Dr. Karamba Diaby, born in 1961 in Marsassoum, Senegal, was elected to the German Bundestag in 2013, the first black person born in Africa to do so. From 2009 to 2015, he was also a city councilor in Halle an der Saale and worked as an advisor in the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs of the state of Saxony-Anhalt from 2011 to 2013.
In his mid-20s, he came to the German Democratic Republic (GDR) thanks to a scholarship, studied chemistry at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. In 1991, he was awarded his master’s degree and in 1996 his doctorate in geoecology. Afterwards, he worked in various nonprofit organizations in the fields of education, youth policy, diversity and human rights.
During the 18th legislative term in the Bundestag, Diaby has served as deputy chairman of the Committee on Human Rights and Humanitarian Aid and a member of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment. The 59-year-old politician moved back into the German Bundestag in 2017, where he is a member of the Committee on Education, Research and Technology Assessment, the Subcommittee on Civic Engagement and continues to be a member of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb). Since March 2018, he has also been a member of the executive committee of the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag. In September of the same year, he was also elected as his parliamentary group's new integration commissioner. Diaby is married and lives with his wife and two children in Halle (Saale).