Colombia has the 3rd largest African descendant population in Latin America. Colombia has over 4.4 million people who refer to themselves as of African descent - to give perspective, Puerto Rico has a population of 3.264 million and Jamaica 2.828 million. According to the census of 2005, the government estimates that Afro-descendants make up 10.6% of the total population of Colombia.

African descendants are present in every major city in the country. It is thought that there are 1 million living in the capital of Bogota. Coastal regions of Colombia can have Afro-Colombian populations that are as high as 90% as in the case of the Pacific, or 60% on the Atlantic coast. In areas like Chocó, whose capital, Quibdó, is 95.3% Afro-Colombian as opposed to just 2.3% mestizo or white. The department of Chocó is the most African descendant state, followed by Magdalena (72%), Bolivar (66%), and Sucre (65%).

Enslaved Africans were first brought by Spanish colonists to Cartagena in the 1500s, to replace the lost labour on the plantations and mines which occurred as a result of the decimation of the indigenous population due partly to the harsh working conditions.

From the beginning of the 1800s the Colombian government actively pursued a policy of ‘blanqueamiento’, or ‘whitening’ of society. This was based both on a white supremacist ideology which believed that to whiten the race was to improve the race, and on a xenophobic policy which feared the eventual political empowerment and influence of black and indigenous peoples if their numbers were allowed to increase. The idea of mestizaje or the unified mestizo Colombian nation, which never experienced social tensions based on race or ethnicity evolved as an outcome of such policies, although increasingly Colombian and Latin American academics are re-evaluating or deconstructing this idea.

These re-evaluations look at the emphasis on a Hispanic heritage while ignoring the cultural contributions made by the indigenous, Afro-Colombian and Gypsy communities.