Contributor(s): Professor Ato Quayson | In 2005 the African Union declared the African diaspora to be the sixth region of the continent. But was the concept of ""African Diaspora"" understood correctly at the time? This lecture will offer a more complex definition. It will focus on the difference between dispersion and diaspora, the dynamics of identity formation, the contrasts between Indian Ocean and Atlantic processes of diasporization, and the growth of a mixed-race population. Ato Quayson is Professor of English and inaugural Director of the Centre for the Study of Disaporas and Transnationals at the University of Toronto.