Afro-Surinamese

Afro-Surinamese (Dutch: Afro-Surinamers) are Surinamese people of predominantly Sub-Saharan African ancestry. They are largely descended from Africans who were forcibly brought to Suriname through the Atlantic slave trade during the colonial period. Afro-Surinamese include descendants of enslaved Africans who remained within plantation and urban colonial society as well as the Maroons, descendants of enslaved Africans who escaped from plantations and established autonomous communities in Suriname's interior. The 2012 census recorded 84,933 people as Creole, 117,567 as Maroon and 3,923 specifically as Afro-Surinamese. Taken together, these separately recorded categories numbered 206,423 people, approximately 38.1% of Suriname's population. The African ancestors of Afro-Surinamese came primarily from several regions of West Africa and Central Africa. Of an estimated 220,000 enslaved Africans transported to Suriname, about 61,500 (27%) embarked from West-Central Africa, 46,000 (21%) from the Gold Coast, 45,000 (20%) from the Windward Coast and more than 32,000 (14%) from the Bight of Benin. Smaller numbers came from the Bight of Biafra and other regions. In modern geographical terms, these principal regions correspond broadly to parts of Ghana; Ivory Coast, Liberia and Sierra Leone; Togo, Benin and western Nigeria; and parts of West-Central Africa, including present-day Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Gabon and Cameroon. The relative importance of these regions changed over time.