Out of Africa, into Aurora: The city's fastest growing minority making strides

AURORA | Soon, the whir of power tools and the clang of hammers at Afrikmall will be a distant memory.

When crews there finish sometime in the coming months, the sprawling mall at East Colfax Avenue and Galena Street will be filled with brightly-colored African shops and restaurants. The founders say it will be a sort of one-stop shop for anybody interested in African food, art and culture.

According to a report last week from the United States Census Bureau, Afrikmall should have a deep pool of African residents to tap into when it opens its doors in a few months. Immigration to the US from Africa has grown steadily in the past four decades, according to the Census, especially from 2008 to 2012. Today, there are about 1.6 million African-born immigrants living in the US, up from just 80,000 in 1970.

And while Aurora and metro Denver lag behind other locales with booming African populations — most notably New York and Washington, D.C.  — Aurora has seen a steady spike in the number of Africa-born residents.

In the 2010 Census, more than 8,000 Aurora residents were born in Africa, compared to just 2,000 a decade prior.

And the city is a central hub of Colorado’s African community, with more than one third of the state’s African immigrants calling Aurora home.

The African-born population is also Aurora’s fastest growing immigrant group, growing faster in that decade than immigrants from Latin America or Asia.

Kobina Lartson, CEO of Afrikmall, said he isn’t surprised to hear so many Africans have immigrated to the United States, something he did when he came here from his native Ghana in 2001.

Lartson said he expects Aurora and Colorado as a whole to see a steady uptick in African immigration in the coming years as more and more people are drawn here by family members.

“Where more Africans are, the incoming Africans will tend to go to relatives who are already established,” he said.

The Census report also said immigrants from Africa had more education than most immigrants — 41 percent had a bachelor’s degree or higher compared with 28 percent of immigrants overall.

Lartson and Afrikmall business development director Emmanuel Eliason, who both came to the United States for college, said they aren’t surprised by that figure.

Eliason said that in Ghana, no matter how successful a student is, there are a limited number of schools they can attend, so many look to the United States for educational opportunities.

While Aurora and Colorado as a whole have seen growth in the number of African immigrants moving here, the bulk of African immigrants have chosen cities on the East Coast. New York had the largest African born population with 212,000 people, followed by Washington D.C. at 161,000, Atlanta and at 68,000.

Eliason said that because New York remains a major entry point for immigrants, it will probably remain the hub of African immigration to the United States. But, he said, he expects more and more immigrants to move westward as they get settled in the US.

For Afrikmall, Lartson said a booming African population will be helpful when it comes to attracting tenants to fill the mall’s many store fronts. But when it comes to customers, Lartson said he expects the bulk of the people buying lunch or shopping for African groceries won’t be African immigrants, but will instead be people from other parts of the world looking for something different.

“Most of our customers will be Americans who want to experience African culture,” he said.