Our tests place your African ancestry in a present-day country and ethnic group or tribe. For other ancestries, we report an mtDNA haplogroup and/or geographic region.

• We use the largest number of African DNA samples in the industry to analyze your ancestry.
• We do not maintain a database of customer information.
• We do not sell or share customers’ personal or genetic information.
• We do not provide customer information to law enforcement.
• We do not biobank your genetic material. All genetic material is destroyed at the lab.
• We analyze mtDNA and Y Chromosome. We do not use autosomal DNA.

Yes. If your mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequence or your Y-chromosome markers have African ancestry, we can tell you what present-day country(ies) and ethnic groups in Africa that they share ancestry with. Please click here for data requirements. We cannot use data from admixture analyses.

The Kit ID# is found on the Kit packaging and on the Activation card inside of the kit.

The Kit ID# protects your confidentiality. Therefore, you must provide your Kit ID# in order to get any information from us about your kit status.

You must activate your Kit. If you send your swabs to us WITHOUT activating your kit AND lose your Kit ID#, we will be unable to locate any information about your sample.

No refunds will be provided if you lose your Kit ID#. Your order number and email are not the same as the Kit ID#. They do not provide access to Test Taker information.

For lineage-based tests, reliability depends on several things: the size of the database, the sampling of the lineages and the accuracy of lineage matches.

Our database is the most comprehensive resource of African lineages available. We have worked with historians, archeologists, anthropologists and other geneticists to build the largest collection of African lineages in the world.

We use a Sequence Similarity Score (SSS) measure to determine matches. The SSS measure is a likelihood estimate based on the frequency of identical and closely related (>99%) haplotypes. It is our degree of confidence in your results. Dr. Kittles explains here.

Our results are highly accurate. For about 85% of the people we test we find identical matches in our database. For the remaining people, we find closely related lineages with greater than 95% confidence. Our database is the most comprehensive resource of African lineages available.

Our tests do not provide percentages. We tell you WHERE in Africa one branch of your family tree goes back to, not HOW MUCH African ancestry you have.

The MatriClan Test traces the ancestry of ONE branch of your family tree, mother to mother to mother on back, for the past 2,000 years.

The PatriClan Test traces the ancestry of ONE branch of your family tree, father to father to father on back, for the past 2,000 years.

In order for a woman to determine her paternal ancestry, she must use the Y-chromosome of a male on her father's side—her brother, father, father's brother, grandfather, etc. It cannot be her son.

The easiest way to trace the ancestry of a deceased family member is to identify a living relative with the same lineage. Give us a call to discuss your options.

African Ancestry will analyze your DNA for ancestry. Your DNA will be destroyed once a result is determined. We do not sell or share our customers' personal, genetic or financial information.

Please click here to review our Terms and Conditions.

Please click here to review the Test Kit Instructions.