Routledge Handbook of Contemporary African Migration [1 ed.] 9781003005551, 9780367437558, 9781032551937

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1 Contemporary African Migration: An Introduction
Part I History of African Migration
Chapter 2 Migration as Empowerment: A Selected History of Migration and Displacement in Africa
Chapter 3 Postcolonial States and Migration
Chapter 4 African Philosophy and International Migration
Part II Patterns and Trends of Contemporary African Migration
Chapter 5 Patterns and Trends of International Migration within and Out of Africa
Chapter 6 Issues, Patterns, and Trends in Contemporary African Migration to Europe and North America
Chapter 7 The Contemporary “African Coolie” in the Middle East: Interrogating the Narratives of the Modern-Day African Slaves
Chapter 8 Lesotho–South Africa Relations: A Case for Free Movement of Persons across the Common Border
Part III Migration Governance, Forced Displacement and Irregular Migration
Chapter 9 Migration Policy Frameworks in Africa
Chapter 10 Refugee Politics in Africa
Chapter 11 Contemporary Forced Migration in Africa
Chapter 12 Migrating Out of Migration: Diminishing Seasonal Migration Options and Conflicts among the Pokot of Kenya
Chapter 13 The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on African Migration
Part IV Migration, Diaspora Engagement, and the Politics of Development
Chapter 14 The Remittances–Development Debate in Africa
Chapter 15 Return Migration to Africa and Its Development Potential
Chapter 16 Reconsidering the Concept of International Return in the African Context: The Place of Immobile Cognitive Return
Chapter 17 The Nature and “Lived” Experiences of Contemporary African Diasporas
Chapter 18 The Landscape of the African Diaspora
Chapter 19 Engendering Migration in Africa: The Case of Ethiopian Migration to South Africa
Part V Future Trajectories of African Migration
Chapter 20 Africa without Borders
Chapter 21 The African Continental Free Trade Area and Migration Patterns
Chapter 22 Climate Variability and New Fish Eldorados In Africa
Chapter 23 Migration Data Management in Africa
Chapter 24 The Future of Immigration in Africa
Index

Citation preview

ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN MIGRATION

This handbook provides an authoritative multidisciplinary overview of contemporary African international migration. It endeavours to present a single source of reference on issues such as migration history, trends, migrant profiles, narratives, migration-development nexus, migration governance, diasporas, impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, among others. The handbook assembles a multidisciplinary contributor team of distinguished and upcoming Africanist scholars, practitioners, researchers, and policy experts both inside and outside Africa to contribute their perspectives on contemporary African migration. It attempts to address some of the following pertinent questions: • • • • •

What drives contemporary migration in Africa? How are its patterns and trends evolving? What is the architecture of migration governance in Africa? How do migration, diaspora engagement and development play out in Africa? What are the future trajectories of African migration?

The handbook is a valuable resource for practitioners, politicians, researchers, university students, and academics interested in studying and understanding contemporary African migration. Daniel Makina is a Professor of Economic Sciences at the University of South Africa. He holds a PhD from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. His research interests include migration economics, financial inclusion in emerging markets, and FinTech. He has published in academic journals such as International Migration, Migration Letters, Applied Economics, Applied Financial Economics, the Journal of Developing Societies, African Finance Journal, African Development Review, among others. His recent edited volume is Extending Financial Inclusion in Africa published in 2019. Dominic Pasura is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Glasgow, UK. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Warwick, UK. His research interests include migration, transnationalism, and diaspora, in particular the new African diasporas. He has published widely in peer-reviewed journals and edited books. He is the author of African

Transnational Diasporas: Fractured Communities and Plural Identities of Zimbabweans in Britain (2014) and co-editor of Migration, Transnationalism and Catholicism: Global Perspectives (2016). He is the Principal Investigator on the UK Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC) three-year funded grant project, ‘The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Transnational Young People of African Migrant Background,’ which commenced in May 2023.

ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN MIGRATION

Edited by Daniel Makina and Dominic Pasura

Designed cover image: © Getty Images First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 selection and editorial matter, Daniel Makina and Dominic Pasura; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Daniel Makina and Dominic Pasura to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-367-43755-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-55193-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-00555-1 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551 Typeset in Galliard by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

CONTENTS

List of Figures viii List of Tables x Notes on Contributors xi Acknowledgementsxvii 1 Contemporary African Migration: An Introduction Dominic Pasura and Daniel Makina PART I

History of African Migration

21

2 Migration as Empowerment: A Selected History of Migration and Displacement in Africa Graham Sherbut

23

3 Postcolonial States and Migration Clayton Boeyink and Simon Turner

38

4 African Philosophy and International Migration Blessing Chapfika

52

PART II

Patterns and Trends of Contemporary African Migration 5 Patterns and Trends of International Migration within and Out of Africa Daniel Makina and Peter Mudungwe



1

v

77 79

Contents

6 Issues, Patterns, and Trends in Contemporary African Migration to Europe and North America Charles Temitope Adeyanju and Olabimpe A. Olatunji

99

7 The Contemporary “African Coolie” in the Middle East: Interrogating the Narratives of the Modern-Day African Slaves Chris C. Opesen, Opolot Amos and Mathew Amollo

114

8 Lesotho–South Africa Relations: A Case for Free Movement of Persons across the Common Border Khabele Matlosa

135

PART III

Migration Governance, Forced Displacement and Irregular Migration 9 Migration Policy Frameworks in Africa Tsion Tadesse Abebe and Peter Mudungwe

151 153

10 Refugee Politics in Africa Alexander Betts

170

11 Contemporary Forced Migration in Africa David Gakere Ndegwa

182

12 Migrating Out of Migration: Diminishing Seasonal Migration Options and Conflicts among the Pokot of Kenya Dulo Nyaoro 13 The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on African Migration Margaret Rutendo Magwedere and Daniel Makina PART IV

Migration, Diaspora Engagement, and the Politics of Development

197 210

229

14 The Remittances–Development Debate in Africa Daniel Makina and Margaret Rutendo Magwedere

231

15 Return Migration to Africa and Its Development Potential Sabastiano Rwengabo

246

16 Reconsidering the Concept of International Return in the African Context: The Place of Immobile Cognitive Return Mary Boatemaa Setrana and Adolf Awuku Bekoe vi

273

Contents

17 The Nature and “Lived” Experiences of Contemporary African Diasporas Thabani Mutambasere and Dominic Pasura

286

18 The Landscape of the African Diaspora Almaz Negash

296

19 Engendering Migration in Africa: The Case of Ethiopian Migration to South Africa Meron Zekele PART V

Future Trajectories of African Migration

310

327

20 Africa without Borders Jesper Bjarnesen and Amanda Bisong

329

21 The African Continental Free Trade Area and Migration Patterns Daniel Osarfo, Peter Quartey, and Joshua Y. Abor

346

22 Climate Variability and New Fish Eldorados In Africa Papa Sow

374

23 Migration Data Management in Africa Daniel Makina and John Atwebembeire Mushomi

389

24 The Future of Immigration in Africa Daniel Makina and Dominic Pasura

407

Index419

vii

FIGURES

5.1 Number of International Migrants, by World Bank Income Group at Origin, 1990–2020 81 5.2 Number of International Migrants Millions by Region of Destination, 2010 and 2020 82 5.3 Annual Rate of Change of Migrant Stock by Region 1990–2020, Percentage 82 5.4 African Migration Trends at a Glance 84 5.5 Top Ten Destination Countries in Africa for International Migrants, 2020 85 5.6 Percentage of Sub-Saharan Africa Immigrants by Education and Employment in Five Destination Countries (2015) 92 5.7 Projected Net Mobility from Africa to EU15, 2020–2029 93 7.1 Flowchart showing the process followed to select articles for the review 117 11.1 Stock of UNHCR’s Populations of Concern for the Years 2007 to 2020 in Africa 184 11.2 Forced Migration Numbers from 2007 to 2020 in African Sub-Regions 186 11.3 Refugees’ Flow Trends from UNHCR and Elections Years Data from IDEA, 2007 to 2020: Cote d’Ivoire 187 11.4 Conflict-Related New Displacements in African Sub-Regions, 2009–2020 189 11.5 Number of People Affected by Disasters in African Sub-Regions from 2007 to 2020 192 11.6 Disaster New Displacements in African Sub-Regions, 2008–2020 192 11.7 Population in Moderate or Severe Food Insecurity in Africa, 2014–2020 194 13.1 Migration Flows to Europe, Arrivals, 2021 and 2020 220 13.2 Trends of Total Migrant Arrivals in Europe by Land and Sea from 2016 to 2021221 13.3 Top Ten Countries in Africa with a Larger Share of Remittances as a Proportion of GDP 222 14.1 Top Ten Remittance Recipients in Sub-Saharan Africa Region, 2021 234

viii



Figures

14.2 Net FDI Flows, Personal Remittances, ODA and Official Aid Received in Sub-Saharan Africa (US$) (1970–2020) 14.3 Top Ten Remittance-Reliant (as a Proportion of GDP) Countries in Africa (2018–2021) 14.4 Percentage of Usage of Formal Remittance Channels 21.1 Ghana’s exports and emigration to ECOWAS member states 21.2 Ghana’s exports and emigration to non-ECOWAS African member states 21.3 Ghana’s exports and emigration to non-African countries 21.4 Ghana’s exports (to) and immigration from other ECOWAS member states 21.5 Ghana’s exports (to) and immigration from non-ECOWAS African countries 21.6 Ghana’s exports (to) and immigration from non-African countries 23.1 Total Number of International Migrants at Mid-Year 2020 23.2 Number of International Migrants by Major Area of Destination 23.3 Actual and Projected Change in Total Population over Five-Year Time Periods by Major Area, from 2000 to 2050, with and without International Migration Starting in 2015 (Millions) 23.4 Main Elements of a Population Register 24.1 Emigration to Africa

ix

234 235 240 365 366 367 368 369 370 391 391 393 394 415

TABLES

4.1 Prominent African Philosophers 5.1 Sub-Saharan African Immigrants in the USA in 2018 5.2 Education and Labour Force Participation of Immigrants and US-Born Citizens in 2017 5.3 Labour Shortages and Surpluses by Country, 2020 and 2030 5.4 Desire to Migrate by Region 5.5 Projected Changes in the Size of the Working-Age Population, 2005–2050 (millions) 7.1 Summary of search words by research questions 11.1 Numbers and Percentages of Forced Migrant Population of Concern to UNHCR in Africa, 2007–2020 11.2 Number of Fatalities from Conflict in Africa, 2007 to 2019 11.3 Leading Causes of Disaster-Related Displacement in Africa, 2008–2020 13.1 Timeline of Pandemics in the 20th and 21st centuries 13.2 Big Data Types and Pros and Cons 14.1 Sources of Remittances to Africa 14.2 Remittances Per Capita 14.3 Selected Remittance Corridors and Their Cost of Transfer 15.1 Migration Context of Selected African Countries vis-à-vis RM-2-A 23.1 Key Statistical Indicators for Internet, Mobile and Social Media Users for Selected African Countries 23.2 Migration Data Collection by Selected African Countries 24.1 Immigration Attitudes in Selected African Countries 24.2 Selected Trading Partners of Sub-Saharan Africa – Change 2006–2018 24.3 Stocks of Immigrants to Africa and Origin Countries (1990–2019)

x

60 86 90 94 95 95 116 185 191 193 213 223 235 236 240 264 398 401 412 414 415



NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Tsion Tadesse Abebe is a leading policy analyst on African migration and displacement issues. She is currently working as the Senior Policy and Research Officer for the International Organization for Migration (IOM)’s Regional Office for the East and Horn of Africa. She is the editor of IOM’s flagship report, ‘The State of Migration in East and Horn of Africa’. Prior to joining IOM, she worked as a senior researcher on migration and displacement issues for the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), a leading African think tank. She has widely published on African migration and displacement policy issues. Joshua Yindenaba Abor is a Financial Economist, Professor of Finance, and former Dean of the University of Ghana Business School. He is a Director and Senior Consultant with the Corporate Support Group. He is an External Fellow at the Centre for Global Finance, SOAS University of London, an Adjunct Professor of Development Finance at Stellenbosch Business School, and a researcher with the African Economic Research Consortium. He has also held Visiting Scholar positions at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in Washington DC, and is an Afreximbank Research Fellow. He is also a member of the Bank of Ghana Monetary Policy Committee. Mathew Amollo (MSC) is a health researcher with over 15 years in research and evaluation. His research interest is in child health especially equity and utilization of health services among children and young adults. He has vast experience in the evaluation of public health programs in Uganda and internationally. He has expertise in experimental research designs such as randomized control trials and quasi-experimental studies; systematic reviews and meta-analysis; analyses of secondary datasets such as longitudinal surveys and national surveys; and conduct of impact evaluations. Mathew is currently working as a Research Manager at the AfriChild Centre, Makerere University. Opolot Amos holds a BA in ethics and human rights from Makerere University. Currently, he is an MA Sociology fellow at Makerere University and a research fellow at the Governance, Development, and Peace Research Centre (GDPRC). His professional career has focused on both academic and applied research with public, civil society, and the private sector agencies Charles Temitope Adeyanju is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Prince Edward Island. He holds a PhD in 

xi

Notes on Contributors

Sociology from McMaster University. Adeyanju’s research interests are immigration, media and society, and race and ethnicity. He has researched a range of social issues that include media representations of race, migration of Nigerians to Canada for higher education, and taser use by the Canadian police. His publications have appeared in leading peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Social Identities, Journal of Black Studies, Journal of Migration and International Migration, African Studies Review, and the Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Charles Adeyanju is currently researching African immigrants in the smallest province in Canada, Prince Edward Island. Adolf Awuku Bekoe is a licensed Clinical Psychologist and a Lecturer at Methodist University Ghana (MUG). Additionally, he holds a Diploma in Transitional Justice from the IJR/ICTJ in Cape Town, South Africa. He recently defended his PhD thesis on the topic ‘(Im)mobility, cognitive migration and return in Ghana’ to conclude his doctoral studies in Migration Studies at the Centre for Migration Studies, University of Ghana. Adolf has considerable experience as a Gender-Based Violence Specialist working with women’s shelters and law enforcement in GBV response, training, and policy. His research interests include imagination and future aspirations, mental health, and sexual/genderbased violence. Alexander Betts is a Professor of Forced Migration and International Affairs and the Director of the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. His recent books include The Wealth of Refugees: How Displaced People Can Build Economies (Oxford University Press). He has received the ESRC’s Outstanding International Impact Award, the International Studies Association’s ‘Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration’ section Distinguished Book Award, and has been recognized by Foreign Policy magazine among the top 100 global thinkers. He has previously worked for UNHCR and served on the World Refugee and Migration Council. Amanda Bisong is a Policy Officer in the migration and mobility team of ECDPM, Maastricht, the Netherlands. She has a background in Law and MAs in International Law and Economics (World Trade Institute) and International Trade Policy and Trade Law (Lund University). She is currently also pursuing her PhD in migration governance in West Africa at the Faculty of Law, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her focus research areas are on migration agreements, labour migration, exploring the linkages between trade and migration in Africa, migration governance, and the interplay between regional and national commitments. In recent years, she has published several research articles on migration governance. Homepage: https://ecdpm​.org​/people​/amanda​-bisong/ Twitter: @BusaSays Jesper Bjarnesen is a Senior Researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI) and Associate Professor in cultural anthropology. He works primarily on the grey zones between forced and voluntary migration in West Africa. His interests include the generational variations of displacement, the dynamics of integration among urban youths, and the broader themes of urban resettlement and transnational families. His current research focuses on the ‘soft infrastructures’ of labour mobilities across and between secondary cities in West Africa. He is the cofounder of the African Migration, Mobility, and Displacement (AMMODI) research network. xii

Notes on Contributors

Clayton Boeyink’s research explores the shrinking space of asylum in Tanzania, which is situated within a longer history of containment and mobility manipulation by the state since the colonial era. Despite severe constraints of encampment, refugees circumvent the state and co-opt humanitarian structures to establish livelihoods through illicit mobilities. His current project aims to improve healthcare at the intersection of gender and protracted displacement amongst Somali and Congolese refugees and IDPs in Somalia, Eastern DRC, Nairobi, and Johannesburg. This project seeks to understand which social connections displaced people turn to for care beyond formal biomedical/psychosocial systems. Blessing Chapfika is a recent Doctor of Philosophy graduate from the University of Hull (UK). In his PhD thesis entitled ‘Towards an African philosophy of education’, Blessing appropriates the critical reflexivity paradigm to formulate a dialogic African philosophy of education. Blessing is mainly interested in African philosophy, philosophy of education, social and political philosophy, postcolonial theory, critical theory, and ethical theory. Margaret Rutendo Magwedere is an early career researcher and a post-doctoral fellow with the University of South Africa (UNISA) where she obtained a PhD in Finance. Her research interests are in development finance/economics focusing on developing countries particularly in Africa. These interests are augmented by her work experience as a banker at an Agricultural bank, economist in government, and as an academic. Challenges that inhibit the attainment of the SDGs are her passion for developing a career in research. Khabele Matlosa is currently the Visiting Professor at the Centre for African Diplomacy and Leadership at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He is the former Senior Governance Advisor at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He is the former Director at the Department of Political Affairs, African Union Commission (AUC), Addis Ababa. He has researched and written widely on migration in Africa. His latest publication in this area is ‘Governance challenges for migration in Africa: the missing link’, in Akinola Adeoye and Jesper Bjarnesen. eds. Worlds Apart? Perspectives on Africa/EU Migration, Auckland Park: Jacana Publishing (Forthcoming, 2022). Peter Mudungwe has a BSc in Economics from the University of Zimbabwe, and a MA in Human Resources Development from the University of Manchester. He is an international development expert with experience in Africa and has over 10 years of experience working on migration and development issues in Africa. Between 2004 and 2014 Peter worked for the International Organization for Migration and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Migration Facility managing migration and development projects. He has written several papers in the area of migration and development, and has been commissioned by the Africa Diaspora Policy Centre (ADPC), the European Union Commission and the International Organization for Migration to work on migration issues in Africa. Peter sits on the Advisory Board of the University of Coventry’s UK Research & Innovation GCRF South-South Migration, Inequality and Development Hub as a representative of the African Union Commission, and is currently a Senior Technical Advisor – Migration Governance at the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. John Atwebembeire Mushomi holds a PhD in Philosophy in Population Studies and has 14 years of research and policy practice experience in Population and Development. He is a research and policy fellow at AFIDEP and a Lecturer at the Department of Population xiii

Notes on Contributors

Studies, Makerere University. Over the years, he has worked on various areas in Demography including reproductive Health, Demographic dividend, Migration, Urbanization and Development, Population Policy, and Development. He has provided research and support services to ministries, departments, and agencies in East and Southern African countries in areas of Migration, Demographic Dividend, and research and policy analysis, among others. Thabani Mutambasere is a Lecturer in African Studies and International Development at the University of Edinburgh. His interdisciplinary research interests include, but are not limited to, African diasporas, particularly how they contribute to their countries of origin via non-economic routes such as politics, development (charity), and humanitarianism. Thabani also works on issues of diaspora citizenship, belonging, identity, and transnationalism (including religious transnationalism). David Ndegwa is a demographer based in Maryland, USA. He has worked with various institutions as a senior research, population, health, education, and infrastructure delivery analyst. His most recent assignment was to assist the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa’s (ECA) process to review the implementation of the Global Compact on Migration (GCM) in Africa including writing of the Africa GCM review report. David has previously worked for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa, Lesotho, Malawi, Uganda, Bangladesh, and Myanmar on various migration analysis assignments. Almaz Negash is named as one of the 100 outstanding Silicon Valley Women of Influence for her work in social innovation. In 2010, Almaz founded the African Diaspora Network (ADN) to inform and engage Africans in the diaspora and facilitate direct collaboration with social entrepreneurs, innovators, and business leaders to invest and improve the lives of everyone on the continent and the communities where we live. Under her leadership and vision, ADN is now the home of The African Diaspora Investment Symposium (ADIS), an annual convening in Silicon Valley, Builders of Africa’s Future, and Impact & Investment Forums. Currently, Almaz is exploring ways to provide access to capital to Black led startups and SMEs via the newly launched program called: Accelerating Black Leadership & Entrepreneurship (ABLE). Whether creating market-driven solutions to reduce homelessness and mental health with Pay for Success (a.k.a. Social Impact Bond) – a more than $28 million project in Santa Clara County, supporting women to gain financial security through microenterprise development, international trade, or engaging former heads of states on Global Leadership & Ethics, she’s a committed and inspiring social change agent. Dulo Nyaoro is a Senior Lecturer/Researcher in the Department of Political Science, Moi University, and Coordinator at Peace Institute since 2011. Qualifications include a BA degree in Political Science, Moi University, and MA in Migration Studies from the University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. He is currently finalizing his PhD in Development Studies at the University of Johannesburg. Nyaoro has over 15 years of experience working with refugees. He has conducted research on migration and displacement in Kenya, South Africa, and Somalia. He has published several pieces on migration and refugee issues in Kenya and the horn of Africa. Research interests include development and migration, human rights, African politics and governance, Peace and Conflicts studies. He is also the team leader of Geographic Working Group of the Local Engagement Refugee Research Network. xiv

Notes on Contributors

Olabimpe Ajoke Olatunji is a Senior Lecturer at the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, Ekiti State, Nigeria. She holds a PhD degree in Developmental Psychology. She served as the Head of the Department of Psychology between the years 2016 and 2018. Her research interest spans the developmental period of adolescents (teenagers, youth, and emerging adults) emphasizing on the biological and socio-emotional processes that interact with adolescents’ development. Her research also focuses on some collaborative researches in the area of adulthood (early, mid, and late adult life) development. The importance of gender issues, particularly women, and the psychosocial factors surrounding them is of utmost concern in her research. Chris C. Opesen is a member of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Scientists (IUAES, 2018–2022), Uganda Sociological and Anthropological Association, Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa (OSSREA) and the East African Borderland Research Network. He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology and has held two post-doctoral fellowships in Medical Anthropology at Exeter University in the last three to four years. Currently, he is a Population and Demography Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Makerere University and a consulting East African Crude Oil Pipeline Project Induced Immigration specialist. Daniel Osarfo is a Development Economist and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research, University of Ghana. His research focuses on Digital and Retail Finance Distribution Networks, Financial and Monetary Sector Development, Trade and Women Empowerment. Peter Quartey is a Professor in Development Economics and the Director of the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research, University of Ghana. He is the Vice National Advisory Board Chairman of the Hunger Project (Ghana), a Board Member of Agricultural Development Bank Ltd, a member of both the African Economic Research Consortium and the Global Development Network, and the Executive Chairman of Startrite Montessori School. He has published extensively in the Financial and Monetary Sector, Private Sector Development including SMEs, Development Finance, Migration and Remittances, and Poverty Analysis. He has consulted for the World Bank, AfDB, OECD, USAID, ODI, DFID, among others. Sabastiano Rwengabo is a Ugandan Political Scientist and Consultant in Fragility and Resilience Assessments (FRAs), Regional Integration, Political Economy Analyses (PEAs), and Governance. He holds a PhD from the National University of Singapore (NUS), where he was a Research Scholar and President’s Graduate Fellow, 2010–2014. He is affiliated with several research institutions in Africa and beyond. He is the author of Security Cooperation in the East African Community (Trenton, New Jersey: Africa World Press, 2018), and coeditor of Peace, Democracy and Development in Africa (London: Adonis & Abbey, 2020). Mary Boatemaa Setrana is the Director of the Centre for Migration Studies, University of Ghana. She is currently a member of the consortium working on the following projects: Migration Decisions and the COVID-19 Pandemic project funded by the Swiss Government; GCRF South-South Migration, Inequality and Development Hub, funded by UKRI; Climate Change, Migration and Social Transformation project funded by EU; Culture for Sustainable and Inclusive Peace Project, funded by UKRI; and Crises as Opportunities project, funded by EU. Prof. Setrana’s research interests include Force Migration and xv

Notes on Contributors

Displacement, Labour Migration and Gender, Return Migration and Reintegration, Youth Migration and Aspirations, Transnational Migration and Diasporas. Graham Sherbut, a Canadian national, is a political scientist and development practitioner who currently serves as the Deputy Chief of Party with the USAID Zambia Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Platform. Holding a PhD in Political Science from Stellenbosch University and a MA in Development Studies from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Sherbut’s research interests focus on comparative African politics and the interplay between governance, state fragility, economic development, and migration, particularly in the continent’s small states. He applies his academic focus to practical development issues, serving as an evaluator of governance programs for multiple international donors. Papa Sow is a Senior Researcher at the NAI-Nordic Africa Institute (Uppsala, Sweden). His main lines of research are migration dynamics, society and culture, and natural resources and environment. He worked and participated in several research projects, with over 40 publications since 2000 in international reviews. Previous jobs: Consultant, Research Associate, Catalan Fund for Cooperation and Development, Spain (2005–2006). Researcher, Project leader, Open University of Catalonia, Spain (2007–2009), Marie Curie Research Fellow, CRER, University of Warwick, UK (2009–2011). Senior Researcher, Centre for Development Research, ZEF – University of Bonn (2012–2017). Senior Researcher at IFAN, University Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar (2017–2020). Simon Turner is a Professor of Social Anthropology at Lund University. He works on forced displacement, diaspora, conflict, and humanitarianism in the African Great Lakes region. Presently, he is engaged in a project on anticipating violence in the Burundi conflict and another project on everyday humanitarianism in Tanzania. He is the author of Politics of Innocence: Hutu Identity, Conflict and Camp Life (Berghahn, 2010), and the co-editor of Stuckness and Confinement: Reflections on Life in Ghettos, Camps and Prisons (Ethnos, 2019) and Invisibility in African Displacements: From Structural Marginalisation to Strategies of Avoidance (Bloomington 2020). Meron Zeleke is an Associate Professor with years of international research and guest teaching experiences in North America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. Her core areas of research expertise include gender, migration, social inequality, industrial labour, child migration, religion and conflict. She has published extensively on these themes in internationally renowned journals, authored books, edited special issue of journals, and co-edited books and has authored entries in Encyclopaedias. Meron is an international editorial member of Brill –Islamic Africa journal and the Editor-in-Chief of Ethiopian Journal of Human Rights (EJHR). Part of her ongoing research projects include a project gender

xvi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As editors we would like to first and foremost extend immense gratitude to contributors for sharing their scholarship on this fascinating topic and for their patience in responding to our numerous requests for revisions. We have received countless benefits from their efforts. Writing the handbook during the COVID-19 situation was difficult and challenging; we are grateful for the perseverance and collaborative spirit of the contributors. During our time working on this handbook, Rosie Anderson and Katerina Lade at Routledge were extremely patient, helpful, and supportive. We are grateful to them for all of their efforts. We would like to express our gratitude to our families and colleagues at the University of South Africa and the University of Glasgow, whose encouragement and support were instrumental in the development of this Routledge Handbook of Contemporary African Migration. Dominic Pasura and Daniel Makina



xvii

1 CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN MIGRATION An Introduction Dominic Pasura and Daniel Makina

Introduction This handbook presents a comprehensive overview of African migration within and outside of the continent from historical, contemporary, and future perspectives. Even though the majority of migration takes place within the African continent, most research, policy, and media coverage are focused on those who leave the continent (Carling & Hernández‐Carretero, 2011; Crawley & Blitz, 2019; De Haas, 2008; Pisarevskaya et al., 2020; Pradella & Taghdisi Rad, 2017), reproducing in thought and practice coloniality of power and knowledge (Mignolo, 2007; Quijano, 2000). However, most of these studies and works are produced about Africa rather than studies with and from an African perspective. Our contention is that Africa and Africans are the epistemological points of departure for the Eurocentric field of migration studies. In this introduction, the editors and contributors of this volume outline five ways to further understand contemporary African migration sui generis and to combat the Eurocentric bias that has plagued migration research thus far. First, in order to de-centre and re-centre the study of African migration, we must first recognise the inadequacy of methodological nationalism in social sciences (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002), which assumes Westerncentric epistemology and nation-states as starting points for empirical studies on international migration. We need to be attentive to alternative ways of knowing, including epistemological stances and methodological approaches. Following Zeleza (2010, p. 2), the challenge is to resist both the tyranny of hegemonic models and the romance of the local, and to develop analytical models that are historically grounded and theoretically suggestive—that are sensitive to local experiences without losing sight of the global forces that structure them. Second, to comprehend contemporary African migration, it is necessary to thoroughly understand the continent’s history, including slavery, colonialism, and imperialism, and the degree to which historical factors contributed to African underdevelopment and shaped its DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-1

1

Dominic Pasura and Daniel Makina

culture, religion, and mobility patterns. Third, the handbook situates the migration and mobilities of Africans within a racialised and globalised capitalism, which remains rooted in colonial hierarchies between white Europeans and the “other”, including black Africans. Fourth, we pay particular attention to the ways in which post-colonial African states, which are historically contingent social formations, enable, manage, and regulate migration in various ways. We also take into account the ways in which these post-colonial states (re)construct ideologies and practices of exclusive citizenship and belonging. Lastly, while neoclassical, New Economic of Labour Migration, and Historical-Structural perspectives all emphasise economic rationale in migratory decision-making (De Haas, 2010; De Haas et al., 2019), we place a high level of importance on the human agency of Africans and do not see migrations and mobilities as primarily the result of larger structural forces but rather as the result of processes of development and social transformation that have resulted in increased capabilities and aspirations on the part of Africans (De Haas, 2021).

De-Centring Eurocentrism in Migration Studies One of the main contributions of the handbook is an attempt to challenge and break away from Eurocentric approaches to migration and policy-making debates by privileging alternative ways of knowing, including epistemological stances and methodological approaches, as well as centring the voices of African scholars and policymakers. Migration to and from Africa is a topic of increasing research, publications, conferences, and workshops; however, there remains an unhealthy monopoly of knowledge generated by scholars located in the global North about migration flows from Africa to Europe. There is an underlying assumption and perception within such a body of knowledge that Africa is the primitive, traditional, exotic, and Oriental Other, which should be subject to the Western gaze and knowledge production system (Said, 1978). The discourse and theorising of social science in the global North and the cultural premises that underlie them are problematic and based on Western cultural assumptions (Bhambra & Santos, 2017). Western modernity established itself as an enlightened civilisation in opposition to the epistemological Other, the colonial Other, in which Africa and the rest of the world became the de facto primitive Other of Enlightenment reason (Vásquez, 2012). Binary notions such as religious/secular, tradition/modernity, and public/private that underpin Western epistemology privilege specific ways of being and belonging while marginalising others (Pasura, 2022). In modern knowledge formation, Africa has always occupied a paradoxical position. It has been and continues to be the subject of the social and scientific attention of scholars from the global North (Shipley et al., 2010). Africa has at least four overlapping constructions as biology – “Sub-Saharan Africa”, a racial construct, as geography, as history, and as representation – discursive, imagined, and “invented” by anthropologists, missionaries, and colonial administrators (Zeleza, 2009). The handbook warns against the tendency within Western academia to essentialise and homogenise “Africa” or “Africans”. We do not pretend to speak for all of Africa, but the case studies presented here give a sense of the continent’s variety and commonalities. Migration studies’ research agendas are often aligned with the interests of states that provide major funding to North American and European academics (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2020). Recent decades have seen an institutionalisation of migration and integration research (Dahinden, 2016) and a call to “de-migranticise” migration and integration research. A large portion of migration and integration research is informed by methodological nationalism 2

Contemporary African Migration

and nation-state and ethnicity-centric epistemologies (Dahinden, 2016; Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002). Landau and Bakewell (2018, p. 5) observe “the frailty of empirical research from Africa (and other regions of the developing world) has reinforced more fundamental, conceptual shortcomings in the literature that tend to universalise the American and European processes of immigrant integration” Schinkel (2018) rallied against “immigrant integration” and correctly called “for an end to neocolonial knowledge production”. As stated by Grosfoguel et al: Migration studies tend to reproduce a northern-centric social science view of the world that comes from the experience of others in the zone of being. For many decades, migration theory was based on European immigrant experience. One of the most pervasive myths reproduced by Eurocentric social sciences is the myth of a neutral, universalist, objective point of view. However, there is no neutrality in knowledge production. We consistently speak from a location in the gender, racial, class and sexual hierarchies of the world-system. In the case of international migration, due to its relationship to colonial legacies and the reproduction in the presence of colonial relations between migrant and host populations, we speak from a location in the “colonial hierarchies” produced by the coloniality of power. (Ramon Grosfoguel et al., 2015, p. 646) How do we address Eurocentrism in migration studies? Post-colonial, decolonial, and/ or southern scholars aim to resist Eurocentrism by drawing on various long-standing theoretical and methodological interventions (Bhambra & Santos, 2017; Connell, 2007; Ramón Grosfoguel, 2007; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2012). Decolonising migration studies is a topic that has come up in contemporary scholarship (Achiume, 2019; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2020; Ramon Grosfoguel et al., 2015; Mayblin & Turner, 2020; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013). Ndhlovu (2016, p. 28) provided decolonial critiques of migration concepts such as diaspora, superdiversity, integration, and multiculturism for their “uncritical embrace of elitist neoliberal conceptualizations of culture and identity”. Scholars from the global South have called for alternative epistemologies to challenge the hegemony of Eurocentric/Western perspectives, which are masked behind discourses of universalism, modernity, and globalisation (Bhambra & Santos, 2017; Ramón Grosfoguel, 2007; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2012). For instance, in “epistemologies of the south”, de Sousa Santos (2014) examines the production and validation of knowledge rooted in the resistance experiences of all social groups that have suffered systematically from capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy. A re-centring of “Southern theories” has been called for by Connell (2007). Indeed, South–South migration has emerged as an important research and policy issue in order to re-centre the global South (Jonathan Crush & Chikanda, 2018; Ratha & Shaw, 2007). By de-centring the Eurocentrism in migration studies, we mean rethinking normative assumptions about migration and focusing on different forms of mobility in the global South, particularly in Africa. It involves engaging with questions about how to engage critically with the geopolitics of knowledge production (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2020). In this handbook, one of the intellectual objectives is to go beyond the normal constraints within which migration is understood. The process of migration occurs within the framework of political structures. Throughout the continent, different forms of mobility occur through, below, or above the nation-state, as well as before nation-states were established (pre-colonial), for example, cross-border mobility, rainmaking mobility, and neo-Pentecostal healing journeys. 3

Dominic Pasura and Daniel Makina

The handbook also includes a conceptual strand related to the current scholarly interest in the “mobilities turn” in the social sciences (Hannam et al., 2006; Urry, 2007), which shifts the focus of research from sources to sources, networks, and flows. However, although the concept of mobilities encompasses both movements of people, objects, capital, and information across the world as well as the travel of material things within everyday life (Hannam et al., 2006), human mobility still dominates the field despite increasing attention to the mobility of material objects and information. This volume contributes to the growing body of research that recognises the analytical inadequacies of classical concepts and frameworks in the global South (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, 2020) and promotes alternative ways of knowing and epistemological approaches and methodological stances. Making sense of mobility’s socio-political consequences in Africa means moving past discussions of the formal policy regimes that often frame Euro-American analyses (Landau & Bakewell, 2018).

