Migration and demographic dynamics in Africa (3) 

GLOBALISATION IN THE African context has only changed in form and norm but not structurally since the legendary “discovery” of the continent began with Christopher Columbus as a historical benchmark and baseline. The slave trade, while it lasted, was a lucrative legal enterprise of what is today an illegal embodiment of human trafficking. It was later followed by movement of natural resources from Africa to Europe and America. In both cases, the movements were not on volition or with the consent of African people and material resources involved were not taken with the approval of the original owners. In both cases, it was against their will and it was done with brute force. That was how strong and energetic Africans found themselves across the Atlantic, and in plantations, homes and sweatshops at their final destinations in the Americas. Material resources extracted from above the soil as cash crops and those from the subsoil as mineral resources were also taken at the pleasure of invaders then. It became an established practice backed fully by law as colonial governments settled down in Africa. Today, the movement of both men and materials still continues unabated, except that the movement is now done mostly with volition of Africans. In addition to massive exports of raw and unprocessed commodities from Africa’s extractive industries of agriculture and mining, the massive exodus of people to countries and continents outside Africa has experienced an increase over the past two or three decades.

Africa is thus left in a quandary as the continent suffers serious setbacks in terms of development in the social, political and economic realms. Exports of raw commodities have not favoured Africa much as these attract low revenues because the transactions are happening at the expense of industrialisation. There is also the problem of the low level of participation of African countries in the global value chain despite the continent’s dependence on commodity exports as the dominant source of revenues in almost all countries. The causes and effects of recent migrations from Africa have been more of economic than any other considerations, although they could be linked to those tangential considerations. Population drift from Africa to Europe, Americas, Asia and Oceania has denied the continent much of the human resources needed to make Africa a great continent. Migrations have therefore resulted in unmitigated brain drain for Africa but a stupendous brain gain for the destination countries, particularly Europe and America. On the surface, many reasons are given for migration, but deep beneath are some unstated reasons.

Considering the effects of migrations on source countries in Africa, an article in The Economist describes African migration as having some positive economic benefits for the African countries of origin, referring to benefits from remittances. It also explained that it shows “those at home the benefits of an education, encouraging more people to go to school.” On the destination countries, the BBC noted that there are rising numbers of crimes relating to African migration in Europe, especially in Scandinavian countries. The consequences in the destination countries have been both positive and negative, depending on ideological, political, economic, social and religious disposition of individuals and persons in and outside governments. Elections have been lost or won by politicians in some European countries partly on immigration policies in their manifestos. While some liberals readily open doors for immigrants, others with nationalist inclinations mount opposition to immigration. The current wave of spikes in immigration from Africa took off in the mid-1980s, mostly for economic reasons. From the second half of the 1980s in North Africa, the destination countries for migrants from the Maghreb broadened to include Spain and Italy, as a result of increased demand for low-skilled labour in those countries. One thing has become evident. The issue of migration has to be managed carefully by both the countries of origin and the destination countries to avoid unintended negative consequences. For instance, it is now clear that countries that attract immigrants can do only very little to keep migrants out. It is better to devise ways of bringing them in legally to avoid the illegal means that the consequences are mostly difficult to manage. In those early 1980s, Spain and Italy probably did not see immigration surge as coming to stay when they imposed visa requirements on migrants from the Maghreb. That resulted in an unprecedented increase in illegal migration across the Mediterranean.

Since what appears to be an irreversible trend in immigration from Africa started, many factors have been responsible, pushing people to leave sub-Saharan Africa.  These factors and the paths they take to arrive at their destinations vary from country to country and individual to individual. Many have migrated as refugees – either truly or under false pretence – to countries in Europe and the Americas. According to the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is described as: “A person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.” And thousands of Africans turned refugees under the regimes of many past and present state despots and dictators, while some pretentiously took advantage of that opening to emigrate.

Historical records over the period of 2000 to 2005 estimated that about 440,000 people per year emigrated from Africa, most of them to Europe. Hein de Haas, director of the International Migration Institute at the University of Oxford, noted that public discourse on African migration to Europe portrays the phenomenon as an “exodus,” largely composed of illegal migrants, driven by conflict and poverty.  From records, African immigrants into some European countries over the years can provide an insight into the trends in emigration from the African continent. Finland had 54,450 of them in 2019, Switzerland had 93,800 in 2015 and Turkey has at least 50,000 African migrants. In 2018, Belgium recorded 550,000 to 600,000. Portugal has recorded as much as 700,000. In 2020, Netherlands had 714,732 and Germany had 1,000,000 in 2021, Italy recorded 1,171,013 and Spain had 1,322,625, while the United Kingdom had 1.387 million in 2016 and France got 3,115,500 in 2019. Remarkably, most immigrants in France have ties to former French colonies. According to the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies or Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE), there are 4.6 million people who were born in North Africa or had North African ancestry, mainly from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. Similarly, in the UK, most immigrants have ties to former British colonies in Africa, with the largest groups coming from The Gambia, Ghana, Libya, Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. The surge in migration to Europe continues with at least a million sub-Saharan Africans immigrants entering Europe since 2010, according to Pew Research Centre.

