Central African community health profile

Central African community health profile

Overview

The Central African community health profile has identified and summarised the national and local evidence about the health, lifestyle behaviours and wider determinants of health that affect Central African communities.

Although the focus of this report was health inequalities among Central African communities in Birmingham, the limited available information on health inequalities has resulted in data being used from the UK and internationally, where available.

Community definition

Central Africa is a region intersected by the equator, situated around the Congo river.

The Central African community health profile presents data for populations that are resident in Birmingham and/or England and Wales that have origins in Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, DRC, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Rwanda, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Zambia.

Although Rwanda and Burundi are not physically situated in Central Africa, they are often included as Central African due to their historic connections with the Belgian Congo.

We acknowledge that using country of birth data will only apply to first generation migrants, however categorising the population in this way enabled us to analyse a greater number of datasets.

Birmingham Public Health’s demographic data collection tool suggests inclusion of an open response question on ‘country/countries of heritage’ to capture Central African populations more accurately.

For more information about how Birmingham City Council is standardising demographic data, see the demographics questionnaire.

Population size

Population size estimates have been taken from the 2021 census for England and Wales, using the 190-country category dataset for country of birth.

England and Wales

Overall, there were 112,343 people born in Central African countries living in England and Wales, the most common countries of birth within this included:

  • Democratic Republic of the Congo: 29,439
  • Zambia: 26,254
  • Angola: 19,717
  • Cameroon: 14,614

Birmingham

Overall, there were 3,848 people born in Central African countries living in Birmingham, the most common countries of birth within this included:

  • Democratic Republic of the Congo: 1,382
  • Cameroon: 660
  • Angola: 650
  • Zambia: 390

Health and wellbeing

To find out more about the health and wellbeing needs, and the identified health inequalities of Central African communities, download the Central African Community Health Profile report.

Available resources

To help you understand more about the health inequalities among Central African communities, we have produced several resources, including:

View all Central African community health profile downloads

Webinar

Watch our webinar which provides a summary of the demographics and key health inequalities among Central African communities:

You can switch on subtitles once you have started to play the video. A menu will appear on the video screen.

Page last updated: 12 April 2024

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