training is ultimately available
through the Black churches and African Instituted Churches to win American
youth back to Christianity.

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