In the United States, another country with a large population of immigrants of African origin, African immigrants are described as nationals of modern African countries. These are different from those of Caribbean origin. But, according to Pew Research Centre, the combined figures of immigrants from African and Caribbean origins accounted for 88 percent of all Black foreign-born people in the United States in 2019. Most recently, people of African origin now make up 42 percent of the overall foreign-born Black population, a substantial increase from 2000 when that share was 23 percent. Significant policy changes in the US in the late 20th century encouraged the first wave of large-scale voluntary migration from sub-Saharan Africa to the US when the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 expanded pathways for non-Western European immigrants to come to the United States, mainly through family ties. The Refugee Act of 1980 increased admissions of refugees fleeing conflict, including from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. Later, the Immigration Act of 1990 created the Diversity Visa to bolster immigration from under-represented countries, including Benin and Cameroon.

The 1990 law also made it easier for highly skilled immigrants to migrate for work, opening the door to educated workers and international students from countries including Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. More recently, many sub-Saharan immigrants have arrived as family members of those already residing in the US. While the temporary travel bans imposed under the Trump administration against citizens from Chad, Eritrea, Nigeria, and Somalia and the prohibition of Tanzanian citizens from applying for the Diversity Visa lottery have been lifted by the Biden administration, the duration of impact on US immigration remains unclear. While much is known about migrations of Africans to the Western countries of Europe and America, documented information remains sketchy about migrations of Africans to the East. An academic paper on “Migration: (Un)Welcome African immigrants to East Asia,” pointed out the difference between an African immigrant in the West, which has been widely published, and the African immigrant to the East, that is hardly known to the world. The presence of Africans in East Asia extends to China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, and to Chinese autonomous territories like Hong Kong and Macau. Their numbers are growing: from 12,039 foreigners of African origin in Japan in 2012, and 14,000 in South Korea in 2015.

China is one of the countries with far less liberal disposition to immigrants, particularly Africans. Reports that many Africans become stuck and experience significant immobility conditions in China because of the peculiarities in immigrant documentation appears to serve as little or no deterrence. The African dilemma in contemporary times is the inability to restrict the outflow of migrants as the continent grapples with political and structural challenges that keep driving people into foreign lands. The loss annually incurred by African countries to brain drain is enormous in financial and human terms. The level of poverty existing side by side with affluence and the extent of opportunities existing side by side with deprivations underscore the inequities within the continent. It brings out the extent of economic crises facing nearly half of the population in the continent. In Africa, 650 million people make less than $2 a day. The most unlikely set of people to emigrate from Africa are these 650 million people. There have been lots of foreign aids pouring into Africa over the years with limited or imperceptible impacts. Expatriate development workers and economic experts have been drafted into Africa at various times to help the countries within the continent. Volumes of reports have been published on Africa’s development by the UN, World Bank, IMF, World Economic Forum, OECD and many other influential international organisations over the years, but with limited impacts. Various social and humanitarian service organisations such as the World Food Programme, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, UKaid, JICA, GTZ, and many more have been coming to intervene in Africa in times of serious crises. But all these are happening when many educated and skilled Africans are moving out of the continent. The sad reality is that these mobile segments of the population that are most equipped to solve Africa’s social and economic problems are the ones moving out.

It cannot be absolutely true therefore that immigration policies in developed countries are meant to help developing countries, especially when such policies tend to create leeway for more of the educated than the poorly educated. Unfortunately for Africa, countries that are attractive to immigrants have devised tantalising methods for drawing and retaining those with higher human capital. The most energetic, most educated and most dissatisfied people who could and should be agents for change in Africa are the ones that tend to be encouraged more to emigrate under those revised policies and are taken in by the immigration systems of developed countries that tend to entice them. This effectively denies African countries their best in human resources. African countries as well as developing countries elsewhere need to be helped right where they live. No matter how well-meaning they sound or appear, immigration reforms in developed countries cannot help developing countries to move out of poverty as long as they encourage more outflows of individuals capable of transforming the continent. Rather, such reforms can only continue to help the receiving countries in terms of workforce, wealth creation, health and security at the expense of Africa.

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