Africans in Singapore find ‘a place like home’ in student society, church fellowship as their numbers slowly grow
- For some it is still rare to see a fellow African on Orchard Road, yet arrivals from the continent are increasing – students, workers and entrepreneurs
- A social group that holds meet-ups, cookouts and fashion shows offers reminders of home, and by countering misunderstandings they break the ice with locals
In a nondescript building in the Katong neighbourhood on Singapore’s eastern outskirts, a small congregation dressed in bright, colourful prints dance joyously to a choir belting out vibrant songs of worship in English.
It’s Sunday morning at the Cornerstone African House of Praise, a fellowship inaugurated in 2006 at the Cornerstone Community Church, which welcomes black people from around the world.
With meet-ups like this one, the African community in Singapore is carving out its own cultural spaces in the small island nation thousands of kilometres from home.
Fuelled by trade and education, the community of about 2,000 people is growing, according to Sean Pike, a counsellor at the South African High Commission in Singapore. In recent years, interest in Africa-Asia business has flourished, with Singapore aiming to be a gateway to Asia for African companies. Trade between the two regions reached S$9.78 billion (US$7.17 billion) in 2017. Over 60 Singaporean companies now operate in more than 50 countries in Africa, in sectors ranging from agribusiness, information and communications technology to transport and logistics, according to Enterprise Singapore, the government agency that helps local enterprises establish international connections.
The Yale-NUS Afro Society (YAS) has a mission to educate Singapore’s wider community about less well understood African and Caribbean cultures of the world by organising fashion shows and food-related events such as a Jamaican Jerk Festival and casual cookouts.