“The foreign-born population from Africa has grown rapidly in the United States during the last 40 years, increasing from about 80,000 in 1970 to about 1.6 million in the period from 2008 to 2012, according to a U.S. Census Bureau brief released today. The population has roughly doubled each decade since 1970, with the largest increase happening from 2000 to 2008-2012. The Foreign-Born Population from Africa: 2008-2012, a brief based on American Community Survey statistics, shows that the African foreign-born population accounts for 4 percent of the total U.S. foreign-born population. No African country makes up the majority of these immigrants, but four countries — Nigeria, Ethiopia, Egypt and Ghana — make up 41 percent of the African-born total. “The brief — the Census Bureau’s first focusing on the African foreign-born population — highlights the size, growth, geographic distribution and educational attainment of this group,” said Christine Gambino of the Census Bureau’s Foreign-Born Population Branch, who is one of the brief’s authors. “We have found that the African-born population tends to be more educated and accounts for a relatively large proportion of the foreign-born population in some nontraditional immigrant gateway states such as Minnesota and the Dakotas.” The foreign-born population from Africa had a higher level of educational attainment than the overall foreign-born population: 41 percent of African-born had a bachelor’s degree or higher compared with 28 percent overall. Within the foreign-born population from Africa, educational attainment varied by place of birth. For example, 40 percent of the Somali-born population had less than a high school education, while 64 percent of Egyptian-born individuals had a bachelor’s degree or higher.”