Slavery, Imperialism, Colonialism, and Contemporary Migration During the development of this Handbook on Contemporary African Migration and the writing of the introduction, we sought to emphasise that slavery, imperialism, and colonialism, as well as African economic and political history are important variables for a comprehensive understanding of contemporary migration in Africa. Mobility practices were widespread across the African continent prior to the arrival of colonial powers. We agree with Mbembe (2020, p. 58), who states that it is impossible to understand the cultural history of the African continent without understanding its itinerancy, mobility, and displacement, but “it is this very culture of mobility that colonization once endeavored to freeze through the modern institution of borders”. However, as Collins (2022, p. 1248) correctly observed, “migration research has often demonstrated an amnesia about its relationship to colonialism.” Slavery, imperialism, colonialism, and neocolonialism have negatively impacted the African continent (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2012). Many Africans were forced to migrate to the Old World of Asia through the Atlantic slave trade (Cohen, 2008). European traders began stripping African societies of their human resources as early as the 16th century. It was not the value of the land or the capital that drove the majority of the trade; rather, it was the value of the people through the slave trade (see also Sherbut in this volume). A primary objective of European colonialism and neocolonialism was to exploit Africa’s human and material resources by partitioning space, offshoring, and fencing off wealth and splintering territories. In this volume, Matlosa captures the predicament of colonially imposed borders between Lesotho and South Africa and argues for free movement across the border. South Africa wholly surrounds the Kingdom of Lesotho. Due to this geographical arrangement, Basotho feel they are prisoners in their own land. Many of them feel like they are a big herd of cattle locked in a kraal with a shepherd or owner who has forsaken them. Due to hunger and thirst, they are supposed to force their way out. There is a consensus among the majority of Basotho stakeholders that any cooperation agreement which does not deal with the burning issue of the free (easy and effortless) movement across the border would not be addressing the pertinence of Basotho's interests and aspirations. (Matlosa this volume) 4

Contemporary African Migration

By conquering and colonising the African continent, Europeans hoped to shape the continent along European lines (Mudimbe, 1988). Mudimbe identified three interrelated but distinct assumptions and courses of action: the control of physical space, the re-education of indigenous minds, and the incorporation of regional economic histories into the Western worldview. Imperial, colonial, and neo-colonial interactions, frequently marked by uneven power relations and symbolic and material violence, have produced biases, stereotypes, and negative construction of people of the African continent as the “other”. African philosophy attempts to reawaken interest in African identity, cultural belief, thought, and value system, after suffering systematic epistemicide at the hands of slavers and colonisers (Chapfika in this volume). Decolonising migration studies entails recognising and pushing back against the ways in which migration studies reproduce colonial, neoliberal, and neo-colonial racialised and gendered structures of oppression.

Racialised and Globalised Capitalism Globalised and racialised capitalism, driven by powerful states, former empires, and hightech corporations, is intrinsically linked to migration and mobilities within and outside Africa, which is regarded as a permanent periphery within the global economic system where modes/relationships of extraction are prevalent. In a sense, Africa’s colonial and post-colonial context was and continues to be underpinned by what Shipley et al. (2010, p. 668) describe as “rapacious modes of extraction” by “corporatist modern-imperial – whose globally-outsourced systems of production make the racial capitalism of apartheid look almost gentle”. Africans play an integral role in human mobility driven by economic, social, and political forces operating on local, national, and global scales (Kane & Leedy, 2013). Our attention is drawn to the continuities between the colonial past and present global and racialised capitalism, in which racial/ethnic hierarchies have assumed new forms. The colonial-era displacement and involuntary migrant labour system in Southern Africa is well documented (Bakewell & De Haas, 2007; Jonathan Crush, 1984), where Africans were viewed as disposable and cheap labour. Colonial administrators forced men to work as settler labourers in urban centres, gold mines, and farms in South Africa. As the colonial capitalist system expanded in Southern Africa, South Africa became the industrial hub of the regional political economy, with Lesotho and neighbouring countries such as Zimbabwe, Malawi, and Zambia providing cheap labour (Matlosa in this volume). Consequently, contemporary racial categories are founded on colonialism and must be analysed in the context of the histories of these colonial empires. In the post-colonial context, the circulation of labour and its reproduction, as well as the accumulation and penetration of capital, have all been intensified across the continent. There is still a sedentary logic embedded within the contemporary discourses of migration in Europe that considers the mobility of ordinary Africans as dangerous and threatening while normalising the movements of white and elite travellers (Bakewell, 2008). For Mbembe (2019), borders are the word for the organised violence that supports modern capitalism and our world system. The border is both a technology and a moving mass of undesirables. Citing Quijano on coloniality of power, Ramon Grosfoguel et al. (2015, p. 642) argue that racism is an organising principle of the international division of labour and all power hierarchies. The racism that emerged from the history of colonialism did not disappear with the end of colonialism. Colonial racism continues to produce zones of being and 5

Dominic Pasura and Daniel Makina

non-being on a world scale. Indeed, the question is rather the relevance of “coloniality” for the understanding of migration experience in the Metropoles. In Chapter 7, Opesen et al. discuss “modern African coolies” in the Middle East, one of the most popular destinations for semi-skilled and unskilled African workers.

African Post-Colonial States In order to understand contemporary African migration, it may be productive to de-centre the Eurocentric notion of the nation-state and its assumptions. For instance, instead of subsuming the Eurocentric characterisation of the African post-colonial state as “failed” or “fragile”, the handbook sees the African state as “a historically contingent product, whose success or capability varies widely” (Boeyink and Turner in this volume). While post-colonial states have influenced migration and mobility patterns on the continent, it is imperative “to decentre the state and analytically incorporate the informal, local, and deeply socio-political processes associated with joining a new community” (Landau & Bakewell, 2018, p. 6). Currently, there are 55 member states of the African Union. As a legacy of colonisation, the borders that divided African states were arbitrarily drawn, dividing people, languages, cultures, and ethnic groups (Mbembe, 2000). It was colonisation, symbolised by the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, that drew the boundaries of African states and arbitrarily separating peoples, cultures, and ethnic groups. Current conflicts are often attributed to the imprecise nature of colonial borders. The coloniality of power has influenced migration studies through bordering practices, the division between citizens and foreigners, and the development of racist hierarchies (Mayblin & Turner, 2020). Even though borders are artificial, they are now used to articulate and consolidate the identities and belongings of individuals within new national contexts (Bjarnesen and Bisong in this volume). New forms of nationalism in Africa have naturalised the arbitrary borders and symbolic boundaries created or invented during the colonial era. For instance, despite cultural, social, economic, and political linkages, colonially enforced borders separate Lesotho from South Africa (Matlosa in this volume). In recent years, new patterns of conflict and violence have emerged, which have caused Africans to turn against other Africans: against “strangers” – in other words, against all those who do not seem to belong to them (Fourchard & Segatti, 2015; Geschiere & Jackson, 2006). The post-colonial promise of freedom, economic, political, and social emancipation motivated thousands of people to move freely in Africa after centuries of European imperialist aggression, diplomatic pressures, military invasions, and eventual colonial conquest through migrant settlements (Khalema et al., 2018). As an anti-colonial liberation movement, panAfricanist mobilisation was effective, but economic integration has proven far more challenging in the post-colonial context, where many young people are emerging from the former “imperial underbelly” (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2006) but are confronted with poverty, corruption, misery, and social inequality in reality. Africa’s youth, who struggle to produce meaningful lives in economies underpinned by “rapacious modes of extraction” and corruption by the ruling elite, migrate internally or internationally in search of better lives. As Kane and Leedy (2013, p. 1) put it, “there is no better indicator of the level of despair among Africans today than the exponentially growing numbers trying to exit at all costs for a better life elsewhere in urban Africa or Western countries”. 6

Contemporary African Migration

Human Agency of Africans While attentive to the structural conditions which constrain, shape, and enable the migration and mobilities of Africans, we are cognisant that the diversity of population movements depends on people’s abilities and aspirations to move (Carling & Collins, 2018; De Haas, 2021). The continent continues to experience intra- and inter-regional migration patterns (Khalema et al., 2018), contrary to the widespread misconception that Africa is a continent where people constantly move around because of poverty, wars, and inadequate infrastructure (Flahaux & De Haas, 2016). African international migration research is skewed towards those leaving Africa, except for displacement or forced migration (Landau & Bakewell, 2018). Wring on the African diaspora, Mohan and Zack‐Williams (2002, p. 233) correctly argue that diasporas represent a form of “globalisation from below” in which “small” players, as opposed to mega-corporations, make use of the opportunities offered by globalisation. In many senses this is a form of resistance in that the subaltern groups creatively explore and exploit the interstices of a global economy. Over the past decades, diaspora and transnational studies have emphasised the role diasporas played in transforming their countries of origin economically, socially, and politically. In the African context, scholars and policymakers have long recognised the development potential of the new African diasporas (Davies, 2010; Mohan & Zack-Williams, 2002). Transnational diaspora networks are expected to fill the gaps left by the retreating African state, particularly in the areas of welfare, social support, and development (Mercer et al., 2008; Mohan & Zack-Williams, 2002). As noted by Zeleza (2010), the analysis of historical diasporas has tended to focus on the political connections represented by the Pan-Africanist movement, while in the study of contemporary diasporas, the focus is primarily on the economic impact of remittances and investment flows. Many African countries are now beginning to actively engage with their diasporas and consider diaspora investment in small businesses and entrepreneurship as a panacea to slow economic growth and poverty reduction on the continent (Black & Castaldo, 2009; Plaza & Ratha, 2011). Studies show that remittances are the largest source of net foreign inflows in Africa after foreign direct investment, ranking higher than official development aid (KayodeAnglade & Spio-Garbrah, 2012). Recent studies have shown how African transnational diaspora members live in dual homes and perform multiple roles and identities by sending remittances (Lindley, 2010; Mazzucato, 2008). Migration and development are linked by European conceptions of appropriate progress, which are dominant in knowledge, institutions, practices, and epistemic coloniality that links racialised difference with power imbalances (Collins, 2022).

Section Overview The handbook is organised into five parts. Part I – History of African Migration – comprises chapters scanning the history of migration and displacement, the nexus between postcolonial states and migration, and the African philosophy of migration. Part II – Patterns and Trends of Contemporary African Migration – comprises chapters exploring patterns and trends of migration within and out of Africa. Part III – Migration, Forced Displacement, 7

Dominic Pasura and Daniel Makina

and Irregular Migration – comprises chapters that evaluate the architecture of migration governance in Africa as well as issues in forced displacement and irregular migration. Part IV – Migration, Diaspora Engagement, and the Politics of Development – comprises chapters dealing with the nexus between remittances and development, return migration, and diaspora engagement. Part V – Future Trajectories of African Migration – concludes with chapters that extrapolate future trajectories from the present trends of African migration.

Part I – History of African Migration Part I applies historical and philosophical perspectives to contextualise and situate migration in and out of Africa within the contexts of economics, slavery, religion, colonialism, post-colonial nation-states, and forced and voluntary migrations. We begin with Sherbut’s historical analysis of pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial migration and displacement on the African continent in Chapter 2. Sherbut argues that migration in the pre-colonial period, at least prior to the advent of the slave trade and its traumatic violence, did not undermine social cohesion in the way that migration during the colonial and post-colonial periods so often did. Furthermore, the author discusses how the drivers of migration and displacement had changed over time, especially during the colonial and post-colonial periods when new political institutions and modes of production were introduced and adapted. Sherbut demonstrates how specific factors – such as environmental and climatic changes, economic development, and violent conflict – have contributed to migration and displacement in different ways throughout the continent’s history. Migration from pre-colonial Africa was primarily a “collective undertaking”, but this has shifted towards individualised circular migration within the colonial and post-colonial contexts. While simultaneously exploiting young male African labour, racialised and colonial capitalism sought to limit the presence of Africans in (European) towns. Due to the male-migrant labour system in colonial times, production and formal employment became gendered as male activities, whereas reproduction became gendered as female activities (see also, Barnes, 1997; Tinarwo & Pasura, 2014). In Chapter 3, Boeyink and Turner examine how African states attempt to govern migration and mobility across national borders, out of the continent or inside the territory of the nation-state. They argue that to understand post-colonial African states, it is crucial to decentre the Eurocentric notion of the state and the normative understandings of migration along certain patterns and logics. Rather than subscribe to the Eurocentric characterisation of African post-colonial state as “failed” or “fragile”, the authors see the African state as “a historically contingent product, which exercises public authority through widely varying degrees of success or capability”. They perceptively argue that to understand the postcolonial state, we must consider how colonial powers controlled migration and mobility and how former colonial empires continue to impact migration into, within, and out of Africa. By appropriating Mamdani’s ideas of the bifurcated state for understanding the racial categorisation of citizen and subject, the rural and urban divide was a means to accommodate “extractive capitalism”. In terms of migration policies, while colonial statecraft was defined by preventing, promoting, and channelling mobility, there are several continuities between the colonial and post-colonial states. The authors provide numerous cases to show African states’ policies of migration prevention, promotion, and channelling. For instance, Rwanda and Uganda utilise extraversion or channelling surrogacy to stimulate migrations of populations unwanted by the Global North in exchange for aid and to divert from their human rights abuses. 8

Contemporary African Migration

In the 1960s, African philosophy emerged to question the justifications and consequences of slavery and the colonisation of African people. In Chapter 4, Chapfika presents a dialogue between African philosophy and international migration, primarily due to slavery and colonialism. As Chapkika argues, the development of African philosophy was a response to forced displacement, knowledge, and value dislocation that occurred during slavery and colonialism in order to address such issues and revive interest in African identity, cultural belief, thought, and values. In order to provide answers to the African postcolonial predicament, which Du Bois (1903) identifies as “double consciousness”, African philosophy has attempted to provide answers to this predicament. Chapfika outlines three broad approaches to the African post-colonial predicament: conservative, liberal, and cosmopolitan, and these approaches influence, at least in part, whether Africans migrate or stay and whether transnational migrants return or stay abroad. Relationships with other people, the environment, and the spiritual world characterise African movements and migration patterns.

Part II – Patterns and Trends of Contemporary African Migration Part II foregrounds questions about patterns, trends, and direction of African migration and integrates insights from migration theory, philosophy, and political science with the state’s role in managing and controlling migration. Contemporary emigration from Africa has accelerated and diverged spatially beyond colonial patterns to Europe and towards regions such as North America, the Gulf, and Asia (Flahaux & De Haas, 2016). We begin Part II with Makina and Mudungwe employing a large number of migration statistics to present an overview of the patterns and trends of international migration both inside and outside of Africa in Chapter 5. While over 90 per cent of North African immigrants depart the continent for destinations outside the region, two-thirds of Sub-Saharan African migration is intra- and inter-regional. The main destinations for intra-African migrants are South Africa, Cote d'Ivoire, Uganda, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Kenya, which host 32 per cent of all intra-regional migrants. Many migration nodes in Africa, particularly megacities Lagos, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Luanda, Dakar, and Abidjan, draw migrants, cross-border traders, refugees, religious pilgrims, and tourists. Based on UNDESA data, Makina and Mudungwe demonstrate how intra-African migration has grown at an annual rate of eight per cent since 2000, which is higher than the out-of-African migration growth rate of 2.8 per cent. In addition to economic factors, other contributors to emigration include civil strife, weak institutions, and climate change. Over three-quarters of African migrants move freely, mostly driven by economic incentives like well-paid jobs, while political instabilities, conflicts, humanitarian crises, and climate-related calamities impact the other quarter. Refugees originate primarily from war-torn nations such as Ethiopia, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Immigrants and international students with advanced degrees originate primarily from Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa. Countries with high levels of prosperity, like the Maghreb or coastal West Africa, have higher levels of extra-continental migration, whereas the poorest, like many landlocked Sub-Saharan countries, travel less and largely to surrounding countries (Flahaux & De Haas, 2016). As conventional routes to Europe become increasingly dangerous, the number of African and Asian migrants transiting through Latin America with the intention of reaching North America has increased. Migration from Africa (especially Cameroon and the DRC) and Asia through Latin America is motivated by economy, conflict, and family reunification. 9

Dominic Pasura and Daniel Makina

Adeyanju and Olatunji explore the complex contemporary migrations of Africans to Europe and North America in Chapter 6, characterised by the diversity of destinations, aspirations, aspirations, mixed social environments, and gender inclusion. The changing pattern of African migration is tied to globalisation, transnationalism, liberalised immigration rules in North America, and labour demands in oil-rich Middle Eastern nations. While “irregular migration” of Africans to Europe and North America dominates scholarly, media, and policy attention, it’s only a fraction of extra-continental African migration. African migrants to Europe and North America fall into two categories. The first group to relocate to the West are students, investors, and skilled service workers. Sub-Saharan African immigrants in the US and Europe are usually well-educated. The second African group includes asylum seekers and refugees, low-income service sector workers, and undocumented migrants. There is mounting evidence that colonial history or connection no longer determines African migratory patterns, with an upsurge in migration to the Gulf regions, especially Saudi Arabia, Canada, Australia, and the US (Flahaux & De Haas, 2016). There has been a diversification of extra-continental African migration from former colonies, as would-be migrants move from fortress Europe to alternative destinations, especially Canada and the US, with more favourable immigration and settlement policies. Even though race structures forms of immobility and its outcomes, it has been absent from our understanding of migration patterns from Africa. In Chapter 7, Opesen, Amos, and Amollo discuss the structural factors (economic, governance, environment, and social) as drivers of migration, the difficulties, and rights of the “modern African Coolie” in the Middle East, one of the most popular destinations for semi-skilled and unskilled African workers. The so-called “African Coolies”, also derogatorily referred to as “Kadamas”, are almost exclusively women who are employed in domestic chores, particularly in the areas of house cleaning, vacuuming, cooking, washing, and childcare, while male migrants are concentrated in security and construction sectors of the economy. The study found that migrant workers in the Middle East face unsafe working conditions, inadequate social security, low wages, and few legal protections. Xenophobia, sexual abuse and racial exploitation, structural inequity and exploitation, and problems associated with finding suitable housing are only some of the obstacles they come up against. In order to fully understand the exploitation of migrants, the authors focus on the intersection between the interests and activities of employers (global capitalism), politicians (as officials of the nation-state), and migrants themselves (Cohen, 2016). The migration of workers is an inherent part of global capitalism for the capital of receiving nations. The peripheral nations of the global economy supply agriculture, manufacturing, and service industries with inexpensive labour. In the last chapter of Part II, Matlosa (Chapter 8) reminds us of the colonial legacies of artificial borders in Africa. Despite the cultural, social, economic, and political ties between Lesotho and South Africa, colonially imposed borders separate them. Even though African borders are artificial, they have become an important tool for articulating and consolidating the identities and belongings of individuals and ethnic groups within new national contexts. Matlosa cites three factors which support the proposition that Lesotho and South Africa should have a special type of relationship, which warrants the free movement of people across the common border between the two countries. The first is that Lesotho is landlocked entirely within South Africa. The second reason is that geographical, historical, sociocultural, and political-economic linkages exist between Lesotho and South Africa. Thirdly, skilled and unskilled Basotho migrants have contributed greatly to South Africa’s economic development. Matlosa argues that Lesotho and South Africa need to change their relationship from 10

Contemporary African Migration

one that is characterised by colonialism and apartheid to one that is based on the mutual benefit of its citizens.

Part III – Migration Governance, Forced Displacement, and Irregular Migration Part III of this handbook addresses the intersection of migration governance, forced displacement, and irregular migration within the continent. De-centring European politics and migration governance, particularly its securitisation of migration framework (Huysmans, 2000; Léonard & Kaunert, 2022), is crucial to understanding migration governance in Africa. For instance, across Europe, irregular migration is widely framed as a security issue rather than the protection of migrants (Carling & Hernández‐Carretero, 2011). The EU’s engagement with developing countries has been increasingly focused on reducing “irregular” migration to Europe (Crawley & Blitz, 2019). We begin Part III with Abebe and Mudungwe’s (Chapter 9) overview of the African Union (AU) and Regional Economic Communities (RECs) migration policy frameworks, which facilitate and enhance legal migration between member states. The policy frameworks address the free movement of people, goods, services, and capital, labour migration, refugees and IDPs, and human trafficking and migrant smuggling. For instance, the Abuja Treaty is a vital migration law as the first agreement to promote regional integration and development in Africa through free movement of people and capital. AU Member States adopted the 2006 Migration Policy Framework for Africa (MPFA) to promote migration and development and address migration issues on the continent. The MPFA helps AU Member States and RECs create migration policies based on their priorities and resources by providing policy guidelines and principles. The MPFA provides recommendations on eight migration themes: migration governance, labour migration and education, diaspora engagement, border governance, irregular migration, forced displacement internal migration, and migration and trade. Strengthening continental, regional, and national institutional mechanisms to implement policies is crucial and challenging. However, external factors like the externalisation of the EU border in Africa and internal factors like the lack of political will and commitment of heads of states and political unrest have hampered its implementation (see also Bjarnesen and Bisong in this volume). Building in part on this focus on migration governance, Betts (Chapter 10) examines refugee politics in Africa, showing how the politics of violence, colonialism, Sub-Saharan Africa’s position in the global economy, fragile states, and competition for natural resources have shaped forced displacement. As Betts correctly argues, African refugee politics require nuance and historical context and we should not generalise the experiences of “the African states” since every country is different even though there are some common themes in refugee movements in Africa, such as encampments, porous borders, and mass influx. As Betts demonstrates, the comparative politics of refugee rights in Africa can be explained in three ways. These include identity-based accounts (that elites privilege refugees from common ethnic backgrounds or from countries with which they have rivalrous bilateral relationships), interest-based accounts (that elites seek resources, patronage, and legitimacy through their refugee policies), values-based accounts (that states support refugee rights to advance panAfrican values of hospitality), and norm-based accounts (respect international and regional legal obligations, including the OAU Convention on the Rights of Refugees). The chapter shows how donors have prioritised European and North American refugees over African refugees; for instance, the Syrian, Venezuelan, and Ukrainian refugee crises diverted donor and 11

Dominic Pasura and Daniel Makina

resettlement support from Africa. Betts concludes the chapter by discussing transnational political mobilisation among African refugee diasporas, specifically how diasporas challenge authoritarian governments from abroad through political mobilisation, using Zimbabwe and Rwanda as examples. In spite of intra-continental and inter-regional migratory patterns in Africa, images of Africans fleeing conflict and crossing the Mediterranean to reach Europe have shaped academic, media, and popular discourses on Africa’s migration in recent years. In Chapter 11, David Ndegwa provides statistical data on contemporary forced migration in Africa. Citing the UNHCR data, Ndegwa shows how the number of forced migrations in Africa has quadrupled from 9.01 million in 2007 to 40.12 million in 2020, with IDPs accounting for more than 60 per cent of the population. On the continent, internal displacement is the predominant form of forced migration. Forced migration in Africa is primarily caused by conflicts, disasters, environment, and climate change, which create complex humanitarian crises. Conflict and violence are largely driven by inter-ethnic fighting for land and valuable resources such as water and pasture, political upheaval, including violent takeovers and contested elections, claims to territorial self-determination rights, and Islamist insurgency. The regions of Eastern Africa and the Horn of Africa stand out due to their unique position as a source of, the destination for, and host for migrants fleeing war, persecution, or other forms of violence (Schmidt et al., 2019). In his earlier work, Betts (2013) developed the concept of “survival migration” to emphasise the crisis in which people flee failed and fragile states when threats such as climate change, food insecurity, and generalised violence are present, as well as conditions in failed and fragile states that violate human rights. Using the case studies of Zimbabweans in South Africa and Botswana, Congolese in Angola, and Tanzania and Somalis in Kenya and Yemen, Betts (2013) argues that the victims of such situations are not usually recognised as refugees, preventing them from being protected by international institutions. While the literature on migration and climate change tends to focus on communities being forced to relocate due to climate and environmental changes but less on those trapped by them. Using a social justice and environmental change perspective, Nyaoro examines cultural violence among the Pokot pastoralists in Kenya’s Rift Valley in Chapter 12. As Nyaoro puts it, East African security and development discourse has almost always included Pokotneighbourhood violence. Observers call the conflicts cattle rustling or inter-community conflicts based on pastoral communities’ age-old cultural practices. Conflicts are deadlier, causing more deaths, displacement, destruction, and insecurity. The chapter vividly describes how the Pokot, who rely on semi-nomadic pastoralism, are harmed by political, administrative, climatic, and environmental boundaries. After being marginalised by the British colonial government and successive post-independence regimes in Kenya and Uganda, the Pokot face a bleak future without livestock or the ability to defend and fight for their only means of subsistence. Nyaoro argues that Kenya’s disarmament response is forcing the Pokot to reconsider seasonal migration as a livelihood; thus, Pokots must “migrate out of seasonal migration”. In the last chapter in Part III, Magwedere and Makina (Chapter 13) discuss the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on intra-Africa and extra-continental migration and the extent to which lockdowns, quarantines, and travel restrictions affected the flow of people, goods, and services throughout the continent. Despite international fears, Africa was one of the least affected by the COVID-19 pandemic due to climate, low population density, limited travel, youth, previous epidemics, and insufficient testing. Migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, 12

Contemporary African Migration

and irregular migrants were most affected and had the worst health, well-being, and protection. They argue that COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated pre-existing problems for African migrants. Specifically, it is a socio-economic crisis, a protection crisis, and a migrant health crisis. Due to legal, linguistic, cultural, and other barriers, migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers had very restricted access to health services. Covid severely harmed the informal economy, limited refugees’ social protection, and exposed them to violence, sexual abuse, and exploitation. Border closures and travel restrictions to stop the virus exacerbated xenophobia, discrimination, racism, and stigmatisation of migrants and refugees.

Part IV – Migration, Diaspora Engagement, and the Politics of Development In Part IV, we focus on the relationship between migration, diaspora engagement, and the politics of development in Africa. There are several theories and views on the migrationdevelopment nexus. According to the neo-classical theory, returning migrants were considered important agents of change and innovation in their countries of origin (Beijer, 1970; De Haas, 2010). From this perspective, the re-allocation of labour from rural/agricultural areas to urban and industrial sectors (internal migration), and from developing to developed countries (international migration), was considered as an essential prerequisite for economic growth (Todaro, 1969). In the late 1960s, the neo-classical migration theory was challenged by a paradigm shift in social sciences towards structuralist views (partly the dominance of socialist thinking in the 1960s), which questioned the proposition of the positive role of migration on development. An increasing number of academics lent support to the hypothesis that migration sustains or even reinforces problems of underdevelopment instead of the reverse (De Haas, 2010). In the 1980s and 1990s, the new economics of labour migration (NELM) emerged mainly as a response to neo-classical and structuralist theories. According to the NELM, the two approaches were seen as too rigid and determinist to deal with the complex realities of migration and development interactions. The NELM offered a much more subtle view of migration and development which links causes and consequences of migration more explicitly, and in which both positive and negative developmental responses are possible (De Haas, 2010; Stark, 1978; Taylor, 1999) This new approach revitalised the academic thinking on migration by placing the behaviour of individual migrants within a wider societal context and focusing on the household rather than the individual (Taylor, 1999). We begin Part IV with Makina and Magwedere (Chapter 14) revisiting the debate regarding the role of remittances in Africa’s development. Even though remittances contribute to poverty reduction, the evidence of their direct link to economic growth is inconclusive and mixed. Migration opponents have also argued that remittances were mainly spent on conspicuous consumption and “consumptive” investments (such as houses) rather than invested in productive enterprises. Scepticism about the use of migrant remittances for productive investments became the common thread of the migration and development debate. Evidence shows that remittances make up a large part of the GDP of smaller, poorer, and fragile African economies; however, recent studies suggest that high remittances may create a remittance trap of economic stagnation and dependence. Makina and Magwedere argue that remittances will not solve Africa’s underdevelopment. Structural issues keep African countries underdeveloped and force migrants to leave. Due to its younger population, Africa will continue to provide labour to developed nations, and most African nations’ development 13

Dominic Pasura and Daniel Makina

plans will rely on remittances to alleviate poverty and inequality. As external investments for development projects in African countries continue to diminish, many African countries and the African Union are actively pursuing a diaspora engagement agenda (Plaza & Ratha, 2011; Ratha & Shaw, 2007). To make use of the human, financial, and social resources of its diasporas and migrants, many nations, particularly those in Southern Africa, have begun adopting national diaspora plans (Chikanda & Crush, 2018). As a result of widespread poverty and inequality, collective remittances from diaspora organisations have been reported to directly and immediately impact local development in their home countries. It is also estimated that a large proportion of the Zimbabwean population relies on the diaspora for survival (J. Crush & Tevera, 2010). In Chapter 15, Rwengabo shifts the focus to return migrants, who are considered catalysts for change, transformation, and development in their homelands. Rwengabo critically evaluates the development potential of Return migration to Africa (RM-2-A) and its apparent positive association with development. Return migration to Africa is seen as facilitating technology transfer from the developed North to underdeveloped Africa, facilitating brain regrowth by returning educated/skilled Africans, and enabling brain exchange and knowledge exchange. Rwengabo contends that “factors that are agent-specific as well as structure-specific influence RM-2-A’s development potential”, moving us beyond the current policy discourses. Networked, skilled, experienced, financed, and investment-savvy returnees can propel development, but RM-2-A also incorporates non-skilled, inexperienced, nonresourced, forced, and aged returnees. The structure is based on the context of return, motivations for return, and the governance and societal dynamics in sending and recipient states, which constrains and enables returnees’ choices. Return migration should be viewed as an element of ongoing transnational mobility, not as a permanent relocation to Africa. In addition to material considerations, return migration is also motivated by emotional and sentimental ties. In Chapter 16, Setrana and Bekoe argue that the migration-development nexus has followed theoretical orthodoxy and neoliberal policy considerations from the global North, especially OECD countries. They introduced “cognitive return” to rethink return in Africa, where voluntary and involuntary migration are oversimplified. Setrana and Bekoe coin another term, “immobile returnees”, to refer to individuals who, at some point in their lives, have dreamed of migrating, and have even pursued a migration project, but as a result of a number of factors, including personal, emigration, and immigration, have decided to give up on their migration dream and return to their native country or resettle. Mary Boatemaa Setrana and Adolf Awuku Bekoe argue that the enormous contributions that “immobile returnees” make once they decide to abandon their migration dream and redirect their skills, savings, and knowledge to their native country are often overlooked by migration research when discussing the benefits of voluntary and involuntary return migration to Africa’s development. Cognitive return is popular in West Africa, where more young people migrate to Europe through the Mediterranean. Remittances, return migration, transnational caregiving, and cross-border investments are all examples of the types of cross-border transactions that migrants and those who stayed behind engage in as a means of establishing a transnational “home”. Through their participation in the social, political, and economic processes and events in their countries of origin, diaspora and transnational communities are powerful agents of change in those countries. In Chapter 17, Mutambasere and Pasura examine home, identity, and belonging in contemporary African diasporas. Home and homeland shape diasporic relationships 14

Contemporary African Migration

across borders. The chapter examines how contemporary African diasporas, embedded in multiple social worlds, relate to local, national, regional, and transnational spaces and places. There are many different interpretations of the term “home” or “homeland”, but these interpretations are frequently couched in dichotomous terms, such as material or metaphorical, rooted or immaterial, real or imagined. These terms provide an essential set of dialectics that continue to structure discussions regarding the meaning of “home”. The chapter discusses three dominant meanings of home: material, home as a fixed and stable location; relational, as an assortment of relationships with people and things; and as representation in the diasporic imagination. For African diasporas, home refers to both practical, material, symbolic, and imagined transnational relationships and the hope of returning to one’s homeland. Negash discusses the potential role of the contemporary African diaspora in the United States in Chapter 18 from the perspective of practitioners participating in the 2010 Silicon Valley-based African Diaspora Network. Negash notes that approximately two million immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa resided in the United States in 2018, accounting for 4.5 per cent of the country’s 44.7 million immigrants. When investing in Africa, diaspora entrepreneurs face several obstacles, including limited funding access, unreliable electricity, political instability, high tax rates, corruption, and customs and trade regulations. There is a paucity of literature on gendered migration in Africa, even though women play key roles as cross-border traders, nannies, caregivers, nurses, and social workers. In the last chapter in Part IV, Meron Zeleke (Chapter 19) draws on extensive ethnographic research conducted in southern Ethiopia to discuss gender and migration in the context of South–South migration, focusing on Ethiopian labour migration to South Africa. According to Zeleke, Ethiopia’s gender norms and socio-cultural landscape highly influence the phenomenon of labour migration. The gendered choosing of destinations and the dynamics of migration and marriage were the two main elements the author cited to explain the gendered migration trends along Ethiopia–South Africa corridor. An example of how gender and migration are intertwined in the study area is the pattern of female migrants heading for Gulf states while male migrants are often headed for South Africa. Gender ideologies and gender relations in the place of origin influence migratory patterns. In Ethiopia’s patriarchal society, men are expected to support their families economically, so the head of households often migrates. Socially, women are less likely to migrate independently, so they migrate shorter distances than men. Most parents prefer migrant husbands to their daughters. It is common for parents to pressure their daughters to marry migrants regardless of their age difference or appearance. Through arranged marriage and abduction, Zeleke argues, gendered migration reinforces repressive gender norms in the place of origin. Due to the migration of male household heads, gendered roles do not change at the household level by challenging patriarchal norms.

