Afro-Swedes
Country · Sweden
Rinkeby and Rosengård — Somali and Eritrean communities that reshaped Swedish music, football and slang.
Afro-Swedes at a glance
- Country
- Sweden
- Main centres
- Stockholm — Rinkeby & Tensta · Gothenburg · Malmö
- Region
- Northern Europe
- How many
- Around 400,000 of African background, largely Somali, Eritrean and Ethiopian
- Languages
- Swedish · Somali · Tigrinya · Amharic
- Dialling code
- +46
The African connection
Sweden took in large numbers of refugees from the Horn of Africa from the 1980s onward. Rinkebysvenska, the multiethnic Swedish of the Stockholm suburbs, is now studied by linguists and used by a whole generation of artists.
Key dates for Afro-Swedes
The dates this community marks — independence, emancipation, and the festivals that fill a hall wherever its people have settled.
Diaspora meets diaspora
AfricAsia began with Africans in Asia. The same story runs through every entry in this section — people of African descent building a life a long way from where their ancestors started.
If you are from Afro-Swedes and you are anywhere in Asia — studying, working, playing, passing through — there are people here who will know what you are asking before you finish the question.
Every Asian country →The Afro-Swedes channel
Every entry in the diaspora section has its own free channel in the Hub, alongside the 108 country channels and the topic rooms.
Open the channel →