What it means to be a black African in London

Since 2011, black Africans have been the dominant black group in the UK. Many of them are the descendants of those travellers who came to London in the 1950s from Nigeria, Ghana and Somalia and other African countries, seeking education and prosperity, and found a new home. They now not only hold prominent positions in British culture – from Bafta and Emmy award-winning Michaela Coel to the rap artist and publishing imprint founder Stormzy – but have reached those heights by using their experiences and heritage to explore what it means to be black British.

Settlers is the first book of Jimi Famuwera, a British-Nigerian journalist and broadcaster. In it he seeks to ‘carve out a distinct space for the African experience amid a black Britishness that can often default to a Windrush-adjacent West Indian story’. In doing so, he embarks on a personal exploration of what it entails to be a black African in London, what it means to settle, to assimilate, to be a custodian of tradition in a modern world, and what that costs.