Part V – Future Trajectories of African Migration In Part V, we address the future trajectories of African migration. The African Union’s longterm development strategy for structural change, Agenda 2063, The Africa We Want, is Africa’s 50-year economic blueprint and plan to transform the continent into a global power and prioritises free movement. In order to achieve economic growth and development, the strategic framework of the continent aims to spread the Pan-African motivation for solidarity, self-reliance, opportunities, and collective consciousness to other parts of the world. 15

Dominic Pasura and Daniel Makina

We begin Part V with Bjarnesen and Bisong (Chapter 20) discussing the concept of “Africa without borders” using the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a regional economic community, as a model for examining policies and practises pertaining to the free movement of people across the continent. Throughout its history, Africa’s borders have been a fundamental symbol of colonialism, contestation, and division; this symbolism continues to impact African politics as well as intellectual discussion. Bjarnesen and Bisong propose an understanding of borders as relational, processual, political, and inconsistent, de-centring the emphasis on European political discourse and international discussions concerning migrant governance. The concept of free movement does not presuppose the absence of borders or the absence of state control and governance. Since the establishment of the ECOWAS and its institutions, the free movement of people has been a cornerstone of regional integration in West Africa, with an effort to recreate precolonial mobility patterns. However, several factors have hindered the implementation of this agreement, including the lack of political will and commitment of the heads of state, civil conflicts, political instability in some ECOWAS nations as well as external influence from the EU through its securitisation of migration framework (Huysmans, 2000; Léonard & Kaunert, 2022). Trade and migration are interconnected in a mutually beneficial and reciprocal manner. In Chapter 21, Quartey, Osarfo, and Abor assess the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which aspires to create a single liberalised market for goods, services, and capital by easing the movement of persons, deepening integration, and accelerating economic development. AfCFTA aims to promote a common African market to promote structural transformation, economic diversity, and African growth facilitated by movement of persons. The authors show that although natural resources dominate Africa’s trade, natural resources were exported to other countries at a rate of 50 per cent, while intra-African trade was 33 per cent. Thus, Quartey, Osarfo, and Abor correctly argue that Africa loses the chance to process or add value, thereby sacrificing a huge opportunity to improve productivity, self-reliance, and quality of life. The authors draw on the similarities between trade and migration within and outside ECOWAS in order to examine the AfCFTA’s impact on Africa’s migration. They argue that the existing agreements and protocols, such as Agenda 2063, the AU’s Protocol on Free Movement of Persons, and the establishment of Africa’s six Regional Economic Communities (RECS), will play a crucial role in the build-up, negotiations, and implementation of the AfCFTA. In Chapter 22, Sow shifts the focus to examine the various links between migration and the environment in Africa and other parts of the world using mixed methods. Although Africa’s contribution to the production of greenhouse gases is significantly less than that of Eurasia and the Americas, the continent is experiencing an acceleration in the global warming trend. Sow discusses the relationship between climate variability and mobility in Africa and concludes with an analysis of fish eldorados in West Africa. Specifically, he examined how ecological change, overfishing, and depletion of fisheries affect mobility/migration in Senegal’s new fish eldorados areas in West Africa. By distinguishing natural climatic variability from anthropogenic acts, the chapter highlights fishers’ migratory patterns in West Africa, some of which are caused by environmental degradations. The chapter demonstrates how illegal fishing by European and Asian trawlers devastated the fish supplies, forcing Senegalese fishermen to migrate to Mauritania and Guinea Bissau. Migration to these neighbouring countries increases conflict between populations. Migrant fishers from Senegal have become “ecological exiles” as a result of their search for new fish eldorados throughout the West African sub-region. As a result of resource depletion, many Senegalese fishermen (the “Boat 16

Contemporary African Migration

captains”) have emigrated or become passeurs (conveyors of clandestine migrants) towards Spain and the Mediterranean Sea. Data on migration stocks and flows in Africa are primarily derived from educated guesses, as national censuses and surveys in the majority of African nations lack modules designed to collect this information. In Chapter 23, Makina and Mushoni provide an overview of African migration data management. They argue that it is necessary to produce reliable migration statistics to implement and monitor migration and development initiatives. Many African and other countries struggle with capacity, limited human and financial resources, lack of harmonisation of migration concepts and definitions, insufficient data integration, and limited systematic collection, management, analysis, and disaggregation. For instance, even though remittances are acknowledged as a contributor to development, data on them are scarce because a significant proportion of remittances in Africa are channelled through informal channels, diminishing their policy relevance. In Chapter 24, Makina and Pasura examine the future of African immigration. Researchers have argued that free international labour migration could be one way of overcoming the Lucas Paradox so that capital could flow to poor developing countries. Poor developing countries have higher capital returns than rich countries because capital is scarcer than labour. Rich countries should consider these countries profitable for investment and immigration. However, few rich countries are sending capital to poor African countries. Makina and Pasura explain this by viewing Africa as a permanent periphery in the global economic system, where extraction modes and relationships predominate. Migration outflows and transnational networks will continue due to Africa’s perpetual economic subordination and lack of new economic opportunities. They draw attention to the continuities between the colonial past and present global and racialised capitalism, in which racial/ethnic hierarchies have assumed new forms. However, the continent’s demographic shift and rich natural resources deserve consideration. Africa’s future is bright if it uses its natural resource to create jobs for its youthful population.

References Achiume, E. T. (2019). Migration as decolonization. Stanford Law Review, 71, 1509. Bakewell, O. (2008). ‘Keeping them in their place’: The ambivalent relationship between development and migration in Africa. Third World Quarterly, 29(7), 1341–1358. Bakewell, O., & De Haas, H. (2007). African migrations: Continuities, discontinuities and recent transformations. African Alternatives, 95–117. Barnes, T. (1997). “Am IA Man?“: Gender and the pass laws in urban colonial Zimbabwe, 1930–80. African Studies Review, 40(1), 59–81. Beijer, G. (1970). International and national migratory movements. International Migration, 8(3), 93–109. Betts, A. (2013). Survival migration: Failed governance and the crisis of displacement. Cornell University Press. Bhambra, G. K., & Santos, B. D. S. (2017). Introduction: Global challenges for sociology. Sociology, 51(1), 3–10. https://doi​.org​/10​.1177​/0038038516674665. Black, R., & Castaldo, A. (2009). Return migration and entrepreneurship in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire: The role of capital transfers. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, 100(1), 44–58. Carling, J., & Collins, F. (2018). Aspiration, Desire and Drivers of Migration (Vol. 44, pp. 909–926). Taylor & Francis. Carling, J., & Hernández‐Carretero, M. (2011). Protecting Europe and protecting migrants? Strategies for managing unauthorised migration from Africa. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 13(1), 42–58.

17

Dominic Pasura and Daniel Makina Chikanda, A., & Crush, J. (2018). Global Zimbabweans: Diaspora engagement and disengagement. Journal of International Migration and Integration, 19(4), 1037–1057. Cohen, R. (2008). Global diasporas: An introduction (2nd ed.). Routledge. Cohen, R. (2016). Migration and its enemies: Global capital, migrant labour and the nation-state. Routledge. Collins, F. L. (2022). Geographies of migration II: Decolonising migration studies. Progress in Human Geography, 46(5), 1241–1251. Comaroff, J., & Comaroff, J. (2006). Reflections on youth, from the past to the postcolony. In: M. Fisher & G. Downey (Eds.), Frontiers of capital: Ethnographic reflections on the new economy (pp. 267–281). Duke University Press. Connell, R. (2007). Southern theory: The global dynamics of knowledge in social science. Allen & Unwin Australia. Crawley, H., & Blitz, B. K. (2019). Common agenda or Europe’s agenda? International protection, human rights and migration from the Horn of Africa. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45(12), 2258–2274. Crush, J. (1984). Uneven labour migration in southern Africa: Conceptions and misconceptions. South African Geographical Journal, 66(2), 115–132. Crush, J., & Chikanda, A. (2018). South–South migration and diasporas. In: E. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh & P. Daley (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of South–South Relations (pp. 380–396). Routledge. Crush, J., & Tevera, D. (2010). Exiting Zimbabwe. In: J. Crush & D. Tevera (Eds.), Zimbabwe’s exodus, crisis, migration, Survival (pp. 1–51). SAMP. Dahinden, J. (2016). A plea for the ‘de-migranticization’ of research on migration and integration. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 39(13), 2207–2225. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/01419870​.2015​.1124129. Davies, R. (2010). Development challenges for a resurgent African diaspora. Progress in Development Studies, 10(2), 131. De Haas, H. (2008). The myth of invasion: The inconvenient realities of African migration to Europe. Third World Quarterly, 29(7), 1305–1322. De Haas, H. (2010). Migration and development: A theoretical perspective. International Migration Review, 44(1), 227–264. De Haas, H. (2021). A theory of migration: The aspirations-capabilities framework. Comparative Migration Studies, 9(1), 1–35. De Haas, H., Czaika, M., Flahaux, M. L., Mahendra, E., Natter, K., Vezzoli, S., & Villares‐Varela, M. (2019). International migration: Trends, determinants, and policy effects. Population and Development Review, 45(4), 885–922. de Sousa Santos, B. (2014). Epistemologies of the South: Justice against epistemicide. Paradigm Publishers. Du Bois, W. E. B. (1903). Souls of black folk. Ryerson University. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, E. (2020). Introduction: Re-centering the south in studies of migration. Migration and Society, 3(1), 1–18. Flahaux, M.-L., & De Haas, H. (2016). African migration: Trends, patterns, drivers. Comparative Migration Studies, 4(1), 1–25. Fourchard, L., & Segatti, A. (2015). Introduction of xenophobia and citizenship: The everyday politics of exclusion and inclusion in Africa. Africa, 85(1), 2–12. Geschiere, P., & Jackson, S. (2006). Autochthony and the crisis of citizenship: Democratization, decentralization, and the politics of belonging. African Studies Review, 49(2), 1–8. Grosfoguel, R. (2007). The epistemic decolonial turn: Beyond political-economy paradigms. In: Wlater D. Mignolo & Arturo Escobar (Eds.), Globalization and the decolonial option (pp. 65–77). Routledge. Grosfoguel, R., Oso, L., & Christou, A. (2015). ‘Racism’, intersectionality and migration studies: Framing some theoretical reflections. Identities, 22(6), 635–652. Hannam, K., Sheller, M., & Urry, J. (2006). Editorial: Mobilities, immobilities and moorings. Mobilities, 1(1), 1–22. Huysmans, J. (2000). The European Union and the securitization of migration. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 38(5), 751–777. Kane, A., & Leedy, T. H. (2013). African patterns of migration in a global era: New perspectives. In: A. Kane & T. Leedy (Eds.), African migrations: Patterns and perspectives (pp. 1–16). Indiana University Press.

18

Contemporary African Migration Kayode-Anglade, S., & Spio-Garbrah, N. (2012). Diaspora bonds: Some lessons for African countries. Africa Economic Brief, 3(13), 1–13. Khalema, N. E., Magidimisha, H. H., Chipungu, L., Chirimambowa, T. C., & Chimedza, T. L. (2018). Crisis, identity and (be)longing: A thematic introduction of the vestiges of migration in post-independent Southern Africa. In: N. E. Khalema, H. H. Magidimisha, L. Chipungu, T. C. Chirimambowa, & T. L. Chimedza (Eds.), Crisis, identity and migration in post-colonial southern Africa (pp. 3–21). Springer. Landau, L. B., & Bakewell, O. (2018). Introduction: Forging a study of mobility, integration and belonging in Africa. In L. B. Landau, & O. Bakewell (Eds.), Forging African communities (pp. 1–24). Springer. Léonard, S., & Kaunert, C. (2022). The securitisation of migration in the European Union: Frontex and its evolving security practices. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 48(6), 1417–1429. Lindley, A. (2010). The early morning phone call: Somali refugees’ remittances (Vol. 28). Berghahn Books. Mayblin, L., & Turner, J. (2020). Migration studies and colonialism. Polity. Mazzucato, V. (2008). The double engagement: Transnationalism and integration. Ghanaian migrants’ lives between Ghana and the Netherlands. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 34(2), 199–216. Mbembe, A. (2000). At the edge of the world: Boundaries, territoriality, and sovereignty in Africa. Public Culture, 12(1), 259–284. Mbembe, A. (2019). Bodies as borders. From the European South, 4, 5–18. Mbembe, A. (2020). Afropolitanism. Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, 46, 56–61. Mercer, C., Page, B., & Evans, M. (2008). Development and the African diaspora: Place and the politics of home. Zed Books. http://doi​.org​/10​.1111​/j​.1471​-0374​.2009​.00247​.x. Mignolo, W. D. (2007). Introduction: Coloniality of power and de-colonial thinking. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 155–167. Mohan, G., & Zack-Williams, A. B. (2002). Globalisation from below: Conceptualising the role of the African diasporas in Africa’s development. Review of African Political Economy, 29(92), 211–236. https://doi​.org​/10​.2307​/4006812. Mudimbe, V. Y. (1988). The invention of Africa: Gnosis, philosophy, and the order of knowledge. Indiana University Press. Ndhlovu, F. (2016). A decolonial critique of diaspora identity theories and the notion of superdiversity. Diaspora Studies, 9(1), 28–40. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2012). Coloniality of power in development studies and the impact of global imperial designs on Africa. The Australasian Review of African Studies, 33(2), 48–73. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2013). Empire, global coloniality and African subjectivity. Berghahn Books. Pasura, D. (2022). Transnational religion. In: B. S. A. Yeoh & F. L. Collins (Eds.), Handbook on transnationalism (pp. 262–275). Edward Elgar Publishing. Pisarevskaya, A., Levy, N., Scholten, P., & Jansen, J. (2020). Mapping migration studies: An empirical analysis of the coming of age of a research field. Migration Studies, 8(3), 455–481. Plaza, S., & Ratha, D. (2011). Diaspora for development in Africa. World Bank Publications. Pradella, L., & Taghdisi Rad, S. (2017). Libya and Europe: Imperialism, crisis and migration. Third World Quarterly, 38(11), 2411–2427. Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power and Eurocentrism in Latin America. International Sociology, 15(2), 215–232. Ratha, D., & Shaw, W. (2007). South-South migration and remittances. World Bank Publications. Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. Vintage Books. Schinkel, W. (2018). Against ‘immigrant integration’: For an end to neocolonial knowledge production. Comparative Migration Studies, 6(1), 1–17. Schmidt, J. D., Kimathi, L., & Owiso, M. O. (2019). Researching refugees and forced migration in eastern and Horn of Africa: Introducing the issues. In: J. D. Schmidt, L. Kimathi, & M. O. Owiso (Eds.), Refugees and forced migration in the horn and eastern Africa (pp. 3–15). Springer. Shipley, J. W., Comaroff, J., & Mbembe, A. (2010). Africa in theory: A conversation between Jean Comaroff and Achille Mbembe. Anthropological Quarterly, 83(3), 653–678. Stark, O. (1978). Economic-demographic interactions in agricultural development: The case of rural-tourban migration (Vol. 6). Food & Agriculture Org.

19

Dominic Pasura and Daniel Makina Taylor, E. J. (1999). The new economics of labour migration and the role of remittances in the migration process. International Migration, 37(1), 63–88. Tinarwo, M. T., & Pasura, D. (2014). Negotiating and contesting gendered and sexual identities in the Zimbabwean diaspora. Journal of Southern African Studies, 40(3), 521–538. Todaro, M. P. (1969). A model of labor migration and urban unemployment in less developed countries. The American Economic Review, 59(1), 138–148. Urry, J. (2007). Mobilities. Polity. Vásquez, M. (2012). Grappling with the legacy of modernity: Implications for the sociology of religion. In: C. Bender, W. Cadge, P. Levitt, & D. Smilde (Eds.), Religion on the edge: De-centering and recentering the sociology of religion (pp. 23–42). Oxford University Press. Wimmer, A., & Glick Schiller, N. (2002). Methodological nationalism and beyond: Nation–state building, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks, 2(4), 301–334. Zeleza, P. T. (2009). Diaspora dialogues: Engagements between Africa and its diasporas. In: I. Okpewho & N. Nzegwu (Eds.), The new African diaspora (pp. 31–58). Indiana University Press. Zeleza, P. T. (2010). African diasporas: Toward a global history. African Studies Review, 53(1), 1–19.

20

PART I

History of African Migration

2 MIGRATION AS EMPOWERMENT A Selected History of Migration and Displacement in Africa Graham Sherbut

Migration and Mobility as Disruptive and Empowering Forces An overarching theme of the chapter, albeit perhaps an unsurprising one to students of African history, is the ubiquity of migration and mobility. Populations have continuously shifted from location to location, sometimes temporarily but often permanently, prompting Ricca (1989) to refer to Africa as “a continent perpetually on the move”. It is useful here to draw a distinction between mobility and migration. Mobility refers to the movement not only of people, but also of ideas, beliefs, capital, and information across frontiers. Population mobility can be expressed in a multitude of ways and, crucially, has taken place in the absence of modern African states and continues to occur today outside the authority of modern state structures. A notable example is the Fulani pastoralists from Niger who move seasonally to the northern states of Nigeria in search of pasture but do so without taking heed of the formal/legal principles that are intended to govern such population movements. Migration, on the other hand, describes a process with clear legal – and political – connotations, which is intimately tied to population movements between modern African states. The focus of this chapter is predominantly on migration. Many of the scholars referenced throughout the chapter conflate mobility and migration, typically using “migration” as a catch-all term to describe all types of people-centred movements. Where possible, however, the chapter references and tries to situate the distinctiveness of historical and contemporary forms of mobility, not least because these mobilities have often had enriching impacts on African cultures and societies. Indeed, both migration and mobility have long served to alter the nature of African politics, economics, and society. It is true that much of this movement, particularly when it has taken the form of forced displacement resulting from slavery, colonialism, or conflict between and within post-colonial states, has been wrenching and has undermined the very fabric of those societies affected. However, certain types of migration and mobility have had an empowering effect on many of those individuals and groups who have chosen to move, as well as on the societies and countries that have received them. The historical DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-3

23

Graham Sherbut

detail that follows will emphasize this line of argument, with reference to the emerging aspirations-capabilities framework for migration, developed by De Haas (2021) and drawing on several other foundational theorists operating in the migration and broader mobility spaces. Forced displacement must continue to be addressed as an urgent humanitarian issue, but intra-African migration and mobility also remain key pillars of the continent’s future prosperity. The movement of people also brings the movement of ideas and the sharing of beliefs that can, at least over time, build social capital and produce new ways of addressing long-standing problems. Moreover, with climate change and unequal patterns of economic development (to provide just two examples) serving as drivers of current and future population movements, it is more urgent than ever for African states and Regional Economic Communities (RECs) to be cognizant of history, learn appropriate lessons, and develop institutional frameworks and policies that allow for the empowering aspects of migration and mobility to be fully realized.

Mobility as a Collective Action: Population Movements in the Pre-Colonial Period Okoth-Ogendo (1989), in a seminal paper on the effects of what he terms migration on African family structures in pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial Africa, pointed to three factors that served as consistent drivers of population movements in the pre-colonial world. First was the search by communities (whether nationalities, lineages, clans, or villages) for new locations where they could realize their productive potential. Second, these movements served as a natural response to environmental degradation and associated effects like droughts or floods. Third, such movements constituted a strategy used to escape violent conflict. Okoth-Ogendo’s analysis was built on that of Adepoju (1979), who identified precolonial African migration and mobility as being focused on prevailing socio-political and ecological trends, including “internecine warfare, natural disasters and the search for farmland or colonization” (p. 210). Jonsson (2009) and Fenske (2014), while not disagreeing with the importance of these factors, add trade dynamics and pilgrimage as essential elements to the pre-colonial migration and mobility story, noting that it was these factors that primarily shaped trans-Saharan movements of small bands or tribes, both in the years before and after the Arab conquest of the Maghreb – and incursions into the Sahel – in the 7th and 8th centuries. Antil et al. (2016) reiterate the importance of these mobility drivers, but also point to the common error of seeing pre-colonial population movements as taking place in a vacuum, in which communities uprooted themselves to travel to virgin lands. On the contrary, the movement of one community to “realize their productive potential”, typically served as a precursor to the displacement and subsequent flight of other communities. The Bantu migrations in central and Southern Africa (circa. BCE 1,000 to 300 CE) saw the displacement of existing hunter-gatherer and pastoralist groups (Oliver, 1966; Vansina, 1995). The Arab migratory expansions in North Africa (647 CE to 709 CE) resulted in the displacement of the indigenous Berbers (Rouighi, 2011). The Dogon population in what is now Mali fled Mandé domination and Islamicization by taking refuge in what became the Dogon Plateau (Antil et al., 2016; Mayor et al., 2005). Even the “Great Trek” of the Boers (1835–1840) can be seen as a mobile reaction to the advent of another migrant group in the form of English colonists and their administrative apparatus (Giliomee, 2003). 24

Migration as Empowerment

The above examples mainly describe pre-colonial movements of specific groups within relatively constrained – albeit still large – geographic areas. Antil et al. (2016) argue that migration and mobility, on a truly continental scale, emerged with the advent of the Arab and Atlantic slave trades of the 16th–19th centuries. The European- and American-dominated Atlantic slave trade, the slave trading operations of Rabih az-Zubayr (concentrated to the east of Lake Chad), and the operations of the Zanzibar-based Tippu Tip in East Africa (to provide just three examples), all produced considerable displacement as populations moved from coastal to far-inland areas that were deemed more remote, or at least more defensible against the slavers (Black, 2015; Thomas, 2007; Van Reybrouck, 2010). These movements of displaced people caused additional dislocation of existing communities in these inland areas – setting the stage for the growth of societal cleavages that persist in many African states to the present day. At first glance, pre-colonial African migration and mobility, catalysed by aspirational desires of communities for improved conditions in which to live, by trade, by religious devotion, but also by the persistent threat of violence and ecological disaster, does not appear altogether different than the drivers of migration, mobility, and displacement – on the continent today. However, in two crucial ways, population movements in pre-colonial Africa were fundamentally different than anything that has come since. First, these movements were primarily a collective undertaking. The decision to move was not made nor undertaken by individuals, but rather by families/households or most commonly, by entire bands, tribes, or communities. The upshot of this “collective migration”, as Okoth-Ogendo (1989) persuasively posits, is that migration and mobility in the pre-colonial period, at least prior to the advent of the slave trade and its traumatic violence, did not undermine social cohesion in the way that movements during the colonial and post-colonial periods so often did. Prior to the slave trade, mobility still allowed family structures to remain largely intact, along with band, tribal, or other community political/authority structures. Even amidst migratory dynamics, social capital was largely preserved, and culture maintained. Prime examples of this include the Dogon people in Mali, whose collective migration to escape Islamicization is seen as contributing to their maintenance of shared social practices, technologies, and arts (Tait, 1950). Another West African example is the Fulani, who collectively migrated from the Senegambia region to what is today northern Nigeria in the 13th and 14th centuries – in the process maintaining much of their traditional social structure oriented around oral storytelling and pastoralism (Okello et al., 2014). The second way in which pre-colonial African mobility differed from later forms, as the examples of the Dogon and Fulani also demonstrate, was that it was not cyclical in nature. With artificial colonial borders not yet established, frontiers between polities were fluid. When population movements did take place, they tended to involve a permanent (or at least semi-permanent) transition to a new location on the part of entire communities (Fenske, 2014; Okoth-Ogendo, 1989). This stands in sharp contrast to the migration dynamics in play in contemporary African contexts, in which cyclical migration – e.g., individual migrants from Lesotho or Mozambique migrating to/from Johannesburg to work in the mines of the Witwatersrand – is common. Cohen (2019), providing a Marxist perspective on Africa’s migration dynamics, points to the lack of industrialization on the continent during the precolonial period – and the resulting lack of need for wage labourers – as the main reason why collective movements, rather than the individualized cyclical type, was predominant. The above examples also point to the existence of multiple mobilities during the precolonial era. The permanent movement of entire bands, tribes, or communities to new 25

Graham Sherbut

locations also brought with it the movement of cultures – including ideas and belief systems – that sometimes displaced, but more often merged with, the cultures of others. For instance, the Arab “conquest” of the Maghreb in the 5th and 6th centuries was partly a spread of Arabic culture, including the Arabic language and Islam. However, despite prolonged periods of conflict, these movements also created cultural mixing between Arab and indigenous Berber populations that served to alter – subtly, at first – the linguistic, religious, and broader cultural practices of both groups (Rouighi, 2011). Such cultural mixing was common, to varying degrees, elsewhere on the continent as cultural mobility accompanied physical mobility. Such mobility occurred more commonly in the pre-colonial era since these mobilities were unconstrained by the imposition of arbitrary political borders and other bureaucratic measures designed to control mobility and limit group-level movements. Was migration and mobility in the pre-colonial period empowering to those who undertook it? De Haas (2021) draws on Isaiah Berlin’s concepts of “positive” and “negative” liberty (Berlin, 1969), as well as Amartya Sen’s capabilities framework (Sen, 1999), and applies these to the migration space. In doing so, he establishes a mode through which to view migration as a “function of aspirations and capabilities to migrate within given sets of perceived geographical opportunity structures” (De Haas, 2021, p. 16). Stated more simply, De Haas situates migration as being a matter of human agency and the freedom to choose where to live – including the option of not migrating at all. While seemingly straightforward, this framework provides an alternative theoretical model to the traditional cause-and-effect view of migration (represented by functionalist and historical-structural schools of thought). In the latter, migrants respond passively to sets of unchanging push and pull factors and migrate primarily out of necessity. Under an aspirations-capabilities framework, the decision to migrate is not passive, but is often aspirational and emerges from a complex set of individual and collective calculations on how migrating – or not migrating – will influence subjective well-being. In the pre-colonial era, intra-African migration and mobility dynamics do broadly reflect evidence of human agency – the ability, however limited, of people – or social groups – to “make independent choices and to impose these on the world and, hence, to alter the structures that constrain [their] opportunities or freedoms” (De Haas, 2021, p. 23). The flight of the Dogon people from their ancestral lands to the Dogon Plateau, while surely not reflecting an ideal circumstance, was nevertheless representative of a collective decision to change this community’s calculus and to employ mobility to maintain cultural freedom. The movement of the Fulani from Senegambia to Northern Nigeria and the wider Sahel was an independent choice – made collectively by particular bands/social groups – that was deemed necessary to open new lands for cattle herding and to maintain pastoral traditions. The “Great Trek” of the Boers marked a collective community decision to use mobility to escape the unwanted authority of British colonialism. Even flights in the face of arriving threats, whether those of hunter-gatherer groups in the face of the Bantu migrations or of the multitude of groups targeted by slavers, represent an active expression of agency, albeit largely reactive in nature. The highlighting of these examples is not intended to suggest that migration and mobility in the pre-colonial era were universally positive or delivered positive outcomes. Indeed, such movements were often wrenching, exploitative, and violent. However, these examples do suggest that migration and mobility also had empowering effects in allowing communities to retain – at least to a degree – cultural, political, economic, and even physical freedoms. 26

Migration as Empowerment

Migration and Mobility within a Restricted Space: Population Movements in the Colonial Period Unsurprisingly, the migration and mobility story in Africa changed with the advent of European colonialism. In the pre-colonial era, geographic barriers, most prominently the Sahara Desert and the Congo rainforest, were the most significant obstacles to long-distance population movements. However, with the imposition of colonial boundaries came new political barriers to mobility. These barriers were not always rigidly enforced, particularly in the early colonial period, when European powers lacked strong control over the (often remote) borders of their new colonies. Despite this, Boogaart and Emmer (1986), Emmer (1990), Okoth-Ogendo (1989), and more recently Cordell (2020) identify the imposition of colonialism with several changes in the continent’s migration and mobility dynamics. These changes included the freezing of spatial limits on collective mobility. Movements across colonial borders still occurred, not least among select members of pastoralist groups like the Berbers, Fulani, and Somalis. However, the ability of entire nationalities, lineages, clans, or villages to uproot themselves and move collectively and permanently to new locations, was severely curtailed. With this came more limitations (though by no means the full stopping) of other mobilities, including the cultural exchange that was so characteristic of the pre-colonial era. Indeed, the colonial era arguably marks the point in time where specific ethnicities and cultures, many with their fluid ethnic identities becoming “fixed” by Missionaries in service of the Catholic and other churches, became associated with specific geographies (Van Reybrouck, 2010). The fluidity of population movements in the pre-colonial era made the association of ethnicity with geography a dubious exercise. Fixed identities and fixed borders (at least in theory) altered this dynamic, setting the scene for a conceptual shift away from considering mobility towards looking more at migration in the context of emerging state structures. At the same time, it was less the delineation of political borders that limited mobility and more the introduction by colonial regimes of exploitative capitalist economic structures. Following the abolition of slavery, colonial governments introduced coercive measures to secure labour to build infrastructure and serve emerging plantation and mining-oriented economies. These measures included outright labour conscription (common in British and French colonies in West Africa) and using various forms of legal chicanery – e.g., drawing on vagrancy infractions and debt obligations – to compel African populations into de facto bonded labour. The latter were practices frequently utilized in Britain’s Southern African colonies, including pre-independence South Africa, as well as in Portuguese East Africa (Cordell and Gregory, 1982; Kunkel, 2018; Okia, 2012; Roberts, 2017). The upshot of this colonial demand for native labour, with wages – if provided at all – being inevitably low, was a seismic shift in the migration and mobility experience. Restrictions on mobility were introduced by colonial authorities to prevent prospective labour from moving to neighbouring colonies. Examples included the introduction of pass laws in the Belgian Congo and much of British-controlled Southern Africa to keep the movement of actual and potential labourers tightly controlled, the press-ganging of local populations into labour groups, as well as the use of colonial legal systems to compel “natives” into employment. Southern Rhodesia and Portuguese East Africa provide compelling examples of the latter approach. In Southern Rhodesia, the Rhodesian Native Labour Bureau (RNLB) oversaw the coercive recruitment of labour for the colony’s mining sector, often by rounding up young men – nicknamed Chibaros – and carting them off directly to the mines (Okia, 2012). In

27

Graham Sherbut

other cases, the RNLB was party to adjusting the colony’s labour laws to compel all native labourers to sign twelve-month contracts, thus binding them to employers and limiting their mobility. Similarly, in Portuguese East Africa, a labour code was introduced that required all natives to work – with young men having to perform wage labour for a certain number of months per year. Those who were unable to prove that they were employed were subsequently press-ganged into work and closely tracked, which restricted their ability to move outside their immediate localities (Guthrie, 2016; Okia, 2012). Suddenly, the spatial limits of mobility became constrained for most African populations. Moreover, the collective nature of such mobility was permanently ended. Instead, the need for labour in the colonial space introduced a precedent that continues to the present day – a predominant role for young men, undertaking individual circular migration, as the key migrant demographic. Perhaps nowhere was this shift as dramatic as in Southern Africa, where the introduction of capital-intensive mining in the Witwatersrand created a substantial demand for cheap, and easily disposable, labour. The Tsonga-speaking population of Portuguese East Africa/Mozambique (also known as the Shangaan) provide an illustrative example of the shift from spatially expansive collective mobility in the pre-colonial period to a more spatially constrained individual (and male) circular migration under the shadow of colonial rule. Tsonga-speaking populations moved steadily from Central Africa to as far south as modernday Eswatini and Xai-Xai over the course of a millennium (Mathebula, 2002). These movements mark the classic description of pre-colonial migration, identified by Okoth-Ogendo (1989), of clans, tribes, and lineages continually and collectively moving to realize their productive potential, in this case by escaping overcrowding and conflict over resources in areas further north. Moreover, collective movements of the Tsonga/Shangaan continued well into the 19th century, with the expansion of the Shangaan Gaza Empire allowing for the ongoing migration of clans into new areas of what are now Mozambique and Zimbabwe (Broch-Due, 2005; Mathebula, 2002). The advent of colonial rule in the territory that would become Portuguese East Africa effectively put an end to this collective mobility, largely through the economically motivated constraints cited earlier. However, Portuguese colonial authorities did come to tolerate (albeit sometimes reluctantly when it removed labour from the local economy) migration of a certain type: the movement of young men to work in South Africa’s gold mines. This migration, viewed by many Shangaan migrants as offering better wages than what could be earned at home, saw young men migrate temporarily (though often for several years), be housed in communal accommodation, and periodically return home to attend their families (Van Onsleen, 2021). The Tsonga/Shangaan were hardly alone in experiencing a seismic shift in migration and mobility dynamics. Mine labour in the Witwatersrand was also prominently procured from the Sotho, Tswana, Shona, and other regional ethnic groups, all with their own pre-colonial history of collective mobility (Cobley, 2014). However, Van Onsleen (2021) identifies the Tsonga/Shangaan as experiencing a particularly striking shift in migration and mobility realities, overseeing an empire, albeit modest in size, that peaked in power in the 1860s and which actively supported collective and permanent mobility among its subjects, to becoming a source of low-cost migrant labour, with young men serving European capital by the end of the 19th century. The shift in colonial migration and mobility dynamics towards individualized circular migration was hardly confined to Southern Africa. Manchuelle (1998) documents the experiences of the Soninke in the Sahel, whose collective movements were underpinned by the 28

Migration as Empowerment

Wangara mercantile confederations that bolstered the economy of the Bambara Empire based out of Ségou (Mali) in the 18th and 19th centuries. With the advent of French colonialism, the introduction of labour conscription signalled the death knell of these confederations and the coercive re-direction of Soninke labour – again, mainly young men – towards supporting plantation-style groundnut production. The upshot, yet again, was the shrinking of the spatial migration space available to this population. Broad traditions of collective mobility, founded on trade dynamics, came to an end with the coercive labour requirements put in place by European powers. Coercive labour – and resulting limitations on movement – were also prominent in British East Africa. The press-ganging of young Bugandan men into kasanvu work groups, directed to contribute corvée labour to support the development of physical infrastructure, placed considerable limitations on the capacity of Bugandan community to undertake even shorter-distance seasonal movements around the shores of Lake Victoria (De Haas, 2019; Okia, 2012). The examples provided above are but a small representation of how the imposition of colonial rule changed the continent’s migration and mobility dynamics. Collective mobility, involving the permanent relocation of clans, lineages, and tribes, came to an end and was replaced – due to the imposition of new capitalist modest of economic production – by a migration that was spatially constrained, individualistic, and largely undertaken by young men. As already noted, this migration also tended to be circular in nature. Whether it was the Chibaros in Southern Rhodesia, the Bugandan members of kasanvu work groups, Soninke groundnut producers, or the Shangaan migrating to the mines of the Witwatersrand, migration was never permanent. Instead, it now involved the temporary movement of migrants over comparatively shorter distances to work (and live) in temporary conditions where they would provide their labour for meagre compensation. This would expectedly be followed by migrants returning, periodically, to their home communities. To be sure, colonial attitudes to African populations, marked by varying levels of racism, contributed to the predominance of circular migration. The desire to limit the presence of African populations in (European) towns meant the imposition of tight controls on where African populations could settle and typically inhibited labourers’ family units/households from accompanying them to their places of work. The introduction of pass laws in the Belgian Congo, as well as the early steps taken in South Africa, both before and after independence, to establish separateness between African and non-African populations, are two examples of how colonial-era migration served to disincentivize any possibility of permanent settlement. Did colonialism mark the complete end of migrants’ agency when it came to making migration decisions? Not necessarily. The later (post-World War Two) stages of colonialism saw the discontinuation of most coercive labour policies. Migrants now had more opportunity to make migration decisions, albeit within the structural constraints of the colonial-era economy, which had disincentivized and weakened local production and made engagement in wage labour a necessity for most (Boogaart and Emmer, 1986; Cordell, 2020). The later stages of colonialism did see a modest (re)expansion of the spatial extent of migration and mobility, with migrants – still mainly young men – having the ability to more easily cross international borders. De Haas (2019), in his analysis of colonial-era migration from Ruanda-Urundi to Uganda, writes about the “large spatial inequalities of opportunity” between colonies in post-1945 Africa and the incentives this provided for circular male labour migration – particularly as migrants were freed from coercive measures that prevented their migratory potential. After World War Two, and even after the introduction of apartheid in 1948, circular male migration to South Africa also increased, aided in no small part by the 29

Graham Sherbut

continued expansion of that country’s industrial mining sector (Harington, McGlashan and Chelkowska, 2004). What were the implications of the shift in migration type from the pre-colonial to the colonial eras? Okoth-Ogendo’s (1989) focus on the impact of migration on the traditional family structure proves illuminating. The end of collective mobility and its replacements by cyclical individual migration across formal colonial/emerging state frontiers led to an undermining of the traditional family. On a practical level, Okoth-Ogendo argues that the nature of colonial-era migration produced a decline in overall fertility rates. The long-term absence of men from the family unit also had gender implications in introducing a requirement for women to take on productive functions (e.g., the production of food and cash crops) in addition to their traditional domestic responsibilities. This created a burden of work on women that continues to mark contemporary African societies (a point also reinforced by Sinke, 2006). Connected to this was a loss of social capital. Communities, previously bound together by common experiences of moving, became increasingly differentiated between those (young and male) who now migrated and those who did not. Except for some pastoralist groups who successfully maintained some of their seasonal migratory traditions, migration also ceased to be a livelihood option available to entire lineages, clans, or tribes in the colonial era – removing an important tool to secure their resilience against inevitable environmental and other shocks. Returning to De Haas’ migration-capabilities framework, what can we say about the empowering effects of migration in the colonial era? There is no question that human agency became curtailed during this time. African populations had a much narrower space in which to make independent choices and to impose these choices on their surroundings. Indeed, the structural nature of colonialism was explicitly focused on constraining opportunities and freedoms. Saying this, it is too simple to say that the shift from the pre-colonial to colonial eras marked a straightforward reduction in migration and mobility capabilities. For example, given the constraints introduced by colonialism, in the form of labour coercion, the decision of even small numbers of Shangaan or Sotho people to migrate to the mines of the Witwatersrand was an empowering decision to change the economic calculus – moving from a situation of little or no economic freedom to a situation where at least a modicum of this freedom (albeit experienced in often terrible conditions) could be found. In other cases, such as the Soninke losing the capabilities of collective migration found under extensive trading networks and having this be replaced by geographically constrained (and coerced) engagement in extensive groundnut production, the loss of capabilities was all too clear.

