What do shifting African migration patterns mean?

Migration has long served as a barometer of evolving realities in Africa, reflecting both the challenges it faces and its adaptive strategies.
This year, it is projected that nearly 75 percent of African migrants will remain within the continent, a figure that defies simplistic narratives of a mass exodus to Europe or North America. This intra-African movement, driven by disparities in economic opportunities, localized conflicts and climate pressures, reveals a dynamic recalibration.
Countries such as Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya now attract regional migrants seeking employment in burgeoning tech hubs and informal sectors alike, even as droughts in the Horn of Africa and instability in the Sahel displace millions.
Meanwhile, traditional routes to Europe have narrowed; border externalization policies reduced Mediterranean crossings by 34 percent between 2022 and 2024, redirecting the flows rather than halting them.
These shifts underscore a paradox. As economies in Africa grow at an average of 4 percent annually, internal inequities and external barriers are reshaping who moves, why they move, and where they move to.
The implications of this reorientation extend far beyond the continent. This year, sub-Saharan Africa’s urban population is expected to surpass 600 million, with cities such as Lagos and Addis Ababa becoming magnets for young labor. Yet 40 percent of these migrants will lack formal access to jobs, testing social systems and political stability.
In Europe and North Africa, the tightening of visa restrictions risks inflaming irregular migration through Libya or Tunisia, while the US grapples with rising asylum claims from conflict-affected regions such as Sudan.
Remittances, which surged to a value of $100 billion in 2024, now rival foreign aid in helping to sustain fragile economies, binding diaspora success to homeland survival.
As climate events and demographic surges — the median age in Africa is 19 — intersect with geopolitical interests, the governance of migration will demand more than simply deterrence. How nations respond could determine whether mobility becomes a catalyst for equitable growth or a fault line in global cooperation.
Contrary to pervasive stereotypes, Africa’s migration story is not one of unchecked flight, but of strategic movement rooted in regional interdependence. More than 85 percent of migrants from Middle Africa — encompassing Cameroon, Chad and Gabon — relocate within the continent, often to neighboring states with stronger labor markets. Ghana, for instance, now hosts 450,000 migrants, primarily from Niger and Burkina Faso, drawn by its stable agricultural and construction sectors.
This intracontinental flow is not merely survival-driven; it fuels economies. Migrant remittances within Africa reached $53 billion in 2024, a 22 percent increase since 2020, directly supporting small businesses and stabilizing rural households.
These figures challenge the myth of a continent that is “emptying out.” Less than 15 percent of African migrants venture beyond its borders; those who do increasingly move through legal channels, such as temporary work visas from Gulf states, which issued 320,000 permits to East Africans last year alone.
The decline in irregular migration to Europe, down 52 percent between 2023 and 2024, reveals both policy successes and unresolved risks.

Intracontinental migration offers a blueprint for harnessing the continent’s demographic surge into sustainable economic momentum. 

Hafed Al-Ghwell

Morocco’s collaboration with the EU to fortify its borders helped reduce the number of Mediterranean crossings from its coast by 75 percent, while Niger’s crackdown on smuggling networks disrupted key Sahara routes.
Yet this enforcement-first approach has unintended consequences. Migrants now take longer, deadlier paths: the figure for fatalities per attempted Mediterranean crossing rose to 1 in 38 in 2024, up from 1 in 55 the previous year.
Meanwhile, intra-African migration faces its own hurdles. The recent expulsion of 12,000 Cameroonian refugees from Nigeria highlights tensions over scarce resources, even as regional blocs such as the Economic Community of West African States push for visa-free labor mobility.
Such contradictions expose a central truth: migration cannot be “solved” by walls alone.
Harnessing migration as a tool for development requires rethinking its drivers. The working age population in Africa will grow by 70 million by 2030, yet formal job creation lags, pushing 28 million young people into informal cross-border trade annually. Programs such as Kenya’s digital jobs hubs, which train and connect migrants with tech-sector gigs, show promise. Similar initiatives could absorb 14 percent of the continent’s youth labor surplus by 2030.
In Europe and the US, investment in such models might prove more effective than funding border drones. The multibillion-dollar African diaspora remittance market, for instance, which already dwarfs foreign aid, should be harnessed by coupling these flows with vocational partnerships to transform migration from a crisis talking point into a cornerstone of equitable growth. The alternative — ignoring the potential of structured mobility — risks amplifying the very pressures that force desperate journeys.
A troubling and seemingly enduring trend lately has been Europe’s fixation on sealing its borders, which has inadvertently reshaped migration governance even within Africa, often with destabilizing consequences.
The $4.6 billion investment by the EU since 2021 to bolster surveillance and the detention infrastructure in North Africa has turned countries such as Tunisia and Mauritania into de facto border enforcers, providing them with incentives to adopt hard-line stances. Tunisia, for example, expelled more than 1,200 Sub-Saharan migrants in 2023 alone, citing EU pressure to curb transit flows.
Such “outsourced deterrence” has rippled southward. Cameroon and Kenya recently imposed restrictive visa policies targeting neighboring nationals, undermining the African Union’s 2018 free movement protocol.
Such measures fracture regional labor markets, already strained by climate shocks and unemployment, while fueling xenophobic rhetoric and driving local tensions.
In South Africa, for instance, anti-immigrant violence surged by 30 percent during 2024, as politicians framed migrants as competitors for scarce resources, while ignoring their contributions to sectors such as retail, education, craftsmanship, domestic work, and healthcare.
These dynamics expose a paradox: Efforts to reduce migration to Europe weaken the very systems that could make intra-African movement a catalyst for stability. The African Union’s vision for mobility as a tool for economic integration, projected to boost gross domestic product by 2.5 percent in participating states, is being dimmed by security-driven mimicry of Western policies.
Meanwhile, aid from the EU and US earmarked for migration “management” in Africa prioritizes drones over vocational training, despite evidence that every dollar invested in education has an eightfold benefit in reducing emigration pressures.
The result is a lose-lose scenario; border crackdowns displace migration routes into riskier corridors controlled by traffickers, while intra-African tensions rise.
Efforts to address the root causes of migration require cooperation, not containment. Without this, the Mediterranean moat will remain a symbol of fractured priorities, not shared solutions.
Intracontinental migration, which accounts for more than three quarters of African mobility, offers a blueprint for harnessing the continent’s demographic surge into sustainable economic momentum. Yet realizing this requires the transcending of fragmented policies. The African Union’s free movement protocol remains hamstrung by border restrictions and politicized xenophobia.
Scalable solutions, such as digital jobs platforms that align labor demand with youth migration, or regional visa waivers tied to skills-sharing, could convert mobility from a perceived liability into an engine for economic rebirth and collective growth.

• Hafed Al-Ghwell is a senior fellow and executive director of the North Africa Initiative at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. X: @HafedAlGhwell