FOI REF: FOI/2022/4555
You asked
I am a student in the UK and doing research which requires data on Africans resident in the United Kingdom as well as Africans born in the UK. I also need data on the number of African led/founded Churches in the United Kingdom. Also, data on the number of current African students in the United Kingdom currently.
We said
Thank you for your Freedom of Information request,
Our Population of the UK by country of birth and nationality, July 2020 to June 2021 data show the numbers of people living in the UK who were born in African countries, and those holding nationality of an African country.
You will find the data for country of birth in Table 1.1 of the downloadable spreadsheet, and for nationality in Table 2.1. The figures for Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa are in columns AJ and AL in both tables.
There are limitations to this data as descendants of African origin born in the UK and holding British citizenship who consider themselves African won't appear in these estimates.
We will be shortly, however, publishing results from the 2021 Census which may well be able to answer your question.
Ethnic group datasets will be available in the ethnic group, national identity, language, and religion topic summary. Please note this has a provisional release date of 29 November 2022.
We have detailed the variables and classifications we plan to include in the topic summaries and area profiles in the corresponding tabs of the Topic summaries and area profile specifications spreadsheet. If you go to the topic summary datasets tab and go to row 27 'Ethnic group (detailed)', if you scroll to the right there is a link that will take you to the list of ethnic groups for which we intend to publish data. Please note, Country of Birth data, National Identity and Passport held has a several categories of 'African' which may be of interest to you.
You can obtain more details about census data from 2021.Census.Enquiries@ons.gov.uk.
We are unable to provide any data regarding the number of African led/founded Churches in the UK as we don't hold this data. The Council of African and African Caribbean Churches may be better placed to help you they can be contact at CACC Home - CACC - Council of African & Caribbean Churches UK (caccuk.org)
With regards to the number of current African students in the UK. I would suggest that you contact the Higher Education Statistics Agency who may be able to assist you with the student numbers.
When accessing any of our files, please read the 'notes, terms and conditions' contained within them.
Should you require anything further, please do not hesitate to contact us directly at pop.info@ons.gov.uk.