Towards a Migration-Defined Future: Population Movements in the Post-Colonial World It is fair to argue that population movements in post-colonial Africa have been influenced markedly by the migration dynamics introduced during the colonial period. The evolution of colonies into modern independent states, albeit with widely varying levels of cohesion and political strength, the persistence of extractive models of economic development focused on industries like mining, as well as the ongoing presence of De Haas’ (2019) “large spatial inequalities of opportunity” between African states, all reinforce the continuing influence of many colonial-era dynamics. However, this should not be interpreted to mean that nothing has changed. On the contrary, in crucial ways, migration in post-colonial Africa marks another sea change from the eras that came before. 30

Migration as Empowerment

One crucial change, obvious to any close observer of the continent, is the increase in the number of migrants leaving Africa for other parts of the world. Opportunities for mobility, comparatively restricted during the colonial era, have re-emerged, however imperfectly. Intra-African migration remains the most common migration focus for most prospective and actual migrants. Moreover, the focus is now on migration, as a formal (typically legal) process that involves movements across formalized state boundaries. References to mobility as a fluid concept, while not eliminated, are less pervasive within the literature. Interestingly, certain mobilities in the post-colonial era – such as the mobility of capital and of beliefs and ideas – have arguably increased due to the influence of technology, even as African states have introduced restrictions intended to continue controlling the migratory movements of people. Migration to other continents – whether in the form of economic migrants heading to Western countries (especially the former colonial powers) to seek greater opportunity or in the form of refugees seeking to escape violence and persecution – has become more prominent (Giménez-Gómez, Walle and Zergawu, 2019; Laine, 2020). Increasingly common, particularly for migrants from the Horn of Africa, is migration to the economically dynamic Gulf states (Bakewell and De Haas, 2007; Demissie, 2017). Contrary to some assumptions that this off-continent migration is being undertaken by the poorest and is purely the product of desperation, Flahaux and De Haas (2016) make a convincing argument – in the modernization theory mould – that it is the growth of a lower middle class in many African states which is fuelling new migratory ambitions. Development and social transformation are increasing Africans’ capabilities and aspirations to migrate in a manner not evident (nor possible) in previous eras. As countries and societies gain even a modicum of increased wealth, dissatisfaction with the status quo becomes untenable and the desire to leave and realize “productive potential” elsewhere (or merely achieve a life of relative stability) becomes ingrained. Does the increase in off-continent migration represent a new (re)opening of spatial migration opportunities – or indeed, broader mobility – for African migrants in the post-colonial era? Only to a degree. Even while pointing to increased migration by African migrants to Europe and the Gulf, Flahaux and De Haas (2016) acknowledge that such movements are only a possibility for a small number of migrants with the resources and connections required to migrate. For the far larger number of (poorer) migrants who choose to migrate between African states, the bureaucratic impediments to migration – work and residency permits, stricter migrant health surveillance, and poorly crafted labour and immigration laws which fail to clarify migrant rights – have become significant. Indeed, Flahaux and De Haas (2016) point to these impediments to argue that Ricca’s (1989) well-known maxim of Africa as “a continent perpertually on the move”, is becoming more difficult to substantiate in the postcolonial era. Flahaux and De Haas (2016), along with Sadiq and Tsourapas (2021), also point to the connections between post-colonial state formation in Africa and the capabilities of migrants to actively choose to migrate. States with socialist or pronounced nationalist orientations, such as Algeria and Guinea (in the socialist camp) and Mobutu’s Zaire and Sudan (in the nationalist camp), put in place strict controls (albeit not universally successful) to control emigration. Others, such as post-apartheid South Africa and Kenya, fearing what an influx of migrants could mean for their own fragile attempts at nation-building, have sought at various stages to make immigration more difficult, often adopting xenophobic policies and political pronouncements as means to discourage immigrants – albeit with the effect of 31

Graham Sherbut

mainly discouraging regular migration while doing little to dissuade more shadowy types of irregular migration into these states (Marchand, Wotela and Letsiri, 2015; Matsvai-Mutsau, 2018). Migration, in the post-colonial space, has at once become more spatially expansive (allowing for increased off-continent migration) and more constrained as post-colonial African states adopt hostile – or least politically ambiguous – attitudes towards migrants, particularly those who wish to migrate permanently to new locations. The upshot is that intra-African migration still tends to revolve around demographics that receiving states find most palatable – single and productive young men staying for a time-limited period. Indeed, the individual and largely circular nature of migration has been largely maintained in the post-colonial world. The mines of South Africa’s Witwatersrand still serve as a prominent example, with over 200,000 mineworkers currently active in the country (40 per cent of the mining workforce) originating from one of Mozambique, Lesotho, or Eswatini. Over 95 per cent of these workers are male, over 80 per cent are under the age of 40, and most have limited legal rights to settle in South Africa (World Bank, 2017). As in the colonial/apartheid eras, most of these migrants continue to live in temporary accommodations (e.g., worker hostels) and are separated from their families for an extended period, thus ensuring an ongoing weakening of the social capital prized by Okoth-Ogendo (1989). In a similar vein, young men from certain nationalities – such as Somalis in East Africa and (increasingly) Malians in West Africa – are increasingly migrating to take up niche opportunities in neighbouring countries, including in the hotly contested small retail space (e.g., Somalis operating spaza shops in South Africa, Malians operating market stalls in Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, and Nigeria). Once again, most of these migrants are male, are mostly below the age of 40, and migrate only temporarily, seldom bringing their immediate families (Charman, Petersen, and Piper, 2012; Hummel, 2016). Critics of the above commentary could justly point to the prolonged nature of much “temporary” migration – e.g., of Somalis in South Africa and Kenya – to argue that such migration is de facto permanent. It is indeed the case that large numbers of migrants remain in their migration destination country for a prolonged period (e.g., staying decades without returning “home”). However, as Hummel (2016) notes, even these longer-term migrants never really settle or build a complete life in their destination countries. Their linkages remain in their origin countries since prevailing post-colonial immigration regimes fail to provide a simple path to permanent residence or opportunities for family unification. Some exceptions do exist in the case of refugees. Somali and other refugees at the Dadaab Refugee Complex in Northern Kenya, for example, are supported by bodies like the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to settle as family units if they so choose (Bashir, 2018). However, such regimes are hardly the norm and are themselves fragile, with the Kenyan government recently introducing legislation to compel all Somali refugees in Kenya to return home, regardless of the considerable political violence still prevailing in Somalia. Restrictions on mobility in the post-colonial space are certainly not the same as they were under colonialism. Pass laws and forcible labour recruitment are not common (though the latter still undeniably happens in some locations). The barriers to migrants moving from country to country are now largely politico-bureaucratic. Nevertheless, the nature of most African economies, focused on natural resource extraction and a vast informal economy, necessitates migrant labour of some type. This creates a paradox that defines contemporary intra-African migration dynamics – most countries wish to strictly control, and ideally lessen, 32

Migration as Empowerment

immigration but are also extremely dependent on migrants to create and sustain growth (Flahaux and De Haas, 2016). In what other ways does migration in post-colonial Africa differ from what has come before? While the description of migration as remaining primarily the reserve of young men remains broadly true, there is a definite gender dimension to the post-colonial migration space that was not previously apparent. Female migrants have become increasingly common on the continent, particularly over the last 25 years – and are likely to make-up half of the continent’s migrants by the end of the 2020s (Hiralal, 2017). Women’s migration across national borders is qualitatively different from that of men, however. Whereas the latter tend to engage in longer-term circular migration, much of the female migration that takes place is seasonal (albeit still circular) and is centred on cross-border trade. In Zambia, 70 per cent of informal cross-border traders are women, and their migration involves frequent (even daily) cross-border movements to purchase and sell goods in regional markets (UNCTAD, 2020). Given their engagement in cross-border trade and the frequency of their migration, it was these female migrants who suffered most with the loss of livelihoods when the COVID19 pandemic hit in early 2020 and interrupted cross-border supply chains (Hiralal, 2017; UNCTAD, 2020). The post-colonial migration space also illuminates a linkage between migration and public health. The emergence of HIV/AIDS as the continent’s most significant public health threat (particularly in East and Southern Africa) has many causes, all of which have been well-documented. However, the ongoing circular migration that began in the colonial era, particularly of Southern Africans flocking to the Witwatersrand to work in South Africa’s mines, has served as a major contributor to the epidemic’s spread. Researchers working in the HIV/ AIDS and migration spaces have long documented the connection between the living conditions of male migrants living away from their families for significant periods, their proclivity to subsequently engage in “risky” sexual behaviour, and the tendency to then infect their spouses once they return home (see Crush et al., 2007; Yorlets et al., 2022 for two examples, though the literature on this subject is extensive). Migration is also linked to the spread of HIV/AIDS through the existence of land transport corridors, with long-distance truck drivers’ utilization of sex workers at transport hubs, often at cross-border sites, serving as a driver of HIV infection and spread (Matovu and Ssebadduka, 2013). More recently, migration has been linked closely with a range of other public health threats. These include tuberculosis, for which those migrants working in the cramped and poorly ventilated conditions of many mines (including artisanal mines in countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC) and living in cramped and poorly ventilated communal housing, are especially prone (Stuckler et al., 2011). Finally, the outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa in 2014 added additional concerns about the potential for migration, and especially poorly tracked irregular migration serving as a mechanism for the spread of this dangerous disease (Heymann et al., 2015). The upshot of the above linking of migration to different public health threats lies with the increased scrutiny migration – and migrants – now receive as a public health concern. This marks a substantial change in the migration story. While Okoth-Ogendo (1989) raised concerns about the impact of migration on traditional family structures and on broader social capital, the debate on migration has evolved to consider whether it is, in fact, a threat to the physical well-being of migratory populations. Returning once more to De Haas’ migration-capabilities framework, does migration retain an empowering effect in the post-colonial era? It would seem so. Human agency is far less 33

Graham Sherbut

curtailed at present than during the colonial era (though the freedom to migrate is certainly more curtailed than during the pre-colonial period). Measures to actively suppress the movement of labour are no longer in place. Barriers to migration are now mainly political and bureaucratic. This does not necessarily make them simple to overcome, as Flahaux and De Haas (2016) elegantly argue. However, the space for migrants to make independent choices and impose these choices on their surroundings clearly exists. Increased off-continent migration and the growing numbers of women choosing to migrate, point to this conclusion. The fact that migration – particularly off-continent migration – largely takes place among the emerging middle classes also points to the aspirational nature of at least some types of migration. Despite the negative consequences associated with migration in terms of break-up of family structures, losses of social capital, and public health, migration is clearly still seen as one strategy to change the economic calculus – moving from constraining situations to situations where more economic freedom can be found.

Conclusions: Towards a Mobile Future in Africa This chapter has provided a broad historical overview of key mobility and migration trends in Africa’s pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial eras. While by no means comprehensive, the chapter has drawn on various examples to show the drivers of mobility and migration in each of these eras, as well as to frame these in the context of capabilities and empowerment. It is hoped that this has allowed the chapter to contribute something different to the debate on mobility and migration, which all too often still sees the decision to move as a necessary evil undertaken by those who are most desperate. On the contrary, as this chapter has sought to argue, mobility and migration – for all their very real drawbacks – are often empowering. Mobility takes many forms and refers not only to the movement of people, but also to the movement of ideas, beliefs, capital, and information across borders. In this sense, mobility has been a constant across African history and has contributed hugely to the continent’s rich cultural tapestry, allowing cultures and livelihoods to be preserved, shared, and further developed. Migration is a human process that has clear legal attributes, and which is inherently politicized. This could make identifying its empowering effects more challenging. However, the choice to migrate is representative of people’s decisions to make active decisions about their lives and to impose these decisions on their surroundings. Moreover, migration is entrenched in contemporary Africa and should be accordingly encouraged as a means of allowing individuals (and ideally, their families) to escape situations of poor economic and/or political freedom in favour of something better. In this sense, the African Union’s Migration Policy Framework for Africa and Plan of Action (2018–2030) is an important foundation around which inclusive (and ideally de-politicized) migration policies should be developed by both individual African states and RECs. Moving forward, the aim of migration policy must be to learn the lessons from history. A return to the comparatively unbounded freedom of the pre-colonial era, in which spatially expansive collective mobility was the norm, is clearly not feasible in a modern world still defined by the primacy of nation-states – and in Africa, by the ongoing effort to build strong and cohesive states. However, migration can be made more humane if efforts are undertaken to address key issues raised by Okoth-Ogendo’s (1989) long-ago analysis – the break-up of family structures and the loss of social capital. Fostering mobility by making migration easier, for both economic migrants and refugees, is an important objective. This should include 34

Migration as Empowerment

steps to make temporary and permanent residence simpler and to facilitate family unifications. While politically contentious, these steps are essential if mobility and migration are to realize their full potential as empowering forces for development.

References Adepoju, Aderanti. 1979. “Migration and Socio-economic Change in Africa”, International Social Science Journal 31(2): pp. 207–225. Antil, Alain, et al. 2016. “Understanding African Migrations”, Politique Étrangère 1, Special Report: Another Look at Migrations in Africa. Bakewell, Oliver and Hein De Haas. 2007. “African Migrations: Continuities, Discontinuities and Recent Transformations”, in: Leo de Haan, Ulf Engel and Patrick Chabal (eds.), African Alternatives, Vol. 2. Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies. Leiden: Brill, pp. 95–117. Bashir, Ummi Kaituma Mohamed. 2018. “Challenges Facing Somali Refugees in Dadaab Refugee Camp, 1991–2016”, PhD Dissertation – University of Nairobi, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Berlin, Isaiah. 1969. “Two Concepts of Liberty”, in: Isaiah Berlin (ed.), Four Essays on Liberty. London: Oxford University Press, pp. 63–68. Black, Jeremy. 2015. The Atlantic Slave Trade in World History. London: Routledge. Boogaart, Ernst Van Den and P. C. Emmer. 1986. “Colonialism and Migration: An Overview”, in: P.C. Emmer (ed.), Colonialism and Migration; Indentured Labour Before and After Slavery. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, pp. 118–139. Broch-Due, Vigdis (ed.). 2005. Violence and Belonging: The Quest for Identity in Post-colonial Africa. New York: Routledge. Charman, Andrew, Leif Petersen and Laurence Piper. 2012. “From Local Survivalism to Foreign Entrepreneurship: The Transformation of the Spaza Sector in Delft, Cape Town”, Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa 78: pp. 47–73. Cobley, Alan. 2014. “Lacking in Respect for Whitemen: ‘Tropical Africans’ on the Witwatersrand Gold Mines, 1903–1904”, International Labour and Working-Class History 86: pp. 36–54. Cohen, Robin. 2019. “Strangers and Migrants in the Making of African Societies: A Conceptual and Historical Review”, Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences 12: pp. 45–59. Cordell, Dennis D. 2020. Hoe and Wage: A Social History of a Circular Migration System in West Africa. New York: Routledge. Cordell, Dennis D. and Joel W. Gregory. 1982. “Labour Reservoirs and Population: French Colonial Strategies in Koudougou, Upper Volta, 1914 to 1939”, Journal of African History 23(2): pp. 205–224. Crush, Jonathan, et al. 2007. “Migration and HIV/AIDS in South Africa”, Development Southern Africa 22(3): pp. 293–318. Demissie, Fassil. 2017. “Ethiopian Female Domestic Workers in the Middle East and Gulf States: An Introduction”, African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal 11(1): pp. 1–5. De Haas, Michael. 2019. “Moving Beyond Colonial Control? Economic Forces and Shifting Migration from Ruanda-Urundi to Buganda, 1920–60”, The Journal of African History 60(3): pp. 379–406. De Haas, Hein. 2021. “A Theory of Migration: The Aspirations-Capabilities Framework”, Comparative Migration Studies 9(1): pp. 1–35. Emmer, P. C. 1990. “European Expansion and Migration; the European Colonial Past and Intercontinental Migration. An Overview”, Itinerario: Journal of Imperial and Global Interactions 14(1): pp. 11–24. Fenske, James. 2014. “Ecology, Trade, and States in Pre-colonial Africa”, Journal of the European Economic Association 12(3): pp. 612–640. Flahaux, Marie-Laurence and Hein De Haas. 2016. “African Migration: Trends, Patterns, Drivers”, Comparative Migration Studies 4. Open access. Giliomee, Hermann. 2003. The Afrikaners: Biography of a People. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Giménez-Gómez, José-Manuel, Yabibal M. Walle and Yitagesu Zewdu Zergawu. 2019. “Trends in African Migration to Europe: Drivers Beyond Economic Motivations”, Journal of Conflict Resolution 63(8): pp. 211–227.

35

Graham Sherbut Guthrie, Zachary Kagan. 2016. “Forced Volunteers: The Complexities of Coercion in Central Mozambique, 1942–1961”, The International Journal of African Historical Studies 49(2): pp. 195–212. Harington, John S., Neil D. McGlashan and Elzbieta Chelkowska. 2004. “A Century of Migrant Labour in the Gold Mines of South Africa”, Journal of the Southern African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy 104(2): pp. 65–71. Heymann, David L., et al. 2015. “Global Health Security: The Wider Lessons from the West African Ebola Virus Disease Epidemic”, The Lancet 385(9980): pp. 1884–1901. Hiralal, Kalpana. 2017. “Women and Migration-Challenges and Constraints- A South African Perspective”, Nordic Journal of African Studies 26(2): pp. 32–42. Hummel, Diana. 2016. “Climate Change, Land Degradation and Migration in Mali and Senegal – Some Policy Implications”, Migration and Development 5(2): pp. 211–233. Jonsson, Gunvor. 2009. “Comparative Report: African Migration Trends. University of Oxford International Migration Institute”, African Perspectives on Human Mobility Programme, Comparative Report 2009. Kunkel, Sarah. 2018. “Forced Labour, Roads, and Chiefs: The Implementation of the ILO Forced Labour Convention in the Gold Coast”, IRSH 63: pp. 449–476. Laine, Jussi P. 2020. “Reframing African Migration to Europe: An Alternative Narrative”, in: Innocent Moyo, Christopher Changwe Nshimbi and Jussi P. Laine (eds.) Migration Conundrums, Regional Integration and Development: Africa-Europe Relations in a Changing Global Order. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 175–215. Manchuelle, François. 1998. Willing Migrants: Soninke Labour Diasporas, 1848–1960. Woodbridge: James Currey. Mathebula, Mandla. 2002. 800 Years of Tsonga History: 1200–2000. Burgersfort: Sasavona Publishers and Booksellers Pty. Ltd. Matovu, Joseph K. B. and B. N. Ssebadduka. 2013. “Knowledge, Attitudes, and Barriers to Condom Use among Female Sex Workers and Truck Drivers in Uganda: A Mixed-Methods Study”, African Health Sciences 13(4): pp. 103–126. Matsvai-Mutsau, Christina. 2018. “Challenges to the Free Movement Residence and Work Rights of Foreign Migrant Workers in South Africa and Kenya: A Comparative Study”, PhD Dissertation on Public Law. University of Pretoria. Mayor, Anne et al. 2005. “Population Dynamics and Paleoclimate over the Past 3000 Years in the Dogon country, Mali”, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 24(1): pp. 25–61. Okello, Anna L. et al. 2014. “Identifying Motivators for State-Pastoralist Dialogue: Exploring the Relationships between Livestock Services, Self-Organisation and Conflict in Nigeria’s Pastoralist Fulani”, Pastoralism 4(12): pp. 116–129. Okia, Opolot. 2012a. “Forced Labor and Colonial Development in Africa”, in: Opolot Okia (ed.), Communal Labor in Colonial Kenya: The Legitimization of Coercion, 1912–1930. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 9–24. Okoth-Ogendo, Hastings Wilfred Opinya. 1989. “The Effect of Migration on Family Structures in Sub-Saharan Africa”, International Migration 27(2): pp. 309–317. Oliver, Roland. 1966. “The Problem of the Bantu Expansion”, The Journal of African History 7(3): pp. 361–376. Ricca, Sergio. 1989. International Migration in Africa: Legal and Administrative Aspects. Geneva: International Labour Office. Roberts, Richard. 2017. “Coerced Labour in Twentieth-Century Africa”, in: David Eltis, et al. (eds.), The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 4, AD 1804–AD 2016. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 77–116. Rouighi, Ramzi. 2011. “The Berbers of the Arabs”, Studia Islamica 106(1): pp. 49–76. Sadiq, Kamal and Gerasimos Tsourapas. 2021. “The Postcolonial Migration State”, European Journal of International Relations 27(3): pp. 124–141. Sen, Amartya. 1999. Development as Freedom. New York: Anchor Publishing. Sinke, Suzanne M. 2006. “Gender and Migration: Historical Perspectives”, International Migration Review 40(1): pp. 82–103. Stuckler, David, S. Basu, M. McKee and M. Lurie. 2011. “Mining and Risk of Tuberculosis in SubSaharan Africa”, American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) 101(3): pp. 524–530.

36

Migration as Empowerment Tait, David. 1950. “An Analytical Commentary on the Social Structure of the Dogon”, Africa 20(3): pp. 175–199. Thomas, Hugh. 2007. The Slave Trade: A History of the Atlantic slave trade, 1440–1870. New York: Simon & Schuster. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). 2020. Women in Informal Cross-Border Trade in Zambia: A Small-Scale Trader’s Guide to Trade Rules and Procedures”, UNCTAD Position Paper. Van Onsleen, Charles. 2021. The Night Trains: Moving Mozambican Miners to and from the Witwatersrand Mines, 1902–1955. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Van Reybrouck, David. 2010. Congo: The Epic History of a People. New York: Harper Collins. Vansina, Jan. 1995. “New Linguistic Evidence and ‘the Bantu Expansion’”, The Journal of African History 36(2): pp. 173–195. The World Bank. 2017. The Southern Africa TB in the Mining Sector Initiative. Project Policy Brief. Wotela, Kambidima and Cleophas Letsiri. 2015. “International Movements, Post-apartheid Dispensations and Illegal Immigration into South Africa”, The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa 11(4): pp. 66–75. Yorlets, Rachel R., et al. 2022. “Validity of Self-report for Ascertaining HIV Status Among Circular Migrants and Permanent Residents in South Africa: A Cross-Sectional, Population-Based Analysis”, AIDS and Behavior. https://doi​.org​/10​.1007​/s10461​-022​-03828​-w.

37

3 POSTCOLONIAL STATES AND MIGRATION Clayton Boeyink and Simon Turner

Introduction Most often, the discussion about migration and Africa is concerned with migration from Africa to Europe, while we know that most migration takes place inside the continent (IOM, 2020). Likewise, much of the literature on state control of migration has been concerned with how European states have attempted to prevent migration from the African continent. Critical border studies have over the past decade explored the coercive and violent nature of the border as states from the Global North manifest their sovereignty and exclude marginalised and racialised others (De Genova and Peutz, 2010; Jones, 2021; Walia, 2021). While such studies are compelling in their rendering of the border spectacle along the southern borders of Europe and North America, they have a Northern bias and may be less helpful for understanding the nature of state sovereignty and migration control elsewhere.1 In this section, we shift the focus to how African states attempt to govern human mobility across borders on the continent, out of the continent or inside the territory of the nation-state. Like other states, African postcolonial states have always been keenly involved in the regulation and control of human mobility. However, states in Africa – as elsewhere – do not simply attempt to prevent migration. They often promote certain kinds of mobility while preventing others (Vigneswaran and Quirk, 2015). Just as the Eurocentric notion of the state must be decentred, so too does the normative understandings of migration taking place along certain patterns and logics. Mobility takes diverse forms in relation to the state often occurring through or against state vectors or barriers, as well as above or below the nationstate. Examples include rural-to-urban migration, the circulation of civil servants (police officers, agricultural supervisors, schoolteachers, etc.) within the state territory, as well as religious pilgrimages across and out of Africa for those seeking healing or religious duties (Biri, 2014; Pasura, forthcoming). The state in Africa is often explored as failed or fragile (Engberg-Pedersen, Andersen et al., 2008), in other words as falling short of the ideals of the Weberian state. It is measured as ‘more or less’ like what is assumed of European states (Bierschenk and Olivier de Sardan, 2014). Even studies that argue that these flaws are exogenic and the result of colonialism, assume the European state as the ideal and perceive the African state as an outlier. We 38

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-4

Postcolonial States and Migration

are thus balancing a view that African states are not merely dysfunctional or incomplete European prototype; however, we do not take an opposite stance that African states are anomalies incomparable to Europe. To begin to understand the postcolonial state, we must look back at how colonial states approached migration and mobility controls while factoring in how former colonial empires have continued to attempt to influence migration into, within, and out of Africa. Yet within this colonial dominance, there has always been African agency in complying with, resisting, and recalibrating the migration priorities of the Global North. Analysis of these state practices in the longue durée allows us to understand the ways postcolonial states have upheld or diverged from the systemic manipulation of human movement, which has always been a critical component of state building. Following the lead of Vigneswaran and Quirk (2015), we argue that we should abandon these Eurocentric normative points of view and instead see the state in Africa for what it is: a historically contingent product, which exercises public authority through widely varying degrees of success or capability to 1) administer justice; 2) extract resources through taxes and other economic means; 3) gain some form of recognition from other states; 4) hold some control of military, policing, and administration functions; and 5) channel mobility and migration (p. 4). What is interesting about this approach is that we might better unveil many assumptions about the state in Europe and elsewhere (see footnote 1). African states have governed migration in several ways. The most obvious is when states prevent migration at the border or to specific privileged areas of the territory. Some East African states have exemplified obstructive migration controls. Kenya and Tanzania have attempted to close their borders to displaced Somalis (Lindley and Long ref) and Burundians (Boeyink, 2020), respectively. Moreover, through encampment policies, these states have actively discouraged and attempted to prevent internal migrations of refugees outside of the camp to towns and cities (Pavanello et al., 2010), which are borne out of an ethno-racialised history of exclusion since colonialism (Brankamp and Daley, 2020; Weitzberg, 2017). States also attempt to promote certain kinds of mobility, as when, for instance, a number of African states (Ghana, Rwanda, Burundi) have extended rights to non-residents citizens and have established ministries and directorates for their diasporas (Brankamp and Daley, 2020; Weitzberg, 2017; Turner, 2013). Finally, Vigneswaran and Quirk point out that most states rarely prevent or promote migration “tout court” but rather promote certain kinds of mobility while preventing others. This results in what they term “channelling” migration (2015, pp. 19–20). When looking at African states’ policies of prevention, promotion, and channelling, the echoes of colonial migration controls quickly emerge. We contend that these genealogies are crucial to understanding the state’s approach to migration in Africa and the overall functioning of the state itself. There is a large body of literature on the subject of state formation and colonialism in Africa (Bayart, 1993; Mamdani, 1996; Young, 1994), and we cannot do justice to the richness of these debates here. Important to our discussion is firstly that colonialism affected state building very differently across the continent, depending not only on the oft-mentioned and somewhat overstated difference between French and British colonial rule, or the more heavy-handed rule of Portuguese colonies, but also on whether the colony was a settler colony or not. Therefore, we cannot assume ‘the African state’ as a generic unit. For example, the former Belgian colony, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has gone through decades of conflict, and the eastern regions of the country have experienced an acute absence of state services and administration. Whereas Ghana, previously ruled by the British, has a state cohesiveness and continuity, which has 39

Clayton Boeyink and Simon Turner

remained unquestioned (Nugent, 2004, p. 9). Second, preventing, promoting, and channelling mobility were pivotal to colonial statecraft as colonial administrations were highly concerned with who moved where and for what reasons. Segregated settler colonies were all about controlling movement, as were the extractive economies of mining and plantations and the slave trade. A broad survey of colonial Africa inevitably flattens differences and nuances across such a large and diverse continent. With this in mind, we lean on the works of key Africanist scholars, who have been central in debates on the nature of the African state before, during, and after colonialism. Mahmood Mamdani (Mamdani, 1996) argues that most colonial states in Africa eventually transitioned from direct to indirect rule, creating a ‘bifurcated state’, which created dual governance structures for citizens and subjects. Direct rule was often costly and inefficient because colonial forces directly and often violently controlled markets and administration across large and difficult-to-access terrains. Indirect rule sought a less costly route, where territories of the colonies were divided into ‘tribes’ or chieftaincies. The colonists’ rigid ethno-racialised understanding of ‘tribes’ led to the instrumentalisation of chiefs and customary leaders as devolved proxies to control and govern native subjects. Some historians argue that tribes were ‘created’ (Iliffe, 1979) or ‘invented’ (Ranger, 1983) as part of advancing the colonial project, while others find middle ground in highlighting that many ethnic systems took definite precolonial formation and that colonial contact and rule led to evolution of ethnic boundaries, which hardened and evolved (Nugent, 2008). Countering the structuralist or ‘dependency school’ of scholars such as Walter Rodney (1972), who attribute continued African inequality and ‘underdevelopment’ to slavery and colonialism, Jean-François Bayart (2000, 1993) contends that African elites have demonstrated their agency in setting up the terms of extraction during and after colonialism. Bayart minimises the magnitude of the colonial project and argues that from precolonial times to the present, African elites have been unable to sufficiently control their own populations and have taken up a stance of ‘extraversion’ or ‘gatekeeping’ (Cooper, 2002) by seeking enrichment and consolidation of power through more wealthy nations’ interventions. Bayart is often set in opposition to Mamdani, as the former contends that the African state is not an exogenous product of colonialism, but rather a hybridised or ‘grafted’ endogenous entity. We will return to both below, but rather than weighing in the debate, we find complementarity in these two scholars in the dialectic relationship between hegemonic control of African politics from former colonial powers and the complicit agency of African leaders. Regardless of where African states are situated in the debate on structure versus agency, we agree that colonial states became bifurcated to varying degrees during colonialism: Organised differently in rural areas from urban ones, that state was Janus-faced, bifurcated. It contained a duality: two forms of power under a single hegemonic authority. Urban power spoke the language of civil society and civil rights, rural power of community and culture. (Mamdani, 1996, 18)2 The rural customary rulers administered land, social, community matters independently, while enforcing taxation and policing on behalf of the colonial state. The bifurcated state relates to migration in Africa because the colonial state’s racialised understanding of ethnic categories, configured with a ‘civilising mission’, was symbiotic with the economic exploitation of the continent. 40

Postcolonial States and Migration

The result of the bifurcated state was a form of rule that sought to accommodate the goal of ‘extractive capitalism’, with the colonial idea of paternalism that Africans were not suited for modernity and therefore should remain in their traditional settings (Ferguson, 1999; Ranger, 1983). Under Apartheid this would be known as ‘separate development’ and was instrumentalised through policies such as the 1955 ‘Coloured Labour Preference Ara Policy in the Cape Province’, where African populations were expelled from ‘white’ parts of the cities or national territory. This was coupled with a similar, ‘kipande’ system in Tanganyika and the settler colony of Kenya which forced Africans leaving ‘native reserves’ to carry identification cards in colonial realms (Brankamp and Daley, 2020). There was, in other words, a tension between the desire to include Africa in global capitalism, exemplified in central and southern Africa by promoting labour movements to the mines in Transvaal or the Copperbelt stretching across Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and the Belgian Congo, and a need to avoid the creation of a modern, urban proletariat. Thus, pass laws in colonial Africa attempted to promote the movement of temporary labour while preventing the movement of the rest of these migrants: their families, their culture, and their identity. These laws were heavily gendered and rested on ideals of male and female positions in the household and the labour market (cf Barnes, 1997). Hence the bifurcation between a small group of citizens and the larger, rural population of subjects. The bifurcated state depended strongly on the control of mobility. On the one hand, hut taxes, enforced and collected by chiefs and native authorities, created the need for a cash economy in rural lands, which was largely absent. This compelled the need for cash incomes and secured the availability of labour in the plantations, mines, as well as menial work in towns and cities. Colonial states also experimented with villagisation programmes on rural peasants who were widely dispersed across vast underpopulated landscapes (Christophe Bonneuil, 2000). Often these involved agricultural schemes designed to concentrate rural populations for greater productivity. However, villagisation also served the goals of colonial social engineering, public health, and counterinsurgency to ensure stability and productivity of the colonies. Some examples include forced resettlements to combat sleeping sickness spread through tsetse flies by the British in Tanzania (Weiskopf, 2011) and Uganda (Hoppe, 2003) and in the Belgian Congo (Lyons, 1992) as well as model sanitation villages by the Portuguese in Angola and the French in Togo (Coghe, 2017). More infamously, villagisation was used to combat dissidents such as during the Mau Mau conflict by the British in Kenya and the French during the Algerian war for independence (Feichtinger, 2017). On the other hand, rule through traditional leaders ensured that the colonial subjects remained closely tied to the land (Ferguson, 1999). While the British settler colonies promoted labour through hut taxes and other forms of manipulation, Belgian and Portuguese colonial administrations made use of more blunt forced labour programmes. These policies had the unintended consequence that many people fled Belgian and Portuguese colonies to settle in Tanganyika (modern Tanzania). Depending on the labour needs of the day, first German and later British colonists blocked or channelled these movements at the border through attempted border closures or active labour recruitment (Chaulia, 2003). The colonial state also attempted to channel the mobility of Europeans migrating to the colony. The Portuguese state had the dual task of recruiting and promoting settlers to colonies like Angola and São Tomé, while simultaneously policing and preventing their movements into colonial hinterlands to prevent conflict and added costs (Ribeiro da Silva, 2015). Although independence came to most African states in the 1960s and 1970s (notable exceptions include Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa), similar patterns of migration 41

Clayton Boeyink and Simon Turner

control remain today. As Brankamp and Daley argue, ‘the legacies of colonial regulations and policies, aimed at instituting tightly controlled migrant labor regimes and managing African presence in spaces deemed “non-native,” continue to reverberate with postcolonial policies and political discourses’ (2020, p. 116).

