Africans in Cambodia

Lately, I read about an increasing number of Africans in Cambodia. I am not talking about African-Americans but pure Africans. The way they dress and their natural skin color do make them stand out here in Cambodia, though some Cambodians can have almost a similar tone of skin. I am also wondering how so difficult a process an African has to go through and how much each has to spend flying from an African country to a Southeast Asian country like Cambodia!! Is it easy? And, of course, I believe there are rich Africans in their countries.. but why are there many young African males coming to Cambodia? Just for the sake of curiosity. How about the old and the ladies? Why aren’t they coming her too?
I once came across several pieces of news that African tourists dealt in drugs and counterfeit dollar bills, which later received a boo from the Cambodian public. People started to feel appalled at the presence of more and more Africans. I’m not saying that all who are here tend to commit this crime at all.
We all want to know the stories behind. Later on, a royal relative came out to say in one newspaper that Cambodia should welcome Africans into Cambodia, and their presence is a good sign of stronger diplomatic relations between Cambodia and African countries. He went on to say that while the King Papa (Sihanouk) was going abroad to call on every nation to support decolonization of Cambodia, it’s the African Union that appeared and supported Cambodia before everybody else.
I don’t feel bad or discriminate against Africans… they are kind of cool to me… they like flocking with their own guys. Yeah, but a very good piece of news should be done in the future to shed light on their presence in Cambodia… This would help us all know each other better. Right?

9 thoughts on “Africans in Cambodia”

  1. Pretty interesting. I'd never imagine Africans would migrate to Cambodia, at least not in mass-numbers..kind of weird. Why Cambodia; they have no historical relationship with your country, right?
    Which nationalities are most common?

  2. @Christin: we know that there aren't many rich Africans.. and now it seems a lot of them are coming here.. I dont knwo what for.. hope it's not drugs or fake dollars… pretty worrying too…I think African countries have the slightest historical relationship with Cambodia… when the former King of Cambodia did a campaign around the world, to free Cambodia off French in 1950s, the African countries said, yes to him.

    Hmm, Ghana..is the only country I've heard of at the moment.. there are several more, I guess….Most are tourists here..

    KK

  3. It is important that Cambodians get themselves more informed about other parts of the world and developments going on. I am an African professional from Ghana, who is considering coming to work on a telecoms project in Cambodia but the comments I have seen on this blog and other similar blogs makes me sad and re consdering whether to take this project in Cambodia or not. If you guys do not get more open minded, you’d loose out of the opportunity of meeting and learning from different cultures and you’d never progress. I currently work in Accra, Ghana, with a Philipino..
    Have you guys heard of “the global village” at all?
    Really sad that in this day and age, some people think the way they do from the cambodian blogs I have read so far!

  4. Dear Kwame,
    This was a post I wrote back in 2009. That means it doesn’t represent my present ideas now. And, in the post, I did not make a generalization about Africans at all. I have African friends working as teachers here in Cambodia. In 2009, I was just surprised to see a rising number of Africans and happened to read some news articles. And in this post, I didn’t accuse anyone but question the reality I saw, as a young Cambodian. I hope you were not really saddened by it.
    Nowadays, I don’t just have one African friend from one African country, but I have many African friends working as journalists from different African countries. And, I dare say you shouldn’t be sad. In Cambodia, it’s mostly Cambodians who commit crimes and murders, and I haven’t seen any news article that mentions Africans doing it.
    And, I heard about ‘global village’ from Marshall McLuhan. 😉

  5. Thank you Kwame. The cynicism, suspicion and pure negative vibe of westerners in Cambodia and some Cambodians towards Africans is just disheartening to say the least. I have been reading blogs and travel forums from Cambodia since May 2011 and everything discussed with Africans involved is negative. It seems like all Africans are either drug dealers, scammers, pimps or shady criminals of some sort; and other nationals who are engaged in similar activities but are more discreet than the Africans escape such judgement and are considered pure at heart. but then can you blame them? can you blame them when some Africans, notably the Nigerians ‘openly’ engage in shady criminal activities? and i’ not saying they should ‘hide’ their criminal activities as the ‘others’ are…no crime at all is best…but is this possible in the world we live in? well whatever…to those pointing the accusing fingers at us… [Africa is a collection of countries as individually different in thinking and behaviour as any other nationality on this earth. Same as Asia is not one country…and Europe etc]…remember, the African criminals are not working in isolation with other Africans. Guess the collection of nationals they are ‘collaborating’ with?
    It’s almost ironic how completely friendly and accepting we are of westerners, Asians and foreigners in general here in Ghana and West Africa; even those whom we could brand as engaging in discreet crimes…and though we are just as guilty of stereotyping others as vise versa…it sure can suck worse than hell to be African on this planet.

  6. African people are friendly in Cambodia as I seen their behavior. It not possible that you guy thing African people are bad.

  7. Resent years , of the economic grows and future in Asia. The africans see its a better opertunity to make money in Asia than in Europe. Thats why the young boys go to try to make money. In my counry as well its starting to come alot of Nigerians. But mostly they come here to learn boat building or other things that we are good at in our country. But as long they respect our culture and specially our woman its ok. In beginning we had some problems that africans they think in generaly our girls just wants someone to “sleep with them” We dont openly go around and kiss, or show that we have an afair and such things. But africans they are used to there style and stand outside shops and screem to girls, even school girls…and teas …And this is not nice …people dont like it

  8. My name is eric and I love people for who they are. As I grew older I was able to understand different kind of people and ideas. By the way my god brother is cambodian american and i love him like he was my real brother. And vice versa. Africans and cambodians have like in common, they are both peaceful people. And there culture are very symbolic.

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