It is the first time Meghan Markle, who is American, will open up about her ancestral background on the public stage.

On the latest episode of her podcast, Archetypes, titled "Upending the angry black woman myth", the Duchess of Sussex, Meghan Markle, revealed that she is 43 per cent Nigerian.

She said this while conversing with the guests on the show, Senegalese-American actress, comedian Issa Rae, Nigerian-American comedian, writer Ziwe Fumudoh and professor Emily Bernards.

It is the first time Meghan, who is American, will open up about her ancestral background on the public stage.

In the 47-minutes-long podcast hosted on Spotify, the Duchess of Sussex asked honest questions about the judgements being made about women and specifically women of colour.

While conversing with them, she told listeners that she took a genealogy test which revealed her roots.

A genealogical DNA test is a DNA-based test used that looks at specific locations of a person's genome to find or verify ancestral genealogical relationships or to estimate the ethnic mixture of an individual.

"I just had my genealogy done a couple of years ago," Meghan said.

The Duchess then proudly says, "I'm 43 percent Nigerian", to the shock of Ziwe, who shouts, "No way!".

Ziwe, who is Nigerian-American, then asks: "Are you serious? This is huge. Igbo, Yoruba, do we know?" The Duchess of Sussex then tells her listeners: "I'm going to start to dig deeper into all of this because anyone I've told, especially Nigerian women, are just like, what?"

Meghan's podcast, which returned to Spotify on 4 October, following its pause during the mourning period for Queen Elizabeth II, has retained its number one position since debuting on Spotify in August 2022, which featured guest Serena Williams.