The Postcolonial African State Mamdani argues that despite independent African states ending the racial categorisation of citizen and subject, the rural and urban divide of the bifurcated state remained. Governmental elites continued to hold the political and economic power in cities. Mamdani argues that states like Sierra Leone were conservative in their retention of power in the form of pluralistic customary rule through chiefs or headmen in rural areas. States such as Tanzania, Guinea, and Mozambique were radical in abolishing decentralised tribal rule in favour of ‘centralised despotism’, yet the bifurcated state remained: Even if it did not employ the language of custom and enforce it through a tribal authority, the more it centralized coercive authority in the name of development or revolution, the more it enforced and deepened the gulf between town and country (Mamdani 1996, p. 26) In terms of migration policies, there are several continuities between the colonial and the postcolonial state. As Bakewell (Bakewell, 2008) has argued, the dominant discourse amongst state elites and international development actors still assumes that urbanisation causes Africans to lose their culture and identity. Large amounts of development funds go to supporting sustainable agriculture, local communities, and other programmes that aim at keeping people ‘on the land’ able to maintain their livelihoods and particular cultures. There is an interesting intersection here between colonial ideas about African traditions and critical development theory that challenges modernisation theory and insists on giving voice to the rural, the local, and the indigenous.3 Given the massive influence of international donors on domestic policies, these ideologies of governing mobilities are often reproduced – implicitly or explicitly – in postcolonial African state policies. Local elites – belonging to what Mamdani calls the citizens – have a strikingly similar, patronising view on their rural cousins. The impulse to maintain the bifurcated divide between urban and rural realms set in motion during colonialism was also maintained despite instances where donors from the North no longer prioritised keeping mobile populations out of the city. This is exemplified and paired with border closures mentioned above through refugee encampment policies in places such as Kenya and Tanzania where refugees are prohibited and actively harassed by the state in towns and cities (Boeyink, 2019; Brankamp and Daley, 2020) despite UNHCR and donors favouring an end to encampment through its urban policies (Crisp, 2017). In addition to internal migrations between rural and urban realms, states in Africa have also grappled with intra-continental movements. Upon independence, African states have been caught in a tension between anti-colonial, pan-African solidarity and nationalist interests. The anti-colonial struggle in the late 1950s and early 1960s promised pan-African solidarity with leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, and Kenneth Kaunda. During the long anti-colonial struggles in southern Africa from the 1970s to 1990s, these solidarities were put to test. Mostly, however, ‘frontline states’ like Zambia and Tanzania welcomed exiles and refugees from the struggles, despite the national security costs that this had in Tanzania and 42

Postcolonial States and Migration

Zambia. In contrast, leaders in Francophone countries such as Léopold Senghor of Senegal (despite being a leading voice in the anti-racist Négritude movement) and Félix HouphouëtBoigny of Côte d'Ivoire sought closer incorporation or degrees of federalism with the former French metropole. Houphouët-Boigny in particular was a collaborator with the West in destabilising revolutionary African regimes. Across the Maghreb, liberation movements called for pan-Arab solidarity while their different histories and colonial experiences resulted in nationalist movements. Meanwhile, nation-building projects in the newly independent states were also creating more nationalist ideologies – as well as creating a number of internal ethnic conflicts and displacements as in Biafra, Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda. This move away from pan-Africanism also meant more restrictive migration policies and fear that violence in one country might ‘spill over’ into neighbouring countries which then preferred to contain the pressure of forced displacement. Since the 1980s, there has been a general hardening of immigration laws and a less hospitable approach to displaced persons in the Global North, which has been mirrored by more containment and securitisation of migration by states in the Global South (Chimni, 2008; Milner, 2009). Betts (Betts, 2013) notes a spectrum of ‘survival migration’ for displaced populations that do not meet the Geneva Convention to become refugees, yet are still in need of protection. African states have implemented variegated responses of ‘stretching’ protection regimes to accommodate survival migrants or have taken hard-line stances of expulsion and containment (Ibid). For example, Tanzania has accommodated Congolese refugees from South Kivu province since the 1990s, whereas the Angolan state violently detained and deported Congolese migrants from southern DRC displaced by poverty endemic to the region. Within these responses to displacement, there has been evidence of xenophobic exclusion: South Africa has since the fall of apartheid become a favoured destination for migrants across the continent and despite the goodwill shown to the anti-apartheid struggle, the South African state and police have largely turned a blind eye to xenophobic violence towards immigrant communities from Zimbabwe, Somalia, and elsewhere (Landau, 2012, Misago, 2017). In Egypt and Sudan, Syrian refugees have been more welcomed than Black African refugees from Sudan, Somalia, or Eritrea (Boeyink, 2019). This era also saw the rise of politics of autochthony, where political elites and local militias capitalised on indigenous peoples’ claims to primordial rights to occupy territory and exclude non-autochthones to accessing state power (Geschiere and Nyamnjoh, 2000). This is evidenced by Cameroonian president Paul Biya turning to the rhetoric of autochthony to retain power; former president of Côte d'Ivoire mobilising ivoirité for political gain, leading to significant conflict between the North (with its large immigrant population) and South of the country; autochthony was a significant local and regional factor for sustained violence in eastern DRC between autochthonous and Banyamulenge populations (Geschiere, 2009). In the following section, we highlight some of the concrete cases of the elasticity of approaches that postcolonial African states demonstrate in preventing, promoting, and channelling migration. Similar to the work of Vigneswaran and Quirk (2015), this is not an exhaustive list, but is rather illustrative of the varied, shifting, and often contradictory stances that African states take towards migration. Preventing: As mentioned above, African states have increasingly followed a policy of preventing migrants and refugees entering the country and of making it difficult for them to remain; however, we posit additional examples. 43

Clayton Boeyink and Simon Turner

Over the past decades, Islamic revivalist movements across the continent have been associated with global ideological, dogmatic, and financial movements. Mosques and madrasas across the continent, from Mali and Nigeria to Zanzibar and Mozambique, have been funded by the Gulf states. Young, African men travel to Egypt, Libya, and Saudi Arabia to attend Islamic universities, and Imams travel the continent. African states feel under pressure from these movements and have in return attempted to prevent migration to and from these regions. It has proven impossible to enforce such measures in practices, in part due to the financial power of the Gulf states. In the case of migrating to Libya, sub-Saharan Africans would travel there for numerous reasons – to make money, to study, and to follow religious studies – making it difficult to restrict migration for religious purposes (Turner, 2009). While we tend to understand prevention of migration to mean preventing in-migration, a central area of concern to African states is uncontrolled out-migration. First, there is the fear of the so-called brain drain. Second, there is the less explicit fear of opposition groups in exile. The fear of an out-migration of skilled labour either to other, wealthier parts of Africa or beyond the continent to Europe or the Gulf states, for instance, has caused African states to try to prevent out-migration. This could be through forcing newly graduated students who graduated from publicly funded universities, to ‘do service’ in the home country before being free to leave and pursue a career elsewhere (Turner and Mossin, 2011). Recently, such preventive policies have given way to more positive policies, promoting brain circulation. In Rwanda in the 1980s, the Hutu regime would not let the Tutsi in exile in Uganda return, officially because the country was too densely populated. This was the catalyst for the RPF invasion in 1990 and the start of a war that culminated in the 1994 genocide. The present Rwandan state – dominated by the returning RPF – is aware of the dangers of a hostile diaspora just across the border and has taken several steps to deal with this danger. Rather than prevent their movement, the state has been active in promoting their return (Turner, 2013). More recently, beginning in 1995 and still active today, Eritrea has implemented compulsory military service, which, coupled with a repressive dictatorship under Isaias Afwerki and a deteriorated economy, has led to a sustained exodus of people to neighbouring countries, Gulf states, and across the Mediterranean. Resultantly, the state has attempted to stop out-migration/asylum-seeking, branding those who successfully flee as traitors and deserters, making it unsafe to return unless the emigrant admits their guilt and promises to economically support the nation (Hirt and Mohammad, 2017). Although Eritrea takes a draconian stance towards preventing out-migration, the financial dependence on remittances, and the ability of an escapee to return to the state’s good graces, suggests there is an implicit level of promoting mobility (Belloni, 2019). Although we emphasise with others the primacy of intracontinental migrations within Africa, rather than towards Europe, there are clear benefits for African states to acquiesce to containment measures for migrants and refugees attempting to traverse the Mediterranean – which reinforces Bayart’s notion of extraversion. Examples of what we term ‘channelling surrogacy’ or ‘externalisation’ abound where West and North African states receive large amounts of bi- and multilateral development and security aid from the EU or IOM to prevent northward migration.4 The Italy–Libya ‘friendship treaty’ made with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2008 before his ouster and death offered five-billion-dollar aid and colonial reparations package in exchange for preventing outward migration from Libya (De Cesari, 2012). Even today where the state in Libya has collapsed and is contested across multiple factions, the EU funds and equips the Libyan ‘coastguard’ to intercept and stop migrant 44

Postcolonial States and Migration

boats despite myriad reports of human rights abuses including torture and human trafficking in detention centres (Human Rights Watch, 2019). Promoting: African states, particularly Rwanda and Uganda, practice extraversion or channelling surrogacy to promote migrations of populations which are undesirable to the Global North in return for access to aid and to distract the international community from their own human rights abuses. Returning to the case of Libya, in 2019, Rwanda, the African Union, and UNHCR brokered a ‘life-saving’ ‘emergency transit mechanism’ to accept African migrants and refugees from the deplorable conditions in detention centres in Libya (McVeigh, 2019). Similarly, since 2013, although in secretive circumstances, African asylum-seekers in Israel were pressured to return to their countries of origin and ‘third countries’ which have been identified as Rwanda and Uganda. Promised legal refugee status, reportedly these individuals never received legal status and have remained undocumented or travelled on to other countries (International Refugee Rights Initiative, 2015). More recently, these same East African countries, alongside Sudan and the self-declared state of Somaliland, were some of the first countries to volunteer to receive Afghan refugees following the 2021 return of the Taliban. Yayboke and Devermont (2021) argue, Rwanda and Uganda have long attempted to use these and other peacekeeping missions to obfuscate their own autocracy and human rights abuses. Moreover, Sudan is trying to recoup international diplomacy following the overthrow and imprisonment of former leader Omar al-Bashir and Somaliland is attempting to gain legitimacy and goodwill towards its sovereignty. Moreover, at the time of writing, there is speculation that the UK government is considering sending UK asylum-seekers to Ghana and Rwanda for ‘resettlement and processing’ similar to the scheme involving Israel and Rwanda (Beaumont, 2022). However, much of African states’ policy focus is on their own citizens, even if living abroad. As mentioned above, African states are increasingly engaged in diaspora policies. The logic here is that out-migration is an asset for the home country, as long as the diaspora contributes to the home country through remittances, development projects, and political support. Ghana has established a programme to attract investments from the Ghanaian diaspora. The state has even established the possibility to become a diasporic chief (Kleist, 2013). Whether blocking or endorsing mobility, visa regimes and border controls are central technologies of power. As it stood in 2018, Africans enjoy visa-free travel in 25 percent of the continent; can receive visa on arrival in 24 percent of African countries; and the remaining 51 percent require visas for travel (African Development Bank, 2018). There is, however, significant ambition to achieve development goals through the free movement of people. Milestones include the African Union’s (AU) commitment to visa-free travel in Agenda 2063, the signing of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement, and the Protocol on Free Movement of Persons in 2018. Quirk and Vigneswaran (2015) rightly point out that ‘mobility should in no way be confused with “free” movement, since promotion tends to be a highly selective exercise’ (p. 13) and largely leave out these treaties and protocols in their analysis. As it stands, however, the success and failure of free movement agendas is contingent on member states’ priorities. For example, free movement as it stands is implemented through regional economic communities (RECs). Of the eight RECs recognised by the AU, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has liberalised mobility the most. The East African Community has made progress in free movement; however, elites like the late President Magufuli, who have taken 45

Clayton Boeyink and Simon Turner

protectionist and nationalist policy stances, coupled with migration-sceptic rhetoric, have obstructed liberalisation of mobility in the EAC (Landau et al., 2018). The Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) has made little advancement in free movement. This is largely because South Africa is the economic powerhouse of SADC and resultantly has the most say in the REC matters and receives the most migrations in the regional bloc. South Africa has taken an increasingly securitised approach, which relates to recent bouts of xenophobia, and is unwilling to cede sovereignty of its borders, and SADC policies have followed suit. Bilateral migration arrangements are the norm in this REC (Maunganidze and Formica, 2018). It is often assumed in public debate and in much migration literature that prevention necessarily has negative impacts on migrants while promotion as its opposite must be positive. Promoting migration may, however, also have negative impacts just as it may involve coercion. We saw this above with the forced labour in the Belgian colonies and the use of hut taxes to promote labour migration to the mines. In recent years, we have also witnessed the forced repatriation of refugees. In 1996, the Rwandan state attacked refugee camps in Zaïre to force Hutu refugees to repatriate. Kenya has also forced Somali refugees to leave the country, allegedly due to the risk of terrorism. Like the colonial predecessors, postcolonial states in Africa have actively pursued a policy of channelling mobility through various villagisation programmes. Tanzania’s ujamaa programme is the most known of these programmes, resulting in the forced displacement of millions of peasants, which led to a devastation of the national economy and peasants’ agricultural livelihoods (Lal, 2012; Coulson, 1982). While the Tanzanian case was spectacular, similar policies have been tried out in various forms across the continent. After the genocide in Rwanda, the state has initiated a villagisation programme, apparently in order to improve agricultural production and to create safety. It has also been criticised as a means for the state to surveillance and control its rural population (van Leeuwen, 2001). Burundi also established ‘peace villages’ for refugees returning from Tanzania following the civil war (Falisse and Niyonkuru, 2015; Purdeková, 2017). Like in colonial Kenya and Algeria, postcolonial states used villagisation and forced encampment as counterinsurgency measures such as the Burundian ruling party forcing regroupement in rebel areas (Amnesty International, 1997) and Uganda coercing most of the population in northern Uganda into IDP camps during the conflict with the Lord’s Resistance Army (Branch, 2009).

Channelling: As mentioned, most migration control is a mixture of preventing and promoting, as certain types of mobility are encouraged while others are deterred. In the Rwandan case, the violent repatriation of the Hutu refugees across the borders was an extreme case of migration control. Most migration control is more subtle and balances promotion and prevention. Thus, the Rwandan state distinguishes between what is conceived as a positive and a negative diaspora. The former is expected to send remittances and act as ‘goodwill ambassadors’ for the new Rwanda wherever they live. The latter are potentially threatening and are exposed to massive campaigns to return to the country. Hutu officers from the previous regime are invited back to the country and given high ranking positions in the present army. The president travels to Paris and Brussels to engage with the negative diaspora and persuade them to return. Meanwhile, a network of agents keeps a close eye on their activities in Belgium, France, and elsewhere. 46

Postcolonial States and Migration

Border Spectacles and Statecraft So far, we have analysed how the postcolonial state in Africa articulates migration as an area of policy intervention and the state practices put in place to prevent, promote, and channel migration. Like the state elsewhere, such practices may be perceived as state performances (Hansen and Stepputat, 2001) or statecraft (Kearney, 1991; Soguk, 1999) where the state comes into being through such practices. Human mobility is articulated as a threat to state sovereignty, and through managing mobility, the state manifests itself as sovereign. But how do such spectacles of statecraft play out in practice and what effects – intended or unintended – do they have on the ground? One is to have a policy of promoting a certain type of migration, another is whether such migration then occurs in the intended manner. A number of studies in history, political science, and anthropology have explored the state and other forms of ‘public authority’ (Lund, 2007) in Africa from a ‘bottom up’ and have found that the state is spread fairly thin outside of the large metropoles, competing and blending with other forms of public authority (Bierschenk and Olivier de Sardan, 2014; Blundo and Le Meur, 2009). Border studies in particular show that borders are less spaces where states assert their sovereignty and more spaces of local renegotiations of state power (Baud and Van Schendel, 1997; Raeymaekers, 2010). More interesting for our purposes here, borders are not only negotiated but also productive. The movement of goods, finances, and bodies across the borders creates zones for new economies, new forms of public authority, and new hybrid identities (Roitman, 2001). In other words, while the postcolonial state attempts to control migration – reasserting state sovereignty through practising statecraft – the border creates another reality that is equally productive, albeit in unintended ways.

Conclusion While much scholarship on migration control has focused on how states in the Global North try to prevent migration from Africa, we have shifted our gaze both to intra-continental migration and to the African state. Furthermore, we argue that we must see state control of migration as much more than simply preventing immigration. States might promote migration of certain types just as migration control can be concerned with controlling internal migration. Furthermore, mobility takes many different contours following logics outside of the nation-state such as for religious pilgrimages and rituals. In order to understand the postcolonial state in Africa, it is necessary to understand colonial administration and power. We have been inspired by Mamdani’s ideas of the bifurcated state to understand the schism between the rural subjects and the urban citizens and the urge for the latter to control and contain the latter. Postcolonial states in Africa are still concerned with urbanisation – often framed in the name of rural development programmes, supported by donors from the Global North. We are aware that while colonialism was decisive for the genesis of the African state, we must keep in mind that the Europeans did not meet a tabula rasa on arrival and that local elites have influenced the state formations across the continent. In the early years of independence, there were calls for pan-African solidarity, resulting in, for instance, front-line states taking political refugees from Zimbabwe and South Africa at great risk. However, ethno-nationalist conflicts and calls for autochthony have resulted in increasingly hostile policies vis-à-vis refugees and migrants across the continent, as evidenced in the waves of xenophobic violence in South Africa or the forced repatriation of refugees from Tanzania. Finally, states in Africa try to control out-migration. While they used to 47

Clayton Boeyink and Simon Turner

attempt to prevent brain drain and hostile diasporas through bans and restrictions, they are now more actively trying to engage their diasporas economically and politically.

Notes 1 We would argue with Vigneswaran and Quirk that not only do these studies have a limited scope or a blind spot geographically (Bjarnesen and Turner 2020), their analysis of the Global North is also limited. By exploring the state in Africa, we can actually shed light on certain aspects of the state and migration in the Global North as well and hence ‘denaturalise’ the state and the border (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2016). 2 Mamdani has been critiqued for the flattening binary and ideal-type analysis of customary and state, citizen and subject (Comaroff and Comaroff, 2018; Schneider, 2006). However, we take to share the view with Peter Geschiere (2018) that rather than an empirical case study, it is best read as ‘political philosophy’, which succeeds in ‘showing how colonial policy created this opposition, this bipolarity, in order to facilitate the governance of huge territories’ (p. 53). 3 Dependency theories (Rodney, Amin, Wallerstein, Frank) originally critiqued modernisation theory from a perspective of global political economy. Later scholars such as Chambers, Escobar, and Sen have called for a more localised approach to development from the ‘bottom up’. 4 See Andersson (2014), Feldman (2012), and others for a discussion of this topic.

References Africa Development Bank, 2018. Africa visa openness report 2018. Amnesty International, 1997. Burundi: Forced relocation; new patterns of human rights abuses (No. AFR 16/19/97). Andersson, R., 2014. Time and the Migrant Other: European Border Controls and the Temporal Economics of Illegality: Time and the Migrant Other. American Anthropologist 116, 795–809. Bakewell, O., 2008. “Keeping Them in Their Place”: The Ambivalent Relationship between Development and Migration in Africa. Third World Quarterly 29(7), 1341–1358. Barnes, T., 1997. “Am I A Man?”: Gender and the Pass Laws in Urban Colonial Zimbabwe, 1930–80. African Studies Review 40(1), 59–81. https://doi​.org​/10​.2307​/525033. Baud, M., Van Schendel, W., 1997. Toward a Comparative History of Borderlands. Journal of World History 8(2), 211–242. Bayart, J.-F., 2000. Africa in the World: A History of Extraversion. African Affairs 99(395), 217–267. Bayart, J.-F., 1993. The state in Africa: The politics of the belly. Longman, London. Beaumont, P., 2022. Rwanda’s History of Receiving Deportees Raises Concerns for Potential UK Scheme. The Guradian. Belloni, M., 2019. Refugees and Citizens: Understanding Eritrean Refugees’ Ambivalence Towards Homeland Politics. International Journal of Comparative Sociology 60(1–2), 55–73. https://doi​ .org​/10​.1177​/0020715218760382. Betts, A., 2013. Survival migration: Failed governance and the crisis of deplacement. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY. Bierschenk, T., Olivier de Sardan, J.-P. (Eds.), 2014. States at work: Dynamics of African bureaucracies, Africa-Europe group for interdisciplinary studies. Brill, Leiden and Boston, MA. Biri, K., 2014. Migration, Transnationalism and the Shaping of Zimbabwean Pentecostal Spirituality. African Diaspora 7(1), 139–164. Bjarnesen, J., Turner, S., 2020. Invisibility in African displacements: From structural marginalization to strategies of avoidance. Zed Books, London. Blundo, G., Le Meur, P.-Y. (Eds.), 2009. The governance of daily life in Africa: Ethnographic explorations of public and collective services, African social studies series. Brill, Leiden and Boston, MA. Boeyink, C., 2019. The “Worthy” Refugee: Cash as a Diagnostic of “Xeno-Racism” and “Biolegitimacy.” Refuge 35(1), 61–71. Boeyink, C., 2020. Sufficiently Visible/Invisibly Self-Sufficient: Recognition and Displacement Agriculture in Western Tanzania. In: Bjarnesen, J., Turner, S. (Eds.), Invisibility in African displacements: From marginalization to strategies. ZED Books, London, 66–84.

48

Postcolonial States and Migration Bonneuil, C., 2000. Development as Experiment: Science and State Building in Late Colonial and Postcolonial Africa, 1930–1970. Osiris 15, 258–281. Branch, A., 2009. Humanitarianism, Violence, and the Camp in Northern Uganda. Civil Wars 11(4), 477–501. Brankamp, H., Daley, P., 2020. Laborers, Migrants, Refugees. Migration and Society 3(1), 113–129. Chaulia, S. 2003. The Politics of Refugee Hosting in Tanzania: From Open Door to Unsustainability, Insecurity and Receding Receptivity. Journal of Refugee Studies 16(2), 147–166. Chimni, B.S., 2008. The Birth of a “Discipline”: From Refugee to Forced Migration Studies. Journal of Refugee Studies 22(1), 11–29. https://doi​.org​/10​.1093​/jrs​/fen051. Coghe, S., 2017. Reordering Colonial Society: Model Villages and Social Planning in Rural Angola, 1920–45. Journal of Contemporary History 52(1), 16–44. Comaroff, J., Comaroff, J.L., 2016. Theory from the south, or, how Euro-America is evolving toward Africa, Politics, sociology. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, London and New York. Comaroff, J.L., Comaroff, J. (Eds.), 2018. The politics of custom: Chiefship, capital, and the state in contemporary Africa. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL and London. Cooper, F., 2002. Africa since 1940: The past of the present. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Coulson, A., 1982. Tanzania: A political economy. Clarendon, Oxford. Crisp, J., 2017. Finding Space for Protection: An Inside Account of the Evolution of UNHCR’s Urban Refugee Policy. Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees 33(1), 87–96. https://doi​.org​/10​.25071​ /1920​-7336​.40451. De Genova, N., Peutz, N.M. (Eds.), 2010. The deportation regime: Sovereignty, space, and the freedom of movement. Duke University Press, Durham, NC. De Cesari, C., 2012. The Paradoxes of Colonial Reparation: Foreclosing Memory and the 2008 Italy– Libya Friendship Treaty. Memory Studies 5, 316–326. Engberg-Pedersen, L., Andersen, L., Stepputat, F., 2008. Fragile situations: Current debates and central dilemmas. Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen, 9. Falisse, J.-B., Niyonkuru, R.C., 2015. Social Engineering for Reintegration: Peace Villages for the ‘Uprooted’ Returnees in Burundi. Journal of Refugee Studies 28(3), 388–411. Feichtinger, M., 2017. “A Great Reformatory”: Social Planning and Strategic Resettlement in Late Colonial Kenya and Algeria, 1952–63. Journal of Contemporary History 52(1), 45–72. Feldman, G., 2012. The migration apparatus: Security, labor, and policymaking in the European Union. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA. Ferguson, J., 1999. Expectations of modernity: Myths and meanings of urban life on the Zambian Copperbelt. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA. Geschiere, P., 2009. The perils of belonging: Autochthony, citizenship, and exclusion in Africa and Europe. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Geschiere, P., 2018. African Chiefs and the Post–cold War Moment: Millennial Capitalism and the Struggle over Moral Authority. In: Comaroff, J.L., Comaroff, J. (Eds.), The politics of custom: Chiefship, capital, and the state in contemporary Africa. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL and London. Geschiere, P., Nyamnjoh, F., 2000. Capitalism and Autochthony: The Seesaw of Mobility and Belonging. Public Culture 12(2), 423–452. Hansen, T., Stepputat, F., 2001. States of imagination: Ethnographic explorations of the postcolonial state. Duke University Press, Durham, NC. Hirt, N., Mohammad, A.S., 2017. By Way of Patriotism, Coercion, or Instrumentalization: How the Eritrean Regime Makes Use of the Diaspora to Stabilize Its Rule. Globalizations 15, 232–247. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/14747731​.2017​.1294752. Hoppe, K.A., 2003. Lords of the fly: Sleeping sickness control in British East Africa, 1900–1960. Praeger, Westport, CT. Human Rights Watch, 2019. No escape from hell: EU policies contribute to abuse of migrants in Libya. Iliffe, J., 1979. A modern history of Tanganyika. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. IOM, 2020. Africa migration report: Challenging the narrative. International Organization for Migration, Addis Ababa. International Refugee Rights Initiative, 2015. “I was left with nothing”: “Voluntary” departures of asylum seekers from Israel to Rwanda and Uganda. Jones, R., 2021. White borders: The history of race and immigration in the United States from Chinese exclusion to the border wall. Beacon Press, Boston, MA.

49

Clayton Boeyink and Simon Turner Kearney, M., 1991. Borders and Boundaries of State and Self at the End of Empire. Journal of Historical Sociology 4(1), 52–74. https://doi​.org​/10​.1111​/j​.1467​-6443​.1991​.tb00116​.x. Kleist, N., 2013. Flexible Politics of Belonging: Diaspora Mobilisation in Ghana. African Studies 72(2), 285–306. Lal, P., 2012. Self-Reliance and the State: Multiple Meanings of Development in Early Post-colonial Tanzania. Africa 82(2), 212–234. Landau, L.B., Misago, J.P., Majidi, N., Marden, A., Sarkar, A., Murahwa, B., Freemantle, I., Okoth, F., 2018. Free and Safe Movement in East Africa: Research to Promote People’s Safe and Unencumbered Movement Across International Borders (A Report by the African Centre for Migration & Society, University of the Witwatersrand and Samuel Hall). Landau, L.B., 2012. Exorcising the demons within: Xenophobia, violence and statecraft in contemporary. United Nations University Press, South Africa. Lund, C., 2007. Twilight institutions - Public authority and local politics in Africa. Blackwell. Lyons, M., 1992. The colonial disease a social history of sleeping sickness in northern Zaire, 1900–1940, Cambridge history of medicine. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and New York. Mamdani, M., 1996. Citizen and subject: Contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism. Fountain Publishers, Kampala. Maunganidze, O.A., Formica, J., 2018. Freedom of movement in Southern Africa: A SADC (Pipe) Dream? (Southern Africa Report No. 17). Institute for Security Studies, Pretoria. McVeigh, K., 2019. ‘Life-Saving’: Hundreds of Refugees to be Evacuated from Libya to Rwanda. The Guardian. Milner, J., 2009. Refugees, the state and the politics of asylum in Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Misago, J.P., 2017. Politics by Other Means? The Political Economy of Xenophobic Violence in Postapartheid South Africa. The Black Scholar 47(2), 40–53. Nugent, P., 2004. Africa since independence: A comparative history. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Nugent, P., 2008. Putting the History Back into Ethnicity: Enslavement, Religion, and Cultural Brokerage in the Construction of Mandinka/Jola and Ewe/Agotime Identities in West Africa, c. 1650–1930. Comparative Studies in Society and History 50(4), 920–948. Pasura, D., 2023. De-centring Pilgrimage Studies: Understanding Neo-pentecostal Journeys and Pilgrimage in Africa. Journal of Contemporary Religion 38(1), 79–96. Pavanello, S., Elhawary, S., Pantuliano, S., 2010. Hidden and Exposed: Urban Refugees in Nairobi, Kenya (HPG Working Paper). Humanitarian Policy Group, London. Purdeková, A., 2017. ‘Barahunga Amahoro—They Are Fleeing Peace!’ the Politics of Re-displacement and Entrenchment in Post-war Burundi. Journal of Refugee Studies 30, 1–26. Raeymaekers, T., 2010. Protection for Sale? War and the Transformation of Regulation on the CongoUgandan Border: Protection for Sale on the Congo-Ugandan Border. Development and Change 41(4), 563–587. https://doi​.org​/10​.1111​/j​.1467​-7660​.2010​.01655​.x. Ranger, T., 1983. The Invention of Tradition in Colonial Africa. In: Hobsbawm, E., Ranger, T. (Eds.), The invention of tradition. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 211–263. Ribeiro da Silva, F., 2015. Portuguese Empire Building and Human Mobility in São Tomé and Angola, 1400s–1700s. In: Vigneswaran, D., Quirk, J. (Eds.), Mobility makes states: Migration and power in Africa. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, PA, 37–58. Rodney, W., 1972. How Europe underdeveloped Africa. Verso, Brooklyn. Roitman, J., 2001. New Sovereigns? Regulatory Authority in the Chad Bassin. In: Gallaghy, T., Kassimir, R., Latham, R. (Eds.), Intervention and transnationalism in Africa: Global-local networks of power. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Schneider, L., 2006. Colonial Legacies and Postcolonial Authoritarianism in Tanzania: Connects and Disconnects. African Studies Review 49(1), 93–118. Soguk, N., 1999. States and strangers: Refugees and displacements of statecraft. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN. Turner, S., 2009. ’These Young Men Show No Respect for Local Customs’—Globalisation and Islamic Revival in Zanzibar. Journal of Religion in Africa 39(3), 237–261. https://doi​.org​/10​.1163​/002​ 2420​09X1​2447​135279538. Turner, S., 2013. Staging the Rwandan Diaspora: The Politics of Performance. African Studies 72(2), 265–284.

