What is wrong with the narrative on African migration?

This chapter lays out the goal of this first-ever Africa Migration Report, which is to advance the African migration agenda in the broader development and integration of the continent. Three reasons are identified for the distortions that characterize the current narrative on African migration: (a) most African migrants are not crossing oceans, but rather crossing land borders within Africa; (b) 94 per cent of African migration across oceans takes on a regular form; and (c) most global migrants are not African. Africa accounts for 14 per cent of the global migrant population, compared, for example, to 41 per cent from Asia and 24 per cent from Europe. These fortify the need to retell the story that is largely about intra-African migration, contrary to the horrific sensationalized impression of irregular migration from Africa through the Mediterranean. This chapter sets the tone for other chapters that follow by emphasizing the need to move past the Western approach and amplify African voices in the migration dialogue by providing answers to the following questions: What would an African approach to mobility look like? With what presumptions would it begin? How would it build on histories of Pan-Africanism and African hospitality? Most importantly, what kind of policies would it bring forth?

Sustainable Development Goals:

Life on Land