Karamba Diaby

Karamba Diaby (born 27 November 1961 ) is a Senegalese-born German chemist and politician of the Social Democratic Party who has been serving as a member of the Bundestag since the 2013 elections.

Diaby grew up in Marsassoum, Senegal.

The youngest of four children, he was raised by his sister after losing both of his parents by the time he was 7.

A graduate of the Cheikh Anta Diop University, he left Senegal to study chemistry in East Germany and received his diploma in 1991.

In 1996 he received his Doctor of Natural Science degree, and stayed after the reunification of Germany, after which he became more involved in political and social activism.

On September 22, 2013, Diaby was elected to the Bundestag as a Social Democratic Party candidate from Halle (Saale), Saxony-Anhalt; Diaby became one of the first two Bundestag members of African ancestry, alongside Charles M. Huber (born to a Senegalese father and German mother), who was elected at the same time from the Christian Democratic Union.

Diaby currently serves as deputy chairman of the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid and as full member of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment.

On the latter, he is his parliamentary group’s rapporteur on matters related to the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the recognition of your foreign qualifications.

Within his parliamentary group, he is a member of the working group on municipal policy.

He also belongs to the Parliamentary Left, a left-wing movement.

In the negotiations to form a fourth coalition government under Chancellor Angela Merkel following the 2017 federal elections, Diaby was part of the working group on migration policy, led by Volker Bouffier, Joachim Herrmann and Ralf Stegner.

In the 2021 German federal election, he won a direct mandate in the constituency of Halle.

In the 2021 election of the German federal parliament, Karamba Diaby won for the first time directly his constituency of Halle.

With 28.8 percent of the votes in the first round, Diaby beat Christoph Bernstiel, who received 20.7 percent of the votes also during the first round.

In the 20th German Bundestag, he is a full member of the Committee for Economic Cooperation and Development and of the Committee for Foreign Affairs.

He also has a membership in the Subcommittee on Global Health and in the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly.

The parliamentary group on West Africa is chaired by him and in the Subcommittee on International Climate and Energy Policy he is a substitute member.

In 2018, Diaby joined other black elected representatives and community leaders from across Europe in signing an open letter in The Guardian in support of Black Italian politician Cécile Kyenge.

Kyenge had been sued for defamation for calling the Italian League party racist.

Since 2019, he has been a member of the German delegation to the Franco-German Parliamentary Assembly.

He is also part of the Elie Wiesel Network of Parliamentarians for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities and against Genocide Denial.

Diaby's office in Halle was shot at on 15 January 2020.

The attack was condemned by Heiko Maas, Germany's Foreign Minister, as "disgusting and cowardly".

In addition to his committee assignments, Diaby is the deputy chairman of the Parliamentary Friendship Group for Relations with the Francophone States of West and Central Africa (Equatorial Guinea, Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Guinea, Cameroon, Republic of the Congo, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo, Chad, Central African Republic).

In 2020, he co-founded a cross-party working group on diversity and antiracism.