50

Postcolonial States and Migration Turner, S., Mossin, B., 2011. From Watch-dogs to Nation-builders – The Dilemmas of Diaspora Engagement in Post-conflict Burundi (DIIS Working Paper). Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen, 10. van Leeuwen, M., 2001. Rwanda’s Imidugudu Programme and Earlier Experiences with Villagisation and Resettlement in East Africa. Journal of Modern African Studies 39(4), 623–644. Vigneswaran, D., Quirk, J., 2015. Mobility makes states: Migration and power in Africa. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, PA. Walia, H., 2021. Border and rule: Global migration, capitalism, and the rise of racist nationalism. Haymarket Books, Chicago, IL. Weiskopf, J.M., 2011. Resettling Buha: A social history of resettled communities in Kigoma Region, Tanzania, 1933–1975. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, University of Minnesota. Weitzberg, K., 2017. We do not have borders: Greater Somalia and the predicaments of belonging in Kenya. Ohio University Press, Athens, OH. Yayboke, E., Devermont, J., 2021. Why African Governments are Accepting Afghan Refugees. Center for Strategic & International Studies. URL https://www​.csis​.org​/analysis​/why​-african​-governments​-are​-accepting​-afghan​-refugees (accessed 1.18.22). Young, C., 1994. The African colonial state in comparative perspective. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT.

51

4 AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY AND INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION Blessing Chapfika

Introduction: Theoretical Grounding African philosophy emerged in the 1960s to challenge the justifications for and consequences of slavery and colonization of African people. The European expansionist ideology, underwritten by the modern foundationalist and dualist metaphysics, was used to justify the slavery and colonization of those perceived as sub- or non-human beings. European expansionism prompted South-North forced migration of enslaved Africans to work on, among other projects, the European-owned plantations in the Americas and the North-South voluntary migration of Europeans to seek opportunity in and to conquer and possess African territories. The North-South migration of Europeans intending to conquer and possess Africa culminated in 75 years of colonization, consequently creating the African postcolonial predicament, which is one of the critical questions in African philosophy. The South-North migration during and after slavery and colonization also played a vital role in the birth and development of African philosophy. This chapter briefly reviews the main approaches to migration theory – micro- and macro-level analyses – and employs meso-level analysis to understand the dynamics in African international migration. This chapter considers the following five aspects. First, this chapter shows that international migration is the cause of the African postcolonial predicament. Second, it interrogates the intricate relationship between African philosophy and international migration. Third, it analyses the influence of the African value system on international migration. Fourth, it explains the baffling ubuntu-xenophobia paradox in African philosophy. And fifth, it assesses the impact of the African idea of the home on the migration decision-making of African diasporas. Faist (2000) makes the astute observation that “the greater part of the research on international migration has dealt with the question of why people migrate and, to a lesser extent, the dynamics of migration, such as chain migration in migrant networks” (p. 30). In his review of the international migration theory, Faist (2000) discusses what he calls “Three Stylized Levels of Analysis: Micro, Macro, and Meso” (p. 30). The micro-level analysis considers the degree of freedom or autonomy of a potential migrant to decide on moving or staying. The degree of autonomy ranges from the low level, where a significant other or a legal agent determines for the person (as in the case of enslaved people, convicts, refugees, 52

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-5

African Philosophy and International Migration

contract workers, children, and spouses), to the high level, where the person makes the decision (often based on money, information, and connections). Faist (2000) stresses that whatever we consider at this level, “the focus solidly rests on the decision-making individual” (p. 31). The decision-making individual decides to move or stay after a rational assessment (often in economic terms) of the social space. However, the concept of the decision-making individual is contested. While the logical choice theorists, for example, extend rationality beyond individual actors to collective units (groups, families, communities, etc.), the new economics of migration theorists do not prejudge the sole social unit of decision-making to be the individual actor. Instead, they try to aggregate the utilities of the individuals involved (Faist, 2000, p. 40). While the rational choice theory considers the household as a rational actor, the new economics of migration theory takes the household as “a collective strategy to ensure the economic viability of the domestic unit through the strategic allocation of labour and investments” (Faist, 2000, p. 40). The new economics of migration theorists consider migration a means through which domestic units diversify their income and interests. However, the degree of freedom to migrate or stay depends on many social variables. Faist (2000) sums the level of freedom as follows: The degree of freedom or autonomy is circumscribed in a context in which the main sets of parties involved in migration decision-making and the dynamics of migration are: people themselves, enmeshed in a web of significant others in the places of origin and destination, collectives and social networks of potential and actual movers and stayers such as families, households, friendship and kinship circles, neighbourhoods, ethnic, religious, and professional associations. (Faist, 2000, p. 32) The macro-level or political-economic-cultural structural analysis denotes a myriad of factors in the country of origin, country of destination, and international political and economic system and organizations that govern nation-state relations. Faist (2000) describes macrolevel analysis in plural terms. Macro-structural analyses of international migration imply a triadic relationship between governments and authorities in the emigration countries, their counterparts in the destination country, and the migrants’ associations—and sometimes international organizations. (p. 32) Countries are different in the two often related factors: the internal socio-economic and political situation and the capacity to influence and strengthen international ties with other countries. These factors have a significant impact on migrant movements. Faist (2000, p. 32) makes the astute observation that “nation-states tend to favor the admission of certain immigrant categories and newcomers from certain countries while making it harder for people from other groups and territorial origins.” Faist (2000) considers the significant differences in economic characteristics between nation-states in the South (potential senders) and nation-states in the North (potential receivers) as the “important prerequisites for migration to occur between nation-states” (p. 32). In the postcolonial environment, Global North countries experience an ever-increasing immigration demand from their respective former colonies in the Global South. Notwithstanding the restrictions the destination coun53

Blessing Chapfika

try imposes on potential migrants, the shared culture between the respective countries makes it easier for South-North migration. This chapter focuses on the meso-level analysis, which considers the extent to which “the set of social and symbolic ties among movers and groups, and the resources inherent in these relations (social capital)” determine movers and stayers (Faist, 2000, p. 31). Since it “focuses more on the form and content of the relationship rather than on the properties or attributes of the actors or positions,” Faist (2000, p. 33) characterizes the meso-level analysis as a “relational analysis (that) obviates the rigid micro vs. macro distinction.” The micro-level analysis emphasizes the autonomous or rational choice of the decision-making individual (or households) based on cost-benefit computations. The macro-level analysis – a systems theory – emphasizes the role of networks in understanding migration volume and dynamics. Faist (2000) criticizes both micro- and macro-level analyses for disregarding the relational nature of migration decision-making and dynamics. He further observes that the social choice approaches migration for being “only concerned with transactions between the collective units and not with what goes on within them,” thereby failing to “consider the social embeddedness of potential migrants’ behaviour” (pp. 40–41). The focus on how the units relate misses the relations within these units and how they inform migration decision-making. The meso-level analysis focuses on the social and symbolic ties of prospective migrants to the countries of origin and destination and the social capital inherent in these relations. Faist (2000) acknowledges that the triad (micro, macro, and meso analyses) is an oversimplified and heavily stylized category of study that is only useful for conceptual analysis purposes. He appraises the triad as follows: Thus, distinguishing among these three levels is analytically convenient at best and theoretically misleading at worst. On the convenient side, the distinctions yield a reasonable way of organizing a discussion of the volume and dynamics of international migration. The difficulty is, however, that the problems appear at more than one analytical level. On the misleading side, the threefold distinction lends itself to reification, to the view that the macro, meso, and micro levels are separable and separate kinds of migratory reality. (Faist, 2000, p. 34) This research proceeds with the meso-level analysis but remains mindful of the utility and limitations of these conceptual distinctions. The meso-level relational study focuses on social and symbolic ties (relationships) and the resources (social capital) inherent in the social and symbolic relations. In addressing the ties of individuals, Faist (2000, p. 33) argues that the “meso-level analysis focuses on how social action is facilitated and on resources such as social capital that people can muster to achieve goals.” This research seeks to percolate the inner fabric of the African beliefs and values regarding migration, particularly international migration. It addresses the nature of the ties that both potential African migrants and international migrants have, mainly in the country of origin, and their influence on their decision to migrate or stay. The research emphasizes African people’s ties with others in their countries of origin and destination. Faist (2000) makes the astute observation that the strength of the relationship is not static. Among international migrants, Faist (2000) observes, “the ties can range from a dense network to the emigration country to a total break,” which implies “no bonds to the origin anymore and a complete reorientation to the immigration country” (p. 33). Faist 54

African Philosophy and International Migration

(2000) further observes that migrants use “resources inherent in these ties, such as various dimensions of social capital—exchange-based obligations, the norm of reciprocity and solidarity, and benefits derived from them, such as access to the resources of others, information, and control” (p. 33). This research unpacks some of the resources inherent in African ties and their possible influence on migration decision-making. This chapter addresses four issues. First, this chapter shows that international migration is the cause of the African postcolonial predicament. This section considers the role of international migration in the context of the abnormal complexities in the African consciousness and its possible role in addressing it. The colonization of the African people and territory, following centuries of slavery, resulted from early international migration that connected the South and North nation-states. The encounter resulted in the abnormal complexities that continue to haunt independent Africa. The abnormal complexities impact modern forms of migration, particularly the South-North migration. Second, it interrogates the intricate relationship between African philosophy and international migration. The section considers the role of international migration in the emergence and development of African philosophy as a field of study. Third, it analyses the influence of the African value system on international migration. Part of the mission of African philosophy is to reignite interest in African identity – cultural belief, thought, and value system – that suffered systematic epistemicide during slavery and colonization. The section analyses African symbolic ties, the social capital inherent in the relationship, and their influence on migration decision-making. Fourth, it explains the baffling ubuntu-xenophobia paradox in African philosophy. Ubuntu, one of the celebrated African philosophies, is tested against the ongoing resurgence of xenophobia in Africa. The section considers the ubuntu-xenophobia paradox in Africa and its influence on international migration. Sadly, xenophobia is not the only antithesis of ubuntu philosophy. The others include poverty, corruption, economic decadence, diseases, political instability, etc. Can the African philosophy of ubuntu be taken seriously abroad if it hasn’t taken root in Africa? And fifth, it assesses the impact of the African idea of the home on the migration decision-making of African diasporas.

International Migration and the African Predicament Massey (1999, pp. 34–35) divides the history of international migration into four periods. First, the mercantile period (1500–1800) was when Europe dominated the world migration flow, and it stemmed from the processes of colonization and growth under mercantile capitalism. Europeans occupied large portions of the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania during this period. Among the colonizing emigrants were European entrepreneurs who founded plantations in South America, and their primary labor source came from enslaved Africans’ forced migration. Second, the industrial period (1800–1925), when growth in industrialism in Europe, caused many people to leave industrializing countries in Europe in search of new lives in the Americas and Oceania. Most of the international migrants in this period were from Europe. Third, a four-decade period of limited migration (the 1920s–1950s) when the Great Depression and World War 2 virtually stopped international migration. Besides a small number of return migrations in the 1930s, mobility primarily consisted of refugees and displaced people. Fourth is the period of postindustrial migration (from the 1960s) when immigration became a global phenomenon. In this period, migrant-sending and -receiving countries increased, and the global supply of immigrants shifted from Europe to developing countries. 55

Blessing Chapfika

Douglas Massey’s four divisions above provide a vital handle to grasp the history of international migration from a global perspective. However, an African perspective provides some modifications. In African history in general and African history of international migration (if there is such a thing), slavery and colonization are essential landmarks. Therefore, there are three divisions. First was the precolonial period (Africa before 1500), when people traveled between different African states and territories without rigid boundaries. During this period, the African states were fluid, and the hunters and gatherers, nomadic pastoralists, traders, and warriors constituted the international migrants. The first period precedes the mercantile period and is not unique to Africa. The second was the colonial period (1500–19601), when Europe colonized Africa and sent some of the continent’s inhabitants into slavery. This period saw a massive flow of migrants between the North and South, mainly via the Middle Passage.2 This transatlantic route serviced the forced African migrants (enslaved people) to the North and free European international migrants to Africa. Over three centuries, slave traders imported an estimated ten million enslaved Africans to the Americas (Massey, 1999, p. 34). The colonial period stretches from the mercantile period, through the industrial and limited migration periods, to the beginning of the postindustrial period. For close to five centuries, Africa experienced the unfolding processes of colonization that culminated in the official 75 years of colonization of Africa (1885–1960). Third, the postcolonial period (Africa after 1960) was when a significant number of European migrants returned to Europe, and there was a surge in voluntary South-North migration. The postcolonial period is the period after Africa attained independence, and it coincides with the postindustrial period when international migration became a global phenomenon. As earlier indicated, slavery and colonization are significant occurrences that did not only affect the African socio-economic and political system but Africa’s epistemic and value systems as well. The major problem with the European expansionist project in Africa was its knowledge and value displacement and epistemic dislocation. Consequently, the colonized communities developed an abnormal complexity, which Du Bois (2015) best describes as “double consciousness.” Du Bois best captures the abnormal complexity in his description of the condition of an African American. It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness – an American, a Negro; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. (Du Bois, 2015, p. 9) Thus described, an African finds herself in a perpetual identity predicament. Wiredu (1995) echoes similar sentiments about the effects of colonization on the African psyche. Contemporary African experience is marked by a certain intellectual anomaly. The African today, as a rule, lives in a cultural flux characterized by a confused interplay between an indigenous cultural heritage and a foreign cultural legacy of a colonial origin. Implicated at the deepest reaches of this cultural amalgam is the superimposition of Western conceptions of the good upon African thought and conduct. The issues involved here are of the utmost existential urgency; for it may well be that many of the instabilities of contemporary African society are traceable to this circumstance. (p. 33) 56

African Philosophy and International Migration

This abnormal complexity is a psychological disposition of thinking or believing that to be or to exist is to be the other. Shujaa (1994) describes the disposition as a “duality of existence” among the formerly colonized people. Besides the obvious question of African identity, the abnormal complexity affects the Africans’ grasp of essential concepts such as being, truth, good, beauty, justice, etc. In postcolonial Africa, the predicament or greatest challenge revolves around the possible ways to resolve this abnormal complexity. Currently, three broad approaches to resolving this challenge are evident. And regarding international migration, each approach to the predicament influences, at least in part, the potential African migrant to move or stay and the transnational immigrant to return or stay. The approach or possible solution one adopts approximates their possible settlement in the destination country. The three broad approaches to the African predicament are the conservative, the liberal, and the cosmopolitan. The conservative approach is popular with liberation war politicians and ethnophilosophers. The view advocates the return to precolonial Africa to find the original African knowledge and values. They intend to use the rediscovered values to cure the postcolonial condition. This school shares in the frustration about the continued Western influence through imported Western ideas and institutions in Africa and optimism about some positive features, values, and practices of traditional Africa. Conservative scholars are fully conscious of the disruptions caused by slavery and colonization. Therefore, they aim to restore lost African pride by reinstituting African knowledge and values. Conservative scholars could most probably agree with Gyekye (1996) on refining and pruning the identified features, values, and practices “to become fully harmonious with the spirit of modern culture and to function satisfactorily within that culture” (p. 174). It is in this context that Ramose (2003) argues for Africa’s right to define itself, and Wiredu (2004) describes such a transformation process as “intellectual decolonization.” This process of transformation, involving “continually deconstructing” assumptions, culminates in what Shujaa (1994) terms African-centered thinking. The conservative school is committed to the recovery and reinstitution of African knowledge and positive values as the basis of African modernization. For this school, searching for lost Afro/cultural moorings is worthwhile as it revitalizes the African sense of identity and legitimacy. Conservative thinkers strongly believe that African countries must reconstitute and reconstruct “African history, African knowledge and African positive values” if they are to be “considered legitimate and to serve their constituency fully” (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2013, p. ix). Therefore, the school envisages the displacement of Western culture and values by African ones. The main challenges to the conservative school, however, include how feasible it is to retrieve the traditional values, what methods to use to access those values, and what criteria to use to determine the worthwhile values that could be reconstituted and reconstructed. We may safely call this approach “Afrocentrism” because it advocates the return to Africa’s past, and it effectively turns the tables on Eurocentrism. The liberal approach is popular among liberal thinkers and professional philosophers who advocate the importance of modern and universal knowledge and values. The liberal school is the chief critic of the conservative school. The liberal school comprises skeptics and cautioners who doubt the logic and possibility of accessing traditional positive values and the relevance of such values in modern society. This school is very critical of the conservative school and cherishes the current liberal views. The main criticism against the conservative school is that it is too backward-looking and exclusivist. Mungwini (2011, p. 784) shares some liberal perceptions when he describes the conservative approach as “paradoxically ‘marching for57

Blessing Chapfika

ward to the past.’” Masolo (1994) also finds very little in the African past that we can apply to the present and future of the continent. He believes that philosophers who are seeking to retrieve and reinstate the traditional African philosophy as appropriate philosophy for Africa today are doing disservice to Africa in trying to pretend that that philosophy is still sufficient or useful or applicable to the African needs. (p. 225) The liberal sentiment is that traditional African values are archaic, out of touch with reality, and at variance with modern life. Obotetukudo (2001), who shares in the skepticism about the possibility of returning to Africa’s past, describes the efforts of the conservative school as romanticizing a past not there, which could be part nostalgia and part lamentation. It is in this context that Mungwini (2011) charges the conservative school with holding a “romanticized and transfigured view of these traditional communal relationships” (p. 781). We may, with caution, call the liberal view “Eurocentrism” because it seems to underplay the abnormal complexities of colonization and adopts a universalist position that advocates the importance of modern European values. The cosmopolitan approach is popular among progressive thinkers and philosophers who advocate hybridity. This school favors a fusion of African and Western views, thereby adopting a middle route between conservatives and liberals. A review of scholarly opinions on hybridity helps to clarify the concept. Kanu (2007) describes hybridity as a postcolonial construct that represents the cultural mixtures and multi-layered forms of interactions between the civilizations of the colonized and those of the colonizers. He views hybridity as a form of intellectual and political cross-fertilization. Applying hybridity to educational reform, Kanu (2007, p. 78) refers to Homi Bhabha’s “third space” “as the place for the construction of identities that are neither one nor the other.” Burke (2009), in his analysis of cultural hybridity, cites Edward Said’s critical observation that all cultures are involved in one another and “none is single and pure, all are hybrids, heterogeneous” (p. 51). The cosmopolitan school holds that postcolonial Africa no longer has a unitary discourse about education but rather a hybrid. In this third space, local African and global images meet to form a weave with implications and configurations. Kanu (2007) argues that hybridity recognizes the heterogeneous basis of helpful knowledge and the need to find abiding links that connect African knowledge and values entailed in Western education. McCarthy (2014) believes that hybridity produces knowledge we can best describe as an alloy of racial, cultural, and ethnic metals. Therefore, hybridity advocates the free interaction of different cultures to create a new culture. Nkomo (2000) attempts to harmonize the conservative view and cosmopolitan view by arguing that “the centrality of the African reality would not negate other realities that enrich the human corpus of knowledge” (p. 562). However, any attempt to put one cultural reality at the center defeats the basic tenets of hybridity. Hybridity seeks to demystify, demythologize, and deconstruct knowledge universalism by allowing space for the cross-fertilization of ideas to create a new philosophy for modernday Africa. While colonialism, religion, and market economy have eroded aspects of Africa’s past, cosmopolitans argue, these outside elements have also enriched the experiences and experiments of African people in self-preservation and cultural conservatism. In a nutshell, hybridity advocates common values, harmony and cooperation, mutual consideration, and 58

African Philosophy and International Migration

interdependence. Furthermore, it respects and values individual and cultural differences and encourages connections with other communities. As such, cosmopolitan proponents consider colonization as an opportunity for cultural integration. Hybridity is an exciting and attractive concept in modern societies in the context of globalization3 because of its close links with multiculturalism and open society. Wiredu (2002) sees some promise in hybridity. As human beings of different cultures interact more and more and become more and more familiar with each other’s languages and philosophies, with any fallacies of racial superiority dropped, one can expect that there will be increasing cross-appropriation and, consequently, cross-fertilization of ideas; so that cultural difference will become more and more unreliable as an index to philosophical difference. (p. 204) The conservative approach is an Afrocentric view that places the African epistemic and value system at the center of African thinking and aims at turning the tables on the Eurocentric view in Africa. The liberal view is a Eurocentric view that advocates the universal knowledge and value system and aims at refining and maintaining the hold of Western ideas in African thinking. The cosmopolitan approach favors hybridity and advocates the cross-fertilization between the culture of the colonizer and the culture colonized. The three briefly summarized approaches to the African predicament are not exhaustive but provide a broad picture of African responses to the African dilemma. The path that a potential migrant or an international immigrant adopts partly influences their decision to migrate or stay. A critique of these approaches is beyond the scope of this chapter.

International Migration and African Philosophy This section analyzes the intricate relationship between international migration and African philosophy. We posit two points regarding this relationship. First, it argues that the NorthSouth migrant flow during the colonial period helped establish colonial rule in Africa. The colonial rule systematically disrupted Africa’s socio-economic and political system and dislocated its epistemic and value systems. Effectively, international migration helped to create the problems that African philosophy later emerged to address. Second, and inversely, it argues that the South-North migrant flow during and after colonization, directly and indirectly, helped establish and develop African philosophy. The chief proponents of African philosophy received their higher degrees from top European and American universities. The international specialized training, network with like-minded thinkers, and the critical university and social cultures shaped their theoretical and practical acumen to confront the challenges of slavery and colonization. As Table 4.1 indicates, most of the prominent figures in African philosophy were, at least as students, international immigrants in Europe and America. The table shows the names of major thinkers in African philosophy, their countries of origin, where they obtained their highest academic qualifications, and influential works in African philosophy. Although the list is far from complete and perhaps skewed by the researcher’s interests, even a different list of prominent African philosophers is most likely to present the same trend. African philosophy emerges within the context of critical theory. About the critical nature of African philosophy, Rettová (2016) contends that, 59

Blessing Chapfika Table 4.1 Prominent African Philosophers Title

Name

Country

Education

Influential work

President Dr

Julius K. Nyerere (1922–1999)

Tanzania

Ujamaa: The basis of African socialism (1987)

President Dr

Kenneth D. Kaunda (1924–2021)

Zambia

Prof.

Kwasi Wiredu (1931–2022) Kwame Gyekye (1939–2019)

Ghana

The University of Edinburgh, UK Munali Secondary School, Zambia University of Oxford, UK Harvard University, USA

Paulin J. Hountondji (Born 1942) John S. Mbiti (1931–2019)

Benin

Prof.

Henry O. Oruka (1944–1995)

Kenya

Prof.

Peter Bodunrin (Born 1936)

Nigeria

Prof.

D.A. Masolo (Born 1952)

Kenya

Prof.

Prof.

Prof.

Ghana

Kenya

École normale supérieure, France University of Cambridge, UK Wayne State University, USA University of Minnesota, USA Università Gregoriana, Italy

A Humanist in Africa (1966) Philosophy and African Culture (1980) Tradition and modernity: Philosophical reflections on the African experience (1997) African Philosophy: Myth and Reality (1996) African Religions and Philosophy (1990) Sage Philosophy (1991)

The Question of African Philosophy (1981) African Philosophy in Search of Identity (2002)

A political charge is at the heart of African philosophy because it arose from a criticism of the dehumanizing tendencies of European culture which, over the past centuries, found expression in slavery, colonial expansionism, and the still very present racial discrimination. Like the critical philosophy of race and postcolonial theory, African philosophy maintains its acute social awareness and a readiness for political militancy. (p. 127) The post-war critical European philosophies, such as postmodern deconstructionism, poststructuralism, and postcolonial theory, influenced African philosophy to expose and challenge Western universalism. Rettová (2016) describes Western universalism as “the intellectual and political hegemony of the West” (p. 129). African philosophy emerged in the 1960s when it was fashionable to question the dominant and authoritarian philosophical metanarratives. The critical discourses that dominated the international stage at this time, such as the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power Movement, Black Theology, and Black Philosophy in the United States of America, also influenced the development of African philosophy. The prob60

African Philosophy and International Migration

lems of North-South migration (slavery and colonization) and the contributions of SouthNorth migration (critical discourse) shape the current form of African philosophy. Colonization disrupted African civilization by denigrating the African socio-economic, political, epistemic, and value systems and superimposing Western ones. Since the NorthSouth migration in this period was to conquer and possess, the small number of colonial administrators needed the services of other people such as farmers, artisans, and entrepreneurs (Massey, 1999) to secure and manage the African colonies. The European immigrants, particularly the administrators, had a clear motive: Mission Civilarice.4 As such, the possibility of integration or incorporation into the destination countries was out of the question. Instead, the modus operandi was to supplant the host nation’s knowledge and value systems (believed to be inferior) and transplant the knowledge and value systems of the country of origin (assumed to be standard). In a cultural encounter, however, contemporary research finds “not only transplantation but vivid cross-fertilization and cultural syncretism, such as composite cultural forms” (Clifford, 1994, as cited in Faist, 2000, p. 55). For example, Christian evangelization in Africa succeeded by incorporating African terms and concepts compatible with the Christian message. The colonial administrators based their policies on racial discrimination and segregation, which incentivized the lower middle-class Europeans to migrate to Africa with the obvious expectation of getting jobs and opportunities ahead of black Africans. The Portuguese were renowned for sending their degredados5 to the African colonies on favorable terms. Although the European expansionist mission civilarice did not achieve its ultimate goal of the total eclipse of the African knowledge and value systems by European ones, it managed to debase Africa, Africans, and African value and knowledge systems. Mission civilarice resulted in the abnormal complexities and the African predicament discussed above. The official colonial administrative narrative, often sustained by hegemonic scholarship, was that “the African mentality was primitive, irrational and illogical” (Bodunrin, 1981, p. 164). Besides contributing to the African predicament, this official position prompts the African philosophy question6 and African scholars’ attitudes7 toward the question. Despite the colonial import, the African philosophy question is a crucial metaphilosophical question without which African philosophy is impoverished. African philosophy addresses the African philosophy question within the context of the African postcolonial predicament. There is no agreement among the African philosophers on an answer to the African philosophy question or a way out of the gridlock of colonization. Oruka (1997) expertly captures the different responses to the African philosophy question in his famous four specimens or trends of African philosophy: ethnophilosophy, nationalist-ideological philosophy, philosophical sagacity, and professional philosophy. Bodunrin (1981) facilitates our understanding of these four trends by identifying specific challenges that each trend addresses. First, we have the ethnophilosophers who respond to the colonial denigration of African culture by insisting that African cultural wisdom has philosophical status. Second, the nationalist-ideological philosophers employ African thought and values to promote African liberation from political and mental subjugation. Third, the philosophical sagacity proponents dispel the myth that literacy is the hallmark of philosophy by engaging with illiterate African sages. Fourth, the African professional philosophers consider philosophy universal and appropriate the conventional philosophical tools to investigate issues in the African experience. The four trends of African philosophy are effectively four possible routes out of the African postcolonial predicament. A critical review of Oruka’s four trends of African philosophy reveals two leading positions. First, there is the inward-looking view of the ethnophilosophers and nationalist-ideo61

Blessing Chapfika

logical philosophers who seek to identify, apply, and justify African beliefs and values. Second, the outward-looking view of the professional philosophers and proponents of philosophical sagacity seeks to employ conventional philosophical methods and tools to investigate and solve problems within the African experience. In political ideology terms, broadly, the first position is right-wing (conservative/particularistic), emphasizing culture, tradition, nationalism, etc. The second is left-wing (liberal/universalistic), emphasizing convention, equality, freedom, internationalism, etc. Viewed in this way, the responses to the African philosophy question effectively present the age-old universalism-particularism philosophical problem. We should reiterate that a potential African migrant’s position impacts their decision to migrate or stay. In the African international immigrant’s case, the position one chooses influences their decision to return or stay. The first position pursues homegrown solutions, while the second pursues network- or partnership-based solutions. However, these positions are not the primary determinants in migration decision-making. Some significant factors explain the massive South-North migration8 from the previous century. These include the cost-benefit push and pull factors, effects of colonization, and the global or world-bundling forces. Kanu (2007), for example, attributes this phenomenon to hybridization. One of the consequences of European colonization and, now, the global migration of former colonial subjects into the metropolitan centres of Western Europe has meant that, intellectually, culturally, and politically, the colonizer and the colonized have been brought together in identity formation that is continually in a process of hybridization. (p. 78) Hybridization creates the cosmopolitanism that characterizes most cities in the Western world. Mngomezulu and Maposa (2017) attribute the increased emigration, at least in part, to “rapid globalization” (p. 181). It is important to note that both hybridization and globalization benefit the North and further isolate and deprive the South. These concepts promote ideas of freedom, equality, free enterprise, the world’s interconnectedness through global techno-economic and value systems, free competition, etc. Hybridization and globalization are oblivious to issues of power and dominance. Consequently, well-funded cultures and economic ideas determine the form of the hybrid culture and the global system. The two concepts enable the South-North flow of expert and potential labor and the North-South flow of market-ready goods and ideas. Therefore, operating within this context of much larger migration decision-making determinants, the different responses to the African postcolonial predicament are only complementary.

African Belief and Value System and International Migration Any conceptualization of African belief, knowledge, and value system must consider the heterogeneity of the African continent and its inhabitants. Africa is a continent of 54 different countries (each country has its cultural diversity), over 3000 ethnic groups, and over 2000 languages. Despite the differences, it is noteworthy that cultural groups within the same African region share some cultural heritage. As such, both tension and cooperation exist in intercultural relations. We should not restrict cultural identity to conditions of cultural singularity and homogeneity. However, it is vital to question the limits and boundaries of African concepts, beliefs, and values. African philosophy is as diverse, making it challenging to come up with a single, unitary, and mutually inclusive African philosophy. This reality demands 62

African Philosophy and International Migration

some geographical and conceptual delimitation each time one speaks of African philosophy. For this research, African philosophy draws on the knowledge, beliefs, and values of the Bantu people or people from Sub-Saharan Africa. People originally from other parts of the world come to enrich the African diversity further. Furthermore, to be an African transcends the social and political conditions of descendance, race, ethnicity, immigration status, or other forms of acculturation. Legal status in or ancestry connections to an African country is a necessary but not sufficient condition to be an African. It is common knowledge that the label “an African” comes with excess baggage (such as the colonialist-authored negative perception about the black race) that some people are ashamed to carry. Being an African should not be prescribed. Instead, it should be a conscious, voluntary, and proud decision anchored on the person’s willingness to tune into, engage with, and contribute to developing the African condition and the world. Therefore, “I am an African” is preferable to “You are an African or He/she is an African.” It is also not uncommon, and justifiably so, for some people to accept the descriptor “an African” only when it suits them. African beliefs, knowledge, and values are, in the main, based on what we would call the metaphysics of corporeality.9 The metaphysics of corporeality emphasizes the materiality of and unity in nature. So conceived, nature is being, and being is material. Nature, in this case, refers to all there is: human and spiritual beings, animals, and the environment. Godfrey Ozumba’s idea of the missing link in his integrative humanism adds some insight. Ozumba (2011) offers a teleological understanding of nature in which he postulates that everything is a missing link for the completion of nature. In this connectedness and materiality of nature, human existence entails harmony with the self, others, animals, and the environment. With caution, the African metaphysics of corporeality could be comparable to Father George Berkeley’s empiricist metaphysics. Fr Berkley’s empiricist dictum “To be is to be perceived” sums up his empiricist metaphysics. The extent to which we could compare the two requires a more detailed analysis. Although the African metaphysics of corporeality summarized here is not exhaustive of African metaphysics, it provides a reasonable basis on which to understand African beliefs, knowledge, and values. African metaphysics informs the African worldview that influences Africans’ general views on migration and their migration decision-making. King (2012) observes the two different views in migration theory. First is the view that we are living in the “age of migration,” and everyone is on the move. This view emphasizes the “fundamental historical role of migration as part of human experience from the remote past to the present and on into the future” (King, 2012, p. 4). King (2012) considers the roving instinct as an “intrinsic to human nature: the need to search for food, pasture, and resources; the desire to travel and explore; but also, to conquer and possess” (p. 4). Second, the view that many people do not migrate even when conditions are ripe for them to do so. This “immobility paradox,” focusses on “the vast majority of people who do not migrate despite the economic models, based on ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors of wage and unemployment differentials, which predict that they should go” (King, 2012, p. 5). The two somewhat contesting views are evidence of the elephant characteristic of migration theories. As such, theorists tend to conceptualize the whole elephant based on the part of the elephant they can access. By citing these contesting views, King (2012) draws scholarship to the enormity and complexity of the field of migration. In this context, King (2012, p. 3) calls for “an interdisciplinary approach to the study and theorization of migration.” The meso-level analysis, which focusses on the impact of social and symbolic ties among potential migrants and the resources inherent in these relations (social capital) on migration 63

Blessing Chapfika

decision-making, attends to the factors that lie outside the focus of the macro- and microlevel analyses. This research follows the meso-level study by enquiring into the impact of the social and symbolic ties among African people and the inherent social capital on migration decision-making. This section considers the effects of African beliefs and values, as informed by the African metaphysics of corporeality, on both the concept of migration and migration decision-making. We consider both questions of mobility and immobility among the African people. Most significantly, the research helps to understand the “immobility paradox.” Given this paradox, King (2012) wonders if it is “because their ‘moorings’ are holding them firmly in place – their family ties, jobs, culture, familiarity and simply feeling ‘at home’? Poverty? Political and institutional barriers? One of the ironies of globalization?” (p. 5). To understand the African views on migration, one should understand the significance of the African home. Like most people across cultures, Africans have an attachment to the home. African people’s devotion to the home is much stronger because of the religious significance of the African home. In traditional Africa, the home is a sacred shrine where the spiritual beings connect with the living, mainly through religious ceremonies such as rites of passage. As such, the home becomes a physical and spiritual habitat. When the male family member gets married, the elders allocate them a place to build their home. Ground-breaking is a ceremony that concentrates the home as the center of the universe. The African practice of burying the child’s umbilical cord at the homestead further strengthens the African people’s connection with the home. The burying of the child’s umbilical cord at the homestead symbolizes the bond between the person and the home. From an African religious perspective, all forms of migration constitute a drift from the center. It is interesting to know how African people view and manage migration or drifting from the center. Following the natural roving instinct, African people leave their homes for various reasons. King (2012, p. 4) summarizes the reasons for roving as to “search for food, pasture, and resources; the desire to travel and explore; but also, to conquer and possess.” Based on the strong sense of community, harmony, solidarity, coexistence, and interdependence characterize the traditional African world. In African communities, leadership was “not usually a source of struggle, acrimony, or contestation” but rather “a position of trust and service to the society” (Ekei, 2003, cited in Abioye, 2013, p. 6). However, intercultural relations were not always amicable. There is evidence of political power struggles in traditional African societies resulting in massive human dispersal. The period of the Mfecane10 and the killing of Shaka Zulu by his brothers are examples of such struggles that “resulted in heavy migrations amongst different communities and societies” (Abioye, 2013, p. 7). Power struggle episodes often punctuate the peaceful coexistence in African traditional societies due to the values of community, harmony, and cooperation, culminating in acts of war that force people to abandon their homes. Horton (1975) captures a fascinating case of the migratory lifestyle of the Fulani tribes,11 their concept of the home, and the intercultural exchanges they had with other people. Pastoral Fulani life was characterized by a pervasive duality. On the one hand, Fulani were highly conscious of their apartness from the sedentary farmers, and of the need to preserve this apartness. On the other hand, the Fulani clan was much less self-contained than any roughly corresponding sedentary unit, with respect both to territory and to social relations. Thus, even during the course of a routine year, the members of the clan spent only a little of their time in the area of the clan centre, and much more of their time on the move outside it. And the frequency of migration meant that the 64

African Philosophy and International Migration

clan centre itself was hardly very permanent. Again, even during the course of a routine year, members of the clan were constantly dependent on contact with non-members and non-Fulani. They made frequent excursions to distant market-places to meet unrelated Fulani from other areas, in order to keep themselves informed on alternative grazing possibilities. They were constantly involved with a wide range of non-Fulani in exchanges of products and in negotiations for grazing rights. And whenever there was a migration, of course, a whole new range of contacts was involved, with both Fulani and non-Fulani. In short, if one can talk of Fulani microcosms at all, one must think of them as units from which the members were constantly breaking out. (Horton, 1975, pp. 377–378) In this quotation, Horton (1975) makes some critical observations. First, he emphasizes the duality of the existence of the Fulani tribes as they try to maintain their uniqueness and integrate with the rest of the world. Second, the observation of the constant shift of the clan center as the pastoral tribes move. Third, he observes the tribes as units with members constantly breaking out as members adopt new ways of life. Fourth, the emphasis on knowledge exchange as the Fulani meets other Fulani and non-Fulani. In this context, we notice that population movements are “the carriers of innovation from one region to another” (King, 2012, p. 4). Since the home is the center of the universe, any form of migration constitutes drifting from the center. Consequently, the further a person drifts from home, the more vulnerable they become. The African cultures view a person away from home as in the “forest.” Like traditional African hunters and gatherers, leaving home to search for resources and opportunities is justifiable as long as you return home. Homecoming is comparable to taking a pilgrimage to the center of the universe because the home is the place of safety. A celebration ritual often accompanies this act. By implication, international migration involves the person making the furthest drift from the center. Even in the case of powerful ties in the destination country, the home’s value as the center usually ties the African people to the country of origin. It becomes apparent, therefore, that even “permanent settlement in the country of immigration does not necessarily mean fewer ties to the area of origin” (Faist, 2000, p. 33). The traditional African view on migration cautions against the notion of the “age of migration” and helps to explain the “paradox of immobility.” In qualifying the idea of the “age of migration,” King (2012) submits that it is a case of migration for some but not others. He observes, Fine if you are white, from a wealthy country in Europe, North America or elsewhere in the developed world, or if you have money to invest or valuable skills to deploy. But if you are from a poor country in Africa, Latin America or parts of Asia: forget it. (King, 2012, pp. 5–6) Economic status is undoubtedly a critical migration decision-making factor for the prospective migrant. Migration is costly, and only those prospective migrants who can afford the migration costs will eventually move. Further, countries of immigration often make it easier for the high economic status or high-skilled migrants than the low financial status or lowskilled migrants for apparent reasons. Besides the cost-benefit computations, the African migrants consider their attachment to their homes or countries of origin. For African immigrants, the capacity to or prospects of returning home or at least contact with the center is 65

Blessing Chapfika

a crucial migration decision-making factor. The heavy human traffic of African migrants to their countries of origin at certain times of the year, particularly during the festive seasons, is telling. The migrants who return to their African homes enjoy respect and admiration from their communities. The African societies do not have kind words for the African drifters who do not return, take too long to return, or completely lose contact with their African homes. For example, the Shona people commonly use the term chichoni to refer to a person who drifts but never or rarely returns. And an African drifter who loses contact with the center is marked as akatetereka (one who got lost or strayed), and their family will eventually conduct a funeral for them and a ritual to bring back their spirit. The importance of the home explains the pressure on African families to get the body of their deceased family member home. In observance of the centrality of religion in African culture, John Mbiti rightly remarks that “Africans are notoriously religious” (Mbiti, 1969, p. 1). In this context, one may categorically submit that African people return home to reunite with their family at some point: if not in their physical state, then in their spiritual form through rituals.

Ubuntu and Xenophobia in Africa As we noted above, the African metaphysics of corporeality influences African thinking, including African ethics. The unity in nature informs the connectedness of being. This naturalism or holisticism gives Africa its communalistic and egalitarian ethic. African communities are closely knit units in which anyone’s business is everyone’s business. Temples (1959) best captures the African holistic worldview by describing it in terms of “beings [that] are linked with one another by a network of relationships like a spider’s web and the actions of one affects the actions of the whole” (p. 46). It is important to note that traditional Africans conceive the cosmos as an integrated phenomenon in which the ontological status of each entity is dependent on other entities. The network of relations also connects the living, the dead, the animate, and the inanimate, and what affects the earlier affects the latter and vice versa. From a traditional African point of view, life is sacred, and its preservation takes priority over anything else. The African ontology emphasizes the connectedness of humanity. John S. Mbiti, an African philosopher and theologian, extrapolates Rene Descartes’s Cartesian principle (I think; therefore, I am) to coin an African epistemic dictum (I am because we are; since we are, therefore, I am). Mbiti describes his African epistemic dictum as “the cardinal point in understanding the African view of man.” Mbiti (1990) sums up African humanism in his African concept of man. Whatever happens to the individual happens to the whole group, and whatever happens to the whole group happens to the individual. The individual can only say, "I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am." This is a cardinal point in the understanding of the African view of man. (p. 109) Following his individualistic foundationalism, Rene Descartes considers intellectual contemplation as the determinant of personhood and the unquestionable basis for building other truths. John Mbiti, following a communalistic ethic, recognizes the existence of others as the definition of personhood and the handle on which we make sense of human relationships. This comparison could prove that Western ethics is inward-looking (ME) and African ethics is outward-looking (YOU). African ethics accept human rationality as a necessary condition 66

African Philosophy and International Migration

of personhood but not a sufficient condition. From an African perspective, therefore, being is being together. And there is no question whether, for instance, I am my brother’s keeper.12 African ethics presupposes the African philosophy of personhood, which is popularly known as the philosophy of “ubuntu.” The ubuntu theory “posits the existence of others as an essential part of the very structure of the self” (Horsthemke, 2011, p. 148). Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Naomi Tutu describe ubuntu as “a delicate network of relationships, of interdependence” (Tutu & Tutu, 1989, p. 71). For Tutu (1999), ubuntu recognizes that “my humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in theirs [humanity of others]” (p. 35) such that “we can only be human together” (p. 4). As a result of this intricate relationship among human beings, the philosophy of ubuntu triggers an urgent sense of respect and commitment to the welfare of oneself and others. This urgent sense of respect and commitment to oneself and others exclude their appearance, abilities, qualities, and achievements, but by who they are – fellow human beings. As such, the ubuntu philosophy transcends issues of racial and cultural considerations. The concept of ubuntu encapsulates the community ethos. We term ubuntu “a philosophy of engagement” because the idea of self is inconceivable or impoverished without the concept of the other. Ubuntu, therefore, prompts a yearning for the other, or a yearning for connection. The rise of xenophobia in Africa has raised questions about the impact and utility of the African philosophy of ubuntu. According to the Collins Online Dictionary, xenophobia “is [a] strong and unreasonable dislike or fear of people from other countries.” It is an unfounded dread and dislike of people from other countries, often resulting in their exclusion and discrimination. McCarthy (2014, p. 2) describes the spike of nationalism and xenophobia in Europe (in the former Yugoslavia, Germany, and France) as “a disturbing instance” and a “rip at the heart of the great icons” of Western civilization. Further, McCarthy (2014, p. 2) observes that “the politics of identity” characterizes parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America, resulting in “gruesome forms of racial/ethnic cruelty.” The stability of the African continent is at risk due to ethnic conflicts, which are the central premise for civil wars in many African states. Xenophobia, and subsequent harming of people from other African countries, presents an additional challenge in Africa. Sanni (2020, p. 20) specifically reports incidences of xenophobia in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Rwanda. The recurrent phenomenon of xenophobic violence in South Africa in recent years has prompted debates about African identity. In expressing his concern about xenophobia in South Africa, Horsthemke (2006) notes that immigrants “are derogatorily called kwerekwere, because of their unintelligible languages. They are insulted, persecuted, sometimes even killed – the well-known excesses of xenophobia” (p. 461). The vastness of Africa and its heterogeneity of culture and language makes it common for people not to understand each other’s languages. Xenophobia in Africa is confined to the black African racial group, that is, black African ethnic group(s) in one country harboring intense fear and dislike of another black African ethnic group(s) from neighboring countries. Horsthemke (2006, p. 461) describes xenophobia in Africa as “emanate from Africans – against Africans.” The baffling question is how xenophobia could take root among the African people who collaboratively fought against racism, oppression, and discrimination from the colonial governments. How could an aversion to racism and tolerance of xenophobia coexist in the human psyche? Bernasconi (2017, p. 155) rejects the view that racism and xenophobia belong to different planes, which manifest in holding a person responsible for racism yet condoning their xenophobia as usual, natural, or an unavoidable consequence of ethnic encounter. For him, xenophobia is, in fact, “a systemic racism at a global level, in which each country is passing off the problem to its 67

Blessing Chapfika

neighbours, that renders a solution almost impossible for those who are racialized as alien” (Bernasconi, 2017, p. 155). This view marks xenophobia as a form of racism that requires national and international intervention. It is important to note that xenophobia occurs within the context of international migration. International migration often “creates [in the country of destination] sharp divisions between those who accept the need for migrants and welcome the economic and cultural contributions they make, and those who oppose them” (King, 2012, p. 6). Of concern is the which is the politically motivated latter group. King (2012) observes that people who do not welcome migrants “often exaggerate the numbers of migrants, employ repeated use of prejudicial terms such as ‘illegal immigrants’ and ‘bogus asylum-seekers’ and tend to scapegoat migrants for the ills of the society they seek to join – like crime, drugs and unemployment” (p. 7). Those who oppose the need for immigrants blame the immigrants for every socio-economic and political ill. They are likely to subscribe to or support xenophobia and xenophobic attacks to chase immigrants back to their countries of origin. Since South Africa is “the most industrialized economy in the region [Southern Africa]” (GMDAC, 2022) with a “commitment to upholding human rights and the rights of asylumseekers and refugees” (Mukumbang et al., 2020, p. 2), the country is an attractive destination for people searching for better education and employment opportunities and those “fleeing their home countries in the quest for a more dignifying and humane existence” (Mukumbang et al., 2020, p. 2). Thus, South Africa offers the immigrants hope and the promise of freedom, political stability, employment opportunities, and decent life (Leepo & Maseng, 2019, p. 188) that are lacking in their countries of origin. These different groups of immigrants integrate with local communities, often peacefully. Most immigrants, except refugees, live in South Africa temporarily. Given their proximity to their countries of origin and the connectedness of the African people to their homes, most immigrants from the region frequently return to their countries. King (2012, p. 7) observes that “temporary migration leads sooner or later to return migration, while permanent migrants may make return visits to their home country from time to time.” Although this is generally the case for immigrants with temporary and permanent residence permits, other complicating factors exist. South Africa has a significant problem of undocumented immigrants, who we think far exceeds the “estimated 2.9 million migrants [who] resided in South Africa at mid-year 2020” (GMDAC, 2022). The adverse economic and political conditions in most Southern African countries force temporary residence permit holders to overstay in South Africa thereby further compounding South Africa’s challenge of undocumented migrants. The numbers of documented and undocumented regional immigrants in South Africa are hard to determine. As King (2012, p. 8) correctly observes, “irregular migrants can become legalised through special schemes for regularisation” and “regular migrants can lapse into irregularity after their permits expire or because of the bureaucratic obstacles and delays they face in renewing them.” There is no doubt that the regional migrants, mainly the migrants from disadvantaged economic backgrounds, increase pressure on public resources and compete with the needy local people for lower-level employment and small business opportunities. There are recurrent incidences in which the local people turn against the foreign nationals, often blaming them for most of the socio-economic and political problems South Africa faces. The common accusations include stealing job and business opportunities, compromising labor rules by accepting low wages, depleting health resources, and crime – particularly theft, drug dealing, and money laundering. The media report recurrent incidences of xenophobic violence, which sometimes result in gruesome murders of foreign nationals. The xeno68

African Philosophy and International Migration

phobic-inspired acts of targeting and subsequent killing of foreign nationals often take the form of vigilantism. It is because of such incidences and other forms of violent crime that Horsthemke (2006, p. 461) comments that “violence pervades South African society like a paralyzing poison.” The phenomenon of xenophobia seems more pronounced within socioeconomic and political deprivation. The excessive fear and hatred of and xenophobic attacks on foreigners are rife in disadvantaged and overcrowded local communities. The influx of poor migrants from neighboring countries into disadvantaged local communities would eventually create conflict over services and opportunities. The picture is different in the middle- and high-income communities and professions. In higher education, for example, Leepo and Maseng (2019) acknowledge the immense contribution of African immigrants to South African universities. Based on their observation that African immigrant scholars produce more publications than their local counterparts, Leepo and Maseng (2019) believe that “South African universities employ African immigrants as strategic investments of knowledge production and increase” (p. 201). Xenophobia is not a concern in such contexts. When xenophobic violence breaks out, the Government of South Africa often responds swiftly through law enforcement, community education, and other agencies to restore order, encourage coexistence, and build community confidence. However, recent reports suggest an exhaustion of political will on the part of the South African Government to deal with xenophobia. We can read the exhaustion of political will to protect obvious targets of xenophobic attacks from the report of the African National Congress spokesperson, Pule Mabe. The information has it that Mr. Mabe “declared open season on all illegal foreign nationals” residing in South Africa, saying “we can no longer guarantee their safety” (Reynolds, 2022). Besides exposing the regional migrants to the risk of xenophobic attacks, the declaration opens doors to vigilantism. However, in the recent “International Migration White Paper” (Mokoena, 2022), which mentions xenophobia five times, the South African Government renews its commitment to dealing with illegal migration and xenophobia. The White Paper (Mokoena, 2022) references xenophobia in three sections. Section 4.7.7 reads, “Educating communities to avoid any form of xenophobia by making them understand the tragedy of illegal immigration while cooperating with law enforcement authorities.” It is unclear to the reader whether the phrase “the tragedy of illegal immigration” refers to illegal immigration as a tragedy or the tragedy resulting from illegal immigration. However, the White Paper discourages vigilantism. Section 11.2.1.1 reads, This education must also involve the avoidance of xenophobia and compassion for the human tragedy of migration. Xenophobia must also be fought within the institutional culture of the immigration officials, as it may color their judgment and objectivity, leading to illegal arrest and detention, verbal abuse, excessive physical force, disregard for aliens’ property, disregard for aliens’ privacy and dignity, and even corruption. These matters should be redressed by adequate training of the officials and internal policing. Again, the phrase “human tragedy of migration” prompts a double interpretation. The White Paper takes a clear stance against institutionalized xenophobia, promotes human rights, and prioritizes training for responsible policing. Section 11.13 reads, One of the major missions of the IS will be to work with other departments and with NGOs to ensure that communities recognize the difference between illegal aliens and 69

Blessing Chapfika

refugees, accommodate refugees, and reject any type of xenophobia. A special campaign against xenophobia should accompany the IS’s on-the-ground presence. Working with other agencies, the task of the Immigration Service (IS) is threefold. First, the IS must ensure the communities can distinguish between an illegal alien and a refugee. Second, the IS works with the communities to accommodate refugees. Third, the IS ensures the communities reject xenophobia. The first task is not only tricky but compromises the communitybuilding efforts. Involving the communities in immigration matters is always concerning. Where is the philosophy or value of ubuntu in all this? Can we take ubuntu to the international market when it has not made any difference at home? Can ubuntu work beyond the closed traditional African societies? These are some of the most pressing questions when we consider the crimes perpetrated by black Africans on black Africans, notably xenophobic attacks. These questions have no clear answer, but it is vital to provide some context to understand the ubuntu-xenophobia dilemma. In presenting the dynamics of the rural-urban migration in Sierra Leone, Kanu (2007) makes an important observation. To survive as town dwellers, the migrants had to abandon their rural outlook and develop different skills such as literacy, commercial, and professional skills. In the process, they were forced to rely on individual talents rather than the teamwork involved in rural life. (p. 75) Although the different African ethnic groups come from rural settings where values such as ubuntu are strong, the urban settings change the dynamics. The African urban centers are built and modeled on Western values, and Africans who migrate to these centers adopt new and different values to survive. Abioye (2013) assumes a similar interpretation when he regards the Mfecane and the killing of Shaka Zulu by his brothers as “the example of what transpired when the people deviated from the tenets of the community, and started looking out for themselves, rather than the good of the community” (p. 7). From this perspective, the problem of xenophobia emanates from the non-practice of ubuntu. Horsthemke (2006) recounts the interview that the German journalist and author, Bartholomäus Grill, had with the former President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, in 1998. Grill asked Mr. Mbeki what worried him the most, and he answered without hesitation: “The lack of moral values,” especially for the age group that causes every society a headache: young men aged between 15 and 30 (Grill, 2003, Cited in Horsthemke, 2006, p. 462). We assume that the lack of African moral values, such as ubuntu, concerned Mr. Mbeki. In a different but related view, Sanni (2020, p. 20) argues that the emphasis on colonially determined boundaries causes many Africans to characterize other Africans as strangers. From this perspective, colonization introduced hard borders that separated and estranged previously fraternal African ethnic groups. The narrow nationalistic ideologies of some African political parties further separate the African cultural groups. Although the explanation here seems to shift the blame from Africa to the former colonial powers, the negative impact of colonization on the African belief, knowledge, and value systems cannot be underestimated. However, the African values such as ubuntu must be remodeled and funded to challenge and influence the status quo.

The African Diaspora and the African Home This section explores the popular concept of ‘diaspora’ and its influence on the African idea of the home. We have discussed the African metaphysics of corporeality and its centrality in 70

African Philosophy and International Migration

the African notion of the home. Apart from fulfilling the basic human need for shelter, the African home provides for the African spiritual needs. The home serves as a religious shrine and sanctuary, constituting the center of the African being. The African people are more connected to and protective of their homes than many other cultural groups. As Africans leave their homes for different reasons, they maintain a spatial-temporal awareness because vulnerabilities increase as the person drifts further from home, loses contact with the home, or prolongs their return home. The rural-urban migration and international migration result in African people having other homes in the urban centers and countries of immigration. For most African people, however, the rural home remains the permanent home or “home proper.” In contrast, the home in the urban center or the country of immigration is a temporary home. As some Africans lose contact with the rural home and settle permanently in urban centers and other countries, they make their new homes their good homes through different rituals. In Africa, the term “diaspora” became part of the everyday vocabulary from the end of the previous century, and its popularity has continued to grow since then. The concept was initially associated with the cross-border hawkers and traders, mineworkers and seasonal farmworkers, and other low-income job seekers in the African regional metropolises. The term diaspora became a trademark for Africans who live and work in different trade centers worldwide. In common usage, the term diaspora refers to both the international immigrant and the country of immigration. What is notable about the diaspora is the transforming power of their remittances to their families back home. Within the context of the economic challenges most people in Africa face, a family “with a diaspora” are easy to spot. We must explore the scholarly uses of the concept to appreciate the influence of the term diaspora on the African idea of the home. Pasura (2022, p. 3) submits that the concepts of diaspora and transnationalism “have become the two master concepts for understanding contemporary migration.” For Pasura (2022), diasporas, “which are a prime example of transnationality, entail a strong sense of collective cultural identity, meaning-making, and place-making in the places of settlement” (p. 3). Faist (2010, p. 12) summarizes the different conceptions of the diaspora in terms of three characteristics, each with older and newer notions of the term. The first characteristic considers the cause of dispersal. Diaspora was initially associated with the forcible scattering of the Jewish people; then, through the secularization thesis, it extends to non-religious groups who were forcibly expelled from their homelands, and the newer notions associate diaspora with any dispersal (Pasura, 2022, pp. 3–4; Faist, 2010, p. 12). The second characteristic considers the cross-border experiences of the homeland with the destination. The older notions emphasized a return to a homeland, while the newer uses often replace return with dense and continuous linkages across borders (Faist, 2010, p. 12). This characteristic marks “a shift in the conceptualization of diaspora away from defining diasporas as substantive entities toward understanding diasporas as a process, stances, or modes of practice” (Pasura, 2022, p. 4). From this standpoint, diaspora becomes “an interpretive frame” or “a condition” rather than a descriptive category (Pasura, 2022, p. 4). The third characteristic considers the incorporation or integration of migrants or minorities into the countries of settlement. The older notions of diaspora imply that migrants do not fully integrate or assimilate, while the newer ideas of diaspora emphasize cultural hybridity (Faist, 2010, p. 13). The third characteristic encourages the conceptualization of diaspora in terms of diaspora spaces where the new and old diaspora meet to converse with the locals. Brah (1996), as cited in Pasura (2022, p. 4), makes the astute comment that a diaspora space disrupts and transgresses the boundaries of ethnic71

Blessing Chapfika

ity and nationalism; hence, diasporic identities are negotiated rather than assumed as given. However, this does not obliterate the difference. Instead, the “diasporas, it seems, are both ethnic-parochial and cosmopolitan” (Werbner, 2018, p. 138, Cited in Pasura, 2022, p. 5). The older and newer notions of the diaspora are incompatible. We notice diaspora restricted to forcible dispersal vs. diaspora extended to any scattering; diaspora as an entity vs. diaspora as a process or practice; diaspora as cultural distinctness vs. diaspora as cultural hybridity; and diaspora as distinct category vs. diaspora as spaces. Although some could view this notion of incompatibility as problematic, it is essential to consider this tension as “an opportunity to raise questions for further analysis” of the concept of diaspora (Faist, 2010, p. 13). Faist (2010) views the tension as raising “the question of whether migrant integration, on the one hand, and cultural distinctions, on the other hand, may coexist” (p. 13). Migrant integration or assimilation favors sameness since the migrants become like or part of the culture of the country of destination. Migrant cultural distinction favors difference since the migrants maintain their distinctive cultures from their countries of origin. In other words, Faist (2010) views the tension between the older and newer notions of diaspora as questioning whether sameness and difference may coexist. We may use sameness to represent cultural universals and differences to represent cultural particulars. Coexistence presupposes both sameness and difference. Cultural collision is inevitable when different cultural groups meet, but coexistence is possible by emphasizing cultural universals while respecting cultural particulars. From this analysis, we can conclude that it is not a question of either cultural integration or cultural distinction but a question of cultural integration and cultural distinction. As such, emphasis should be placed on “the co-presence of universalising and particularising processes” (Faist, 2010, p. 16). We have noted earlier that the North benefits more from migration than the South. For example, international students have become the major cash cows for universities in the North (Jowi & Sehoole, 2017, p. 77). Through the skilled visa system, countries in the North have siphoned expertise from the South – the infamous process of brain drain. The system does not only target experts but potential experts as well. However, the contributions of African experts in the North, particularly African academics, are not restricted to the development of the North. They have significantly impacted the thinking in the North and shaped the thinking and practice in the South. They have contributed immensely to the “reclaiming African identity” project by promoting cultural and intellectual liberation, which Jowi and Sehoole (2017, p. 77) consider as forming the “essential and necessary resources for correcting distortions of the African reality.” From an African perspective, the diaspora notions that advocate integration, assimilation, and hybridity are part of the universalizing or unifying forces that favor sameness. The diaspora notions that advocate cultural distinction are part of the forces of freedom that favor difference. Over and above the cost-benefit computations, the migration decision-making of African diasporas in the North is informed by the African postcolonial predicament, the search for an African identity, the African beliefs and values of the connectedness of being or nature, and the close affinities with the home. Most African diasporas, especially the first generation, would maintain a delicate balance between distinction and integration. As such, they retain their country of origin homes as their permanent homes and their country of settlement homes as temporary.

Conclusion This chapter broadly considers the relationship between African philosophy and international migration. We note that international migration, particularly the North-South migration dur72

African Philosophy and International Migration

ing slavery and colonization, created one of the significant problems in African philosophy: the African postcolonial predicament. Notwithstanding the devastation of the South-North forced migration of Africans into slavery, we note that international migration, specifically the South-North migration, during and after slavery and colonization significantly contributed to the birth and development of African philosophy as an academic discipline. The contributions of the African immigrants in the North to Africa’s search for identity are a case in point. The chapter summarizes the main trends in migration theory – the micro- and macro-level analyses – and adopts the meso-level analysis to understand the dynamics in African international migration. The line of argument is that other important factors influence migration decision-making apart from the main micro and macro migration theories. We have highlighted the role of African beliefs and values, particularly the connectedness of the African people to their homes in their countries of origin. Understanding the symbolic ties, resources, and social capital that underpin human relationships with others, the environment, and the spiritual world is essential to migration theorization. Paying attention to such dynamics would help scholars understand baffling migration theory scenarios, such as the immobility paradox. The chapter also looks at the dilemma of African philosophy regarding the ubuntu-xenophobia paradox. The rise of xenophobia in Africa is among many problems that would prompt one to question the utility of the African value of ubuntu. The chapter ends by considering the question of diaspora distinction versus diaspora integration, and we argue for a delicate balance of the two competing diaspora notions.

Notes 1 1960 is popularly known as the “Year of Africa” because 17 African countries attained independence from European countries. Some countries remained under colonial rule beyond 1960 and Namibia was the last African country to gain independence (from South Africa) in 1990. 2 The Middle Passage was the infamous 6–8-week voyage across the Atlantic that was used to ferry African slaves to the Americas and Europe. The transatlantic slave trade route was triangular: From Europe to Africa, from Africa to Americas, and from Americas back to Europe. African forced international migrants did not complete the triangle as they were destined for enslaved labour in Americas and Europe. The same route serviced the voluntary international migrant flow from Europe to Africa. 3 Globalization here refers to the “rapidly developing process of complex interconnections between societies, cultures, institutions and individuals world-wide” (Tomlinson, 1996, p. 22). This trajectory, however, “leads to the flattening and destruction of a vast part of human heritage” (Petkova, 2017, pp. 14–15). 4 Mission Civilarice is “a mission to civilize the so-called uncivilized people in the colonies” (Njoroge & Bennaars, 1986, p. 69). The civilizing mission was justified as a gesture of goodwill, that is, “a process for and means of bringing modernity to societies considered to be ‘backward’ and living in the ‘dark ages’” (Shizha, 2005, p. 4). 5 Degredados are legally sanctioned or convicted criminals. There was a Depósito de Degredados (Depot for Transported Convicts) in Luanda, Angola, the larger of the two prisons established to supervise the work of convicts sent from Portugal and Portugal’s Atlantic colonies of Cape Verde, Portuguese Guinea, and São Tomé (Coates, 2018). Unlike the successful degredado project in Australia, sending convicts into forced labor in Africa where there was already excess labor was unproductive (Coates, 2014). Of concern was that the convicts were granted citizenship in respective colonies after serving their sentence (Coates, 2014, p. 120). 6 The African philosophy question originally pertains to challenging the existence of African philosophy. For example, Bodunrin (1981) acknowledges that African philosophy has been dominated by debates on the African philosophy question. He framed the question in two parts, “Is there an African philosophy, and if there is, what is it?” (Bodunrin, 1981, p. 161). It is in this context that Laleye (2002) attempts to answer the question, “Is there an African philosophy in existence today?”

73

Blessing Chapfika 7 Some think the question of definition of African philosophy is a waste of time (Makinde, 2007) and urge African philosophers not to waste time on endless talks and just do African philosophy. Some think the question should now be abandoned because it has been exhaustively answered (Etuk, 2002). Yet others consider the African philosophy question to be a perverse debate (Chimakonam, 2015; Uduma, 2014; Vest, 2009). 8 Basing on the U.S. Census Bureau (2016), Banks (2019) reports that “The United States is currently experiencing its largest influx of immigrants since the early 1900s,” with “45 million residents of the United States were foreign born, which was the largest number of foreign-born residents in any nation” and “approximate 14 percent of foreign-born residents in the United States in 2015” (p. ix). We envisage a similar trend in Europe and Africa makes a significant contribution to these statistics. 9 Metaphysics of corporeality is an a posteriori conception of existence, which assumes physicalism or materiality in things that exist. By corporeal existence, I mean tangible, physical, occupying space as opposed to some bundled up, imagined, or intangible existence. I mean a person as a body (a quality she shares with a stone or other physical matter); a person as a man (a quality she shares with a snake and other sentient beings; she assumes the quality of a body); and a person as a human being (a quality of capable of reason and moral deliberation, forming relationships, building, and evaluating institutions that support her corporeality; she assumes qualities of both body and man). The metaphysics of corporeality rejects, or at least excludes, the existence of some intangible structures such as Plato’s forms, Leibniz’s monads, or any other such beings. More so, the celebrated inquiry by the rationalist metaphysicians into the being of such beings. The African world is believed to be full of spiritual beings, but African humanism is not about such beings and the relationship they have with real people. African humanism, therefore, is about worthwhile living for living human beings “here and now” before their time to go and assume (if they must or qualify) a new role in the spirit world. 10 The Mfecane was a period of strife, war, and heavy chaos in the Southern African region in the early 19th century (Abioye, 2013, p. 7). The disturbances during this time caused major human movements in this region and beyond. 11 The Fulani tribes – nomadic pastoralists who live in nearly every country of the Western African Savanna, between Senegal and Cameroon – have a long history of international migration. 12 The New International Version of the Bible, Genesis 4:9: And the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” “I don't know,” he replied. “Am I my brother's keeper?” After Cain had murdered his brother Abel, God asked him where his brother was. Cain answered that he had no idea where his brother was and further asked God if he was his brother's keeper!

References Abioye, F. (2013). Governance in pre-colonial African societies: Extracting lessons for today. In: N. Andrews, N. E. Khalema, T. Oriola, & I. Odoom (Eds.), Africa yesterday, today and tomorrow: Exploring the multi-dimensional discourses on ‘development’ (pp. 80–96). Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Banks, J. A. (2019). An introduction to multicultural education (6th ed.). Pearson Education, Inc. Bernasconi, R. (2017). Facing up to the Eurocentrism and racism of academic philosophy in the west: A response to Davis, Direk, and mills. Comparative and Continental Philosophy, 9(2), 151–161. doi :10.1080/17570638.2017.1331901. Bodunrin, P. O. (1981). The question of African philosophy. Philosophy, 56(216), 161–179. Burke, P. (2009). Cultural hybridity. Polity. Chimakonam, J. O. (2015). Addressing Uduma’s Africanness of a philosophy question and shifting the paradigm from metaphilosophy to conversational philosophy. Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religions, 4(1), 33–50. Coates, T. J. (2014). Convict Labor in the Portuguese Empire, 1740–1932: Redefining the Empire. Leiden:Brill. Coates, T. J. (2018). The depósito de degredados in Luanda, Angola: Binding and building the Portuguese empire with convict labour, 1880s to 1932. International Review of Social History, 63(S26), 151–167. Du Bois, W. E. B. (2015). The souls of black folk. Yale University Press.

74

African Philosophy and International Migration Etuk, U. (2002). The possibility of African logic. In: O. Oladipo (Ed.), The third way in African philosophy: Essays in honour of Kwasi Wiredu. Hope Publication. Faist, T. (2000). A review of dominant theories of international migration. In: T. Faist (Ed.), The volume and dynamics of international migration and transnational social spaces, (pp. 30–59). Faist, T. (2010). Diaspora and transnationalism: What kind of dance partners. In: R. Bauböck & T. Faist (Eds.), Diaspora and transnationalism: Concepts, theories and methods (Vol. 11, pp. 9–34). Amsterdam University Press. GMDAC. (2022). Migration data in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). IOMGMDAC. https://www​.migrationdataportal​.org​/regional​-data​-overview​/southern​-africa. Gyekye, K. (1996). African cultural values: An introduction. Sankofa Publishing Company. Horsthemke, K. (2006). The idea of the African university in the twenty-first century: Some reflections on Afrocentrism and Afroscepticism. South African Journal of Higher Education, 20(4), 449–465. Horsthemke, K. (2011). Some doubts about ‘indigenous knowledge’, and the argument from epistemic injustice. Engaging with the Philosophy of Dismas A. Masolo, 25(1–2), 49. Horton, R. (1975). On the rationality of conversion: Part II. Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute, 45(4), 373–399. doi:10.2307/1159452. Jowi, J. O., & Sehoole, C. (2017). Knowledge and change in African university: Some prospects and opportunities for internationalisation. In: M. Cross & A. Ndofirepi (Eds.), Knowledge and change in African universities. Sense Publishers. Kanu, Y. (2007). Tradition and educational reconstruction in Africa in postcolonial and global times: The case for Sierra Leone. African Studies Quarterly, 9(3), 65–84. King, R. (2012). Theories and Typologies of Migration: An Overview and a Primer. Malmö: Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare (MIM), Malmö University. Laleye, I. P. (2002). Is there an African philosophy in existence today. In: P. H. Coetzee & A. P. J. Roux (Eds.), Philosophy from Africa: A Text with Readers (pp. 467–476). Leepo, K., & Maseng, J. O. (2019). An examination of the contribution of African immigrants scholars in increasing the knowledge repository in institutions of higher learning: The case of north west university. African Renaissance, 16(2), 1744–2532. Makinde, M. A. (2007). African philosophy: The demise of a controversy. Obafemi Awolowo University Press. Masolo, D. A. (1994). African philosophy in search of identity. Indiana University Press. Massey, D. S. (1999). Why does immigration occur?: A theoretical synthesis. In: C. Hirschman, K. Philip, & D. Josh (Eds.), The handbook of international migration: The American experience. Russell Sage Foundation. Mbiti, J. S. (1969). African religions and philosophy. Heinemann Educational Books Ltd. Mbiti, J. S. (1990). African religions & philosophy. Heinemann. McCarthy, C. (2014). The uses of culture: Education and the limits of ethnic affiliation. Routledge. Mngomezulu, B. R., & Maposa, M. T. (2017). The challenges facing academic scholarship in Africa. In: M. Cross & A. Ndofirepi (Eds.), Knowledge and change in African universities. Sense Publishers. Mokoena, A. S. (2022). International migration white paper. Presented to the Minister of Home Affairs, DR Mangosuthu Buthelezi, by AS Mokoena, Chairperson of the Task Team on International Migration on behalf of the Task Team. As Modified and Approved by Cabinet of the South African Government. Mukumbang, F. C., Ambe, A. N., & Adebiyi, B. O. (2020). Unspoken inequality: How COVID-19 has exacerbated existing vulnerabilities of asylum-seekers, refugees, and undocumented migrants in South Africa. International Journal for Equity in Health, 19(1), 1–7. Mungwini, P. (2011). The challenges of revitalizing an indigenous and Afrocentric moral theory in postcolonial education in Zimbabwe. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 43(7), 773–787. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2013). Coloniality of power in postcolonial Africa. African Books Collective. Njoroge, R. J., & Bennaars, G. A. (1986). Education and philosophy in Africa. Transafric. Nkomo, M. (2000). Educational research in the African development context. In: P. Higgs, N. C. G. Vakalisa, T. V. Mda, & N. T. Asie-Lumumba (Eds.), African Voices in Education (pp. 47–62). Lansdowne: Juta & Co Ltd. Obotetukudo, S. (2001). The African philosophy of development: When localism and traditionalism collide with globalism, is “Tele” communication the answer. Journal of Sustainable Development in Africa, 3(2), 39–57.

75

Blessing Chapfika Oruka, H. O. (1997). Practical philosophy: In search of an ethical minimum. East African Publishers. Ozumba, G. O. (2011). Integrative humanism and complementary reflection: A comparative analysis. Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religions, 1(1), 151–170. Pasura, D. (2022). Negotiating diasporic leisure among Zimbabwean migrants in Britain. Ethnography, 14661381221115798. Petkova, P. (2017). How to build a just society: In the defence of communitarianism. Dialogue and Universalism: Journal of the International Society for Universal Dialogue, XXVII(2/2017), 189–196. Ramose, M. (2003). Transforming education in South Africa: Paradigm shift or change?: Perspectives on higher education. South African Journal of Higher Education, 17(3), 137–143. Rettová, A. (2016). African philosophy as a radical critique. Journal of African Cultural Studies, 28(2), 127–131. Reynolds, B. (2022, August 7). Mabe declares ‘open season on illegal foreign nationals in SA’. Sunday Times. https://www​.timeslive​.co​.za​/sunday​-times​/opinion​-and​-analysis​/opinion​/2022​-08​-07​ -mabe​-declares​-open​-season​-on​-illegal​-foreign​-nationals​-in​-sa/. Sanni, J. S. (2020). Decolonising borders: Re-imagining strangeness and spaces. Theoria, 67(163), 1–24. Shizha, E. (2005). Reclaiming our memories: The education dilemma in postcolonial African school curricula. In: A. A. Abdi & A. Cleghorn (Eds.), Issues in African education: Sociological Perspectives (pp. 65–83). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Shujaa, M. J. (1994). Too much schooling, too little education: A paradox of black life in white societies. ERIC. Tempels, P. (1959). Bantu philosophy (M. A. T. Translated into English from “La Philosophie Bantoue” the French Version by Dr. A. Rubbens of Fr. Tempels’ original work. The Revd. Colin King, Trans.). Présence Africaine. Tomlinson, J. (1996). Cultural globalisation: Placing and displacing the West. The European Journal of Development Research, 8(2), 22–35. Tutu, D. (1999). No future without forgiveness. Image. Tutu, D., & Tutu, N. (1989). The words of Desmond Tutu. Newmarket Press. Uduma, O. U. (2014). The question of the “African” in African philosophy: In search of a criterion for the africanness of a philosophy. Filosofia Theoretica: Journal of African Philosophy, Culture and Religions, 3(1), 127–146. Vest, J. L. (2009). Perverse and necessary dialogues in African philosophy. Thought and Practice, 1(2), 1–23. Wiredu, K. (1995). Conceptual decolonization in African philosophy: Four essays (selected and introduced by Olusegun Oladipo). Hope Publication Ltd. Wiredu, K. (2002). Conceptual decolonization as an imperative in contemporary African philosophy: Some personal reflections. Rue Descartes, 2, 53–64. Wiredu, K. (2004). Prolegomena to an African philosophy of education: Perspectives on higher education. South African Journal of Higher Education, 18(3), 17–26.

76

PART II

Patterns and Trends of Contemporary African Migration

5 PATTERNS AND TRENDS OF INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION WITHIN AND OUT OF AFRICA Daniel Makina and Peter Mudungwe

Introduction Generally, there is consensus among anthropological and archaeological studies that Africa is the cradle of humanity. Chan et al. (2019) summarize the findings of such studies stating that anatomically modern humans originated in Africa around 200,000 years ago. It is further reported that humans remained in Africa thereafter for the next 140,000 years and only migrated to Europe and Asia about 60,000 years ago. Thus, it can be argued that intraAfrican migration preceded out-of-African migration. Thereafter, it is realistic to assume that intra-African migration must have co-existed with out-of-African migration. However, as such which was dominant between the two in pre-history, we do not know because there are no recorded statistics. Inter-African migration has a long history, shaping the way in which distinct regions have been populated and developed (European Parliament, 2020, p. 4). Before the colonial period, many societies, especially in Africa, also depended on different levels of mobility for their livelihoods; rather than undertaking wage labour, people moved for trade, seasonal agriculture, marriage, natural resource extraction, pastoral nomadism, and many other reasons (European Parliament, 2020, p. 4). Labour migration was induced following the Western presence (slave trade) in Africa, whereby people were moved from one region to another for work. Partially recorded migration into Africa and out of Africa can be traced to the 15th century. With regard to out-migration, the slave trade that existed between the 16th and 19th centuries represented forced migration out of Africa to the Western world. It is estimated that over 12 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic into the Americas over four centuries (Segal, 1995). Early significant migration into Africa from Europe started with the Dutch (through the Dutch East India Company) who settled at Cape in South Africa in 1652. This was followed by European migration that subsequently followed colonization. Following the abolition of the slave trade after 1806, Africa saw a rise in indentured Asian labour migration to satisfy the demand for labour in the plantations, mines, and infrastructure projects in the colonies. Indentured labour was a form of inter-colonial regulated work migration by Asian workers in DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-7

79

Daniel Makina and Peter Mudungwe

the 19th and early 20th centuries which the Indian government stopped after 1911 (Tinker, 1974). Intra-Africa, there was also significant indentured African labour migration to South Africa and Mauritius to work in mines, plantations, and farms. During the colonial periods, the out-migration from Africa to the Western world was largely for education purposes whereby some ended up staying permanently while others returned home upon completion of their studies. This type of migration continued postcolonial and was accompanied by significant European reverse migration when colonies attained independence. According to European Parliament (2020), African independence also opened up new possibilities for intra-African migration, with the first steps being made towards regional collaboration and integration. Contemporary African migration is that being witnessed in post-independent Africa. It is the one that is the subject of this chapter. Contemporary global migration trends indicate that by 2017 there were more than 258 people living outside their land of birth (international migrants), representing around 3.4 percent of the world population, up from 2.8 percent in 2000 (UNDESA, 2017). The International Organisation for Migration (IOM, 2018, p. 9) reports that within the 258 million international migrants, 150.3 million are migrant workers, 4.8 million students, 25.4 million registered refugees, 124.8 million women, and 36.1 million children. Noticeably, the global migration trend is upwards as international migrants have risen from 191 million in 2005 to 220 million in 2010 and then to more than 258 million by the end of the 2010s. The global breakdown of migration shows that about 38 percent represent South-South migration while 35 percent represent South-North migration. Despite the South-North migration being only about one-third of global migration, it attracts disproportionate attention as compared to the larger South-South migration. African migrants account for only ten percent of the global total international migrants but receive the most media attention perhaps because of the disproportionate fatalities (in the Mediterranean Sea, in particular) they encounter as they pursue irregular South-North migration. For instance, over 17,000 out of the 30,000 irregular migration deaths and disappearances reported by IOM for the period 2014 to 2018 took place in the Mediterranean (IOM, 2019). Notably, the vast majority of people migrate to a country with a higher Human Development Index (HDI) than their own country of origin. This is particularly so in the case of migrants from developing countries. Over 80 percent of total migrants from developing countries migrate to countries with a higher HDI and most do not migrate to developed countries but rather to other developing countries with better employment prospects. This trend is observable in Sub-Saharan Africa whereby about two-thirds of migration is intraregional, inter-regional as later on explained in the chapter. North Africa is a stark contrast in that about 90 percent of its emigrants depart to destinations outside the continent. The intra-Africa emigration rate is about 50 percent and is comparable to that of other developing countries in Europe and Central Asia (59 percent) and the Middle East (45 percent).

International Migration Trends Migration at large is very controversial, and it is potent when one understands where migrants come from and where the mostly migrate to. This understanding connects migration and reasons for migrations, as well as builds migration projections. Intuitively, one may think that majority of international migrations come from low-income countries. Current trend confirms that the majority of international migrants originate from middle-income countries. According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA, 80

Patterns and Trends of International Migration within and Out of Africa

2020, p. 14), in 2020, nearly 177 million international migrants globally came from a middle-income country, equal to about 63 percent of the total, and of these, nearly 90 million were born in a lower-middle income country and 88 million in an upper-middle-income country. However, 37 million international migrants, or around 13 percent of the total, originate from low-income countries and 53 million migrants originate from high-income countries, equal to 19 percent of the total, while for 13 million migrants, or five percent, the origin is unknown (UNDESA 2020). Figure 5.1 shows that while the number of migrants originating from low-income countries remains small compared to other income groups, it picks up between 2010 and 2020, and according to UNDESA (2020), this shift is driven by humanitarian crises. The big question is that would the number of migrants from low-income countries surpasses that of middle-income countries, given that there is increase in humanitarian crises year-on-year and more particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa? However, COVID-19 disruptions around the globe have led to the closing of national borders and severe disruptions to international land, air, and maritime travel and caused hundreds of thousands of people to cancel or delay plans of moving abroad (United Nations, 2020a). Despite these disruptions, it is not clear if it has any effect on the African diaspora on regional and international levels. However, desperate journeys observed across the oceans to Europe may mean that the pandemic is not a threat to African Migrants. According to UNDESA, in 2020 Africa hosted 25.3 million international migrants compared to 14.7 million for Latin America and the Caribbean and 85.6 million for Asia. Figure 5.2 graphically summarizes the number of international migrants by destination in the developing regions of Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean in two periods 2010 and 2020. Between 2010 and 2020, number of international migrants in Africa increased by 7.8 million, a net increase of 0.78 million migrants per annum. In contrast, the number of international migrants in Asia increased by 19.5 million representing a net increase of international migrants of 1.95 million migrants per annum. For the same period, the number of international migrants in Latin America and the Caribbean increased by 6.4 million, a net increase of 0.64 million per annum. Recent trends show that Latin America is experiencing an increase of transit international migrants from Africa and Asia whose intention is reaching North America as the traditional routes to Europe are increasingly becoming risky (Yates,

Number of migrants (millions)

300 250

World

200

High-income countries Middle-income countries

150

Uper-middle-income countries Lower-middle-income countries

100

Low-income countries

50 ..

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

2020

Figure 5.1  Number of International Migrants, by World Bank Income Group at Origin, 1990–2020

81

Daniel Makina and Peter Mudungwe

Latin America and the Caribbean

2020 2010

14.7 8.3

85.6

Asia

66.1

25.3

Africa

—

17.8 10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

Figure 5.2  Number of International Migrants Millions by Region of Destination, 2010 and 2020 10.0 8.0

Africa Asia Latin America and the Caribbean

6.0 4.0

2015-2020

2010-2015

2005-2010

2000-2005

-2.0

1995-2000

0.0

1990-1995

2.0

-4.0

Figure 5.3  Annual Rate of Change of Migrant Stock by Region 1990–2020, Percentage

2019). This pattern of migration from Africa (especially from Cameroon and the DRC) and Asia through Latin America is motivated by a number of factors such as economic reasons, conflict, and reuniting with family in North America. Figure 5.3 shows the annual rate of change of migrant stock by region for Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean. Figure 5.3 shows that the rate of increase in African migrant stock eclipsed that of Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean in the period 2010–2015. In prior periods 1995–2000, 82

Patterns and Trends of International Migration within and Out of Africa

2000–2005, and 2005–2010, the rate trailed that of both regions. In the period 2015–2020, African migrant stock maintained the same level as Asian migrant stock. It is surprising as Latin American and the Caribbean migrant stock showed a huge jump in the period 2015– 2020. This huge difference may be explained by US stricter restrictions by President Trump on migration. As such, potential migrants to USA might have been stuck in Latin American and the Caribbean with lesser migration restrictions.

Intra-African Migration versus Out-of-African Migration It is potent to show migration trends by migrants leaving in their destination countries, but in their regions of origin. While intra-European migration is not firmly based on income level, intra-African migration is based on income level. Literature provides that African migrants are more desperate to travel to high-income countries, since within their region of origin, countries are fairly on the same income level. But unfortunately, due to lack of resources to travel to these high-income countries, intra-African migration surpasses African Diaspora on an international scale. Sub-Saharan Africa had the second largest share of intraregional migration globally, with 63 percent of all migrants born in Sub-Saharan Africa living in another country or area in the region in 2020 (UNDESA, 2020, p. 21). Intra-European migration is the highest in the world with 70 percent of all migrants born in Europe 2020 (UNDESA, 2020), but this movement is not caused by drivers observed in Sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of African migrants are intra-Africa mainly from the neighbouring states. Over three-quarters of African migrants move voluntarily, mainly motivated by economic incentives, that is, the availability of relatively well-paid employment, while the other quarter is influenced by political instabilities, conflicts and humanitarian crises, and climate-related disasters (Bakewell and Bonfiglio, 2013). As illustrated in Figure 5.4, most of the international migration in Africa takes place within the continent and inter-regionally. In the order of the highest migrant numbers, the main intra-Africa migrant receiving countries are: South Africa, Cote d’Ivoire, Uganda, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Kenya. Figure 5.5 shows the top ten international migrants receiving countries in Africa. The main intra-Africa migrant-receiving countries are, in order of importance: South Africa, Cote d’Ivoire, Uganda, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Kenya; these host 32 percent of all intra-regional migrants. Some of these receiving countries have become migration hubs in Africa – particularly South Africa in Southern Africa, Côte d’Ivoire in West Africa, and Kenya in East Africa. Efforts by African leaders to strengthen regional integration have increased intra-African migrations, especially the free movement of people in Economic Communities such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the East African Community (EAC) where intra-regional migration comprises over two-thirds of total migration. In recent years, both ECOWAS and EAC have launched regional passports and abolished visa requirements for citizens of member states. The ECOWAS region has gone even further to abolish residence permits for citizens. At the continental level, the African Union adopted a continent-wide protocol on free movement in March 2018, which, when ratified by all member states, will result in more intra-African migration. UNDESA data shows that since 2000 the trend of intra-African migration has been at the annual rate of eight percent which is higher than the out-of-African migration annual growth rate which was 2.8 percent. With the exception of North Africa whose majority of migrants are outside Africa, the majority of African migrants live on the continent. In 83

Daniel Makina and Peter Mudungwe

Figure 5.4  African Migration Trends at a Glance

general, African countries with reasonably higher levels of economic development, such as those in the Maghreb, the west coast of West Africa, and South Africa often have high levels of out-of-African migration compared with poorer countries. However, Côte d’Ivoire is a major destination of intra-African migration and has fewer of its citizens that leave the country despite being a coastal country. Between 2000 and 2019, the number of international migrants in Africa increased from 15.1 million to 26.6 million, the sharpest relative increase (76%) among all major regions of the world; the share of international migrants in Africa relative to the total globally increased from nine percent in 2000 to ten percent in 2019 (IOM, 2019). Despite this sharp relative increase, the total number of international migrants recorded in Africa remains relatively modest compared to other world regions and to Africa’s total population. According to UNDESA data, in 2020, Europe and Asia hosted 31 percent of the world’s 280 million international migrants each, followed by Northern America (21%), Africa (9%), Latin 84

Patterns and Trends of International Migration within and Out of Africa 2020 Internaonal Migrant Stock in Africa South Africa Côte d'Ivoire Uganda Sudan Nigeria Ethiopia Kenya R Congo South Sudan Libya —

1 000 000

2 000 000

3 000 000

4 000 000

Figure 5.5  Top Ten Destination Countries in Africa for International Migrants, 2020

America and the Caribbean (5%), and Oceania (3%). While the percentage of international migrants in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean is 45 percent for all the three regions, Northern America and Europe dominate with 52 percent. This follows that the most developed regions tend to attract many migrants due to the presence of many opportunities (UNDESA, 2020). As such, economic reason is the key driver of international migration. The USA has been the main country of destination for international migrants since 1970; since then, the number of foreign-born people residing in the country has more than quadrupled – from less than 12 million in 1970 to close to 51 million in 2019 (IOM, 2020). Outside Africa, the USA is a major destination for African migrants. There are more than 3.8 million black immigrants in the USA that represent 8.7 percent of the USA’s black population (Anderson and Lopez, 2018). Echeverria-Estrada and Batalova (2019) estimated that 2.4 million immigrants from Africa comprising slightly more than two million from subSaharan Africa and 400,000 from North Africa were living in the USA in 2018, representing about five percent of the USA’s 44.7 million total immigrants. More than 36 percent of them arrive from West Africa, followed by 29 percent and 17 percent from Eastern and Northern Africa, respectively (Omenka et al., 2020). Refugees largely originate from conflict-ridden countries such as Ethiopia, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). High skilled immigrants and foreign students largely originate from Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and South Africa. Table 5.1 shows the distribution of Sub-Saharan African immigrants by country and region. It is evident that African migration to the USA is dominated by migrants from East and West African countries, representing more than half of all African immigrants in the USA. Notably, more than half of all migrants living in the USA are just from four countries: Nigeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, and Kenya. In terms of destinations to Europe, Sub-Saharan African migrants were concentrated in four countries – the UK (1.3 million), France (980,000), Italy (370,000), and Portugal 85

Daniel Makina and Peter Mudungwe Table 5.1 Sub-Saharan African Immigrants in the USA in 2018 Region and country

Number of immigrants

Share (%)

Sub-Saharan African Total Eastern Africa  Eritrea  Ethiopia  Kenya  Somalia Other Eastern Africa Middle Africa  Cameroon Other Middle Africa Southern Africa   South Africa Other Southern Africa Western Africa   Cape Verde  Ghana  Liberia  Nigeria   Sierra Leone Other Western Africa Africa (not elsewhere classified)

2,019,000 730,000 45,000 278,000 147,000 103,000 157,000 171,000 78,000 93,000 104,000 100,000 5,000 896,000 37,000 195,000 85,000 375,000 48,000 155,000 117,000

100 36.2 2.2 13.8 7.3 5.1 7.8 8.5 3.9 4.6 5.2 4.9 0.2 44.4 1.8 9.7 4.2 18.6 2.4 7.7 5.8

Source: Migration Policy Institute (MPI) tabulation of data from the U.S. Census Bureau 2018 ACS

(360,000) according to UN Population Division estimates in 2017. Overall, the USA is more preferred than Europe by Sub-Saharan African migrants.

Key Drivers of African Migration In order to appreciate motivations and drivers of African migration, one must have regard to population dynamics vis-à-vis employment generation on the continent. UNDESA estimates that Africa’s population, which has risen from 477 million in 1980 to 1.2 billion by 2017, will reach 2.5 billion by 2050. The youth population (15–24 years) that was around 231 million in 2015 will double to 461 million by 2050, which increase is higher than in other developing regions like China and India. Economic growth and job creation do not match the rapid growth in the youth population. The African Development Bank (AfDB1) observes that out of Africa’s roughly 420 million young people between 15 and 35 years old, “onethird are unemployed and discouraged, another third are vulnerably employed, and only one in six is in wage employment.” The AfDB further reports that only 3.1 million jobs are created every year in Africa yet there are 10–12 million youths that enter the workforce each year. The combination of rapid population growth and low employment growth, especially in the rural areas where most Africans live, is leading to high rural-urban migration, which is usually an alternative or forerunner to international migration.2 Both historical and modern antecedents suggest that international migration is an inevitable and complex phenomenon that touches political, economic, and social lives of the 86

Patterns and Trends of International Migration within and Out of Africa

interconnected world (IOM, 2018; UNCTAD, 2018). In 2017, there were about 41 million international migrants moving within, from, or to Africa where five million were immigrants from the rest of the world, 17 million were residents outside the continent, and 19 million were found to be residing within the continent. However, African international migration stock has dropped to 40 million in 2020 according to UNDESA 2020 statistics. While 20 million reside in Africa in 2020, 11 million reside in Europe. Europe is the second largest destination for African migrants with 11 million migrants, followed by Northern America (predominantly USA) with three million migrants. According to UNDESA 2020 migration statistics, more migrants tend to migrate to economically advanced societies. Due to constraints such as financial resources, distance, and migration restrictions observed in the USA recently, migrants are likely to migrate to relatively richer countries that are closest to their countries of origin. This explains why South Africa is at the top of the list in terms of migration destination preferences for an average Sub-Saharan African migrant. If migration is driven by economic motives, then voluntary migration dominates involuntary migration. According to UNECA (2017), over three-quarters of African migrants move voluntarily, mainly motivated by economic incentives, that is, the availability of relatively well-paid employment, while the other quarter is influenced by political instabilities, conflicts and humanitarian crises, and climate-related disasters. Some evidence cited in the 2017 UNECA Report3 shows that the perception that poverty is a driver of migration in Africa is not entirely supported by research. It is observed that such perception ignores the role of labour demand and its changing dynamics. The segmentation of European and Middle East labour markets into a higher skilled formal sector and a lower skilled that is largely informal is leading to a persistent demand for migrant labour in the informal labour markets of rich country destinations, especially manual jobs, which local workers in those countries shun. In the skilled sector, there is also an increasing demand that is motivating an increasing number of young, skilled Africans to migrate out of Africa to work and/or study. Africa is the youngest continent in the world with half the population under the age of 18 years. The West, on the other hand, has an aging population. So, there is bound to be a natural flow of young, educated people from Africa wishing to migrate to the West to look for jobs. Conversely, the overall difference in income levels triggers movement and this underpins the rationale to migrate. By nature, humans are always looking for better opportunities and this shift flows from poor countries to rich countries with greener pastures. A large body of literature documents that a significant difference in the average income in terms of average GDP per capita between the origin and destination countries is a principal determinant of international migration (Giménez-Gómez et al., 2019, p. 7). Evidence shows that in general emigration rises with economic development until a country reaches upper-middle-income status after which it flattens and starts to fall.4 Presently, the majority of African countries are in the low-income (27) and lower-middle-income (18) categories; there are only eight countries in the upper-middle-income category (Algeria, Botswana, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Libya, Mauritius, Namibia, and South Africa) and one country (Seychelles) in the high-income category.5 The implication is that emigration within and out of Africa will continue to rise in tandem with economic development for years to come until countries reach the upper-middle-income levels. Potential migrants require a certain level of resources to actually move, and as individuals or households increase their level of development, they are likely to continue migrating until they reach an “income threshold” at which the potential gain of migrating is deemed too small (European Parliament, 2020, p. 15). This potential gain depends on the income gap between sending and receiving coun87

Daniel Makina and Peter Mudungwe

tries, meaning that as long as wages are significantly higher in the receiving countries, people are likely to continue migrating (IOM, 2017a; UN, 2019). Thus, the actual economic deprivation and abject poverty of most African countries will likely have an enormous push effect on African migrants and refugees of Africa to high personal income countries in Europe and America (Giménez-Gómez et al., 2019). The segmentation of labour markets has also resulted into feminization of migration. For instance, the state-sanctioned sponsorship system in the Middle East has created demand for female domestic workers. The dynamics that play out in African migration are to a large extent replicated in rural-urban migration within African countries and in intra-African migration. Male migrants typically work in construction, industry, and intensive agriculture while there is a growing trend of women migrating within and between African countries to work as domestic workers (De Haas, 2017). Most Africans living outside the continent are not from the poorest sections of their societies of origin. Migration statistical data shows that countries with relatively higher levels of economic and human development such as Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, South Africa, Ghana, and Senegal tend to have comparatively higher emigration rates outside the continent than poorer countries. However, there are some exceptions such as large overseas migrant populations from Ethiopia and Somalia, which countries experienced extended periods of political instability (Bakewell and Bonfiglio, 2013). Furthermore, drivers of migration for unskilled and semi-skilled child labour (under 18) are limited education opportunities and high poverty levels. The International Labour Organisation (ILO, 2019) observed that Africa has the highest prevalence of child labour internationally at 19.6 percent compared to a global incident of 9.6 percent. Though economic push plays a major role in emigration numbers, other contributing drivers are: civil conflicts, weak institutions, and climate change. In the absence of safety and security, the expected returns of labour, development projects, and investments are significantly decreased – since civil conflicts directly affect both the security and livelihood of individuals, people are likely to be forced to migrate in seeking for an alternative survival strategy (De Haas, 2017; Giménez-Gómez et al., 2019). Severe conflicts often lead to a significantly increased flow of internally displaced people or refugees (UN, 2018). The current political situation of most African countries is very poor in the way conflicts are handled; many civil disorders have been witnessed in DR Congo, Nigeria, Chad Republic, and Cameroon, and this has led to the deaths of many youths and set in motion youths across borders. This partly explains why African migrants are younger relative to other regions. Wars and civil disorders trigger youths’ movement across borders more than children and the old. Africa remains one of the (demographically) youngest continents in the world, which continues to influence the likelihood of migration; migrants’ average age is particularly low among inter-continental migrants in Africa when compared with other continents (European Parliament, 2020, pp. 12–13). Politically motivated migrants tend to migrate to the closest relatively secure country; this category of migrants (refugees) does not migrate to countries far away from home relative to economic migrants because they tend to be more financially disadvantaged and never prepare to migrate. Furthermore, Baudassé et al. (2018) supported that the weak performance of institutions in the source countries may be a sufficient motive for emigrating in search of institutions which perform better. The lack of political rights, democracy, and endemic corruption act as push factors for migrants seeking greater freedoms. The institutional setting in Africa is such that citizens’ rights are violated and suppressed such that they have no saying and do 88

Patterns and Trends of International Migration within and Out of Africa

nothing. It becomes impossible for learned minds to stay home and watch things go wrong without being outspoken. This triggers learned Africans to migrate to more politically stable and safe countries like the Western societies. Population increase is exacerbating resource insecurities due to increased demand for already depleted resources, and combined with climate change, they are the main drivers of both intra- and inter-migration (Mpandeli et al., 2020). Climate change acts as an impact multiplier and accelerator to other drivers of human mobility (Onafeso, 2020, p. 155). The debate on migration and climate change focuses on the number of people likely to be displaced by climate change. Evidence shows that increasing instances of flooding and scarcity of resources as well as severe weather changes are likely to increase migration of people already in vulnerable situations (Marchand et al., 2017). Following literature investigation, Hoffmann (2020) found that changing climatic conditions and ecological hazards are an important migration driver in Sub-Saharan Africa. According to the author, major contributors are floods and droughts, which have led to major displacements in the past years. Climate change is more prevalent in some parts of Africa than others. Urban areas in southern Africa are under immense pressure to accommodate climate refugees from resource-stressed rural areas, a situation that is impacting agricultural production (Mpandeli et al. 2020). On March 14, 2019, Tropical Cyclone Idai struck the southeast coast of Mozambique, and UN High Commissioner for Refugees reported that 1.85 million people needed assistance, 146,000 were internally displaced, and Mozambique scrambled to house them in 155 temporary sites (Podesta, 2019). The cyclone and subsequent flooding damaged 100,000 homes, destroyed one million acres of crops, and demolished $1 billion worth of infrastructure. Climate change has become a big player in human mobility in recent times. An estimate by Kanta et al. (2018) indicates that three regions (Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southeast Asia) will generate 143 million more climate migrants by 2050. Climate-induced migration tends to be intra-regional. However, over time and depending on how overwhelmed resources are, it is likely to induce international migration (MPI, 2013  ).

Demographics of African Migrants Analysis of UNDESA data shows that in 2020 while the global median age of international migrants is 39 years, the one for African international migrants is 31 years confirming that it is generally the youth that migrate. The youthfulness of African migrants becomes apparent when their median age is compared with those of other regions, viz:

• • • •

North America and the Oceania – 44 years; Europe – 43 years; Oceania – 41 years; and Latin America and the Caribbean – 31 years.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, Northern Africa, and Western Asia, male migrants had a higher median age than female migrants in the same year. According to UNDESA (2020), while in the past women often migrated as dependents of spouses or other family members, today, they increasingly migrate on their own for study or work. In 2020, just 48 percent of all international migrants worldwide were women or girls. Though the number of women migrants is increasing, the proportion of female migrants as 89

Daniel Makina and Peter Mudungwe

a percentage of total African migrants has remained the same for many years. In 2017, the share of women migrants as a percentage of the total African international migrants remained at 47%, the same as it was in 2000. UNDESA 2020 statistics reports the same proportion. However, the actual number of women migrants increased at an annual rate of 2.5%, thus indicating growing feminisation of African migration. Analysing Sub-Saharan migrants in the USA, Echeverria-Estrada and Batalova (2019) observe that while they are older than native-born Americans, they are younger than the overall foreign-born immigrants. In 2017, they constituted 82 percent of the working age group (18–64 years) as compared to 79 percent for the overall foreign-born immigrants and 59 percent of the native-born population. In terms of education, Sub-Saharan immigrants in the USA have higher qualifications than both all immigrants in general and native-born US citizens. Table 5.2 shows the position gleaned from 2017 data. Sub-Saharan immigrants in the USA are largely employed in management, business, science, and arts occupations than in other sectors. Notwithstanding better educational attainment and higher participation in civilian labour force, Echeverria-Estrada and Batalova observe that more Sub-Saharan African immigrants live in poverty (19 percent) as compared to all immigrants (15 percent) and USA born natives (13 percent), and the variability of poverty is wide with poverty rates being highest for Somalis (42 percent) and lowest among South Africans (nine percent). According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2020), immigrants’ labour market outcomes strongly differ depending on their region of origin. Education level plays a significant role in a migrant’s financial status and also depends on the destination countries’ economic structures. Uneducated or poorly educated migrants tend to do well in destination countries whereby the informal sector plays a major role in the economy. This explains why Somalis in South Africa do well than many African immigrants despite their level of education. However, in the USA, whereby the economy is well structured to accommodate only the formal sector, Table 5.2 Education and Labour Force Participation of Immigrants and US-Born Citizens in 2017 Ages 25 and over Sub-Saharan Africa immigrants in USA All immigrants in ***the USA Native-born USA citizens Selected African country migrants (ages 25 and over) Nigerians South Africans Kenyans Ghanaians Liberians Ethiopians Somalis Labour force participation (ages 16 and over) Sub-Saharan Africa immigrants All immigrants in the USA Native-born USA citizens

Proportion with bachelor degree or Higher 40% 31% 32% Proportion with bachelor degree or higher 61% 58% 50% 39% 31% 30% 15% Proportion that participates in the US civilian labour force 75% 66% 62%

Source: Echeverria-Estrada and Batalova (2019)

90

Patterns and Trends of International Migration within and Out of Africa

uneducated migrants will automatically be more financially constrained since all jobs require a certain education level.

Migration of Skills and Its Impact on African Economies Skilled migration triggers multiple impacts resulting in costs and benefits viewed from a lens of “brain drain” and “brain gain” so that developing countries only derive benefits from leveraging the benefits (Lowell and Findlay. 2001). On the one hand, high levels of skilled migration reduce economic growth and increase poverty as the number of educated personnel critical to productivity and growth ply their skills elsewhere. Migration of skilled labour lowers the human capital of the origin country and produces a shortage of high skilled labour, thereby reducing productivity (Koczan, Peri, Pinat & Rozhkov, 2021, p. 23). Brain drain may also have large implications for public finance through shifting tax revenue from income taxes (which decline because of lower high skilled labour) in favour of consumption taxes (which increase because of remittances inflows) (Koczan et al., 2021). More so, migration of skilled labour may have a long-lasting damaging impact on the quality of institutions in the origin countries. This category of migrants has the skill required to improve the country’s economic infrastructure, improve the business and finance environment, and control corruption. With their departure, there is a danger that a country may turn into a passive recipient of remittances, with a large majority uninterested in changing the status quo (Koczan et al., 2021, p. 23). On the other hand, migration feedbacks such as remittances and return of re-skilled migrants with international experiences can boost productivity and economic growth. Migration can benefit countries of origin through exchange of knowledge and culture. When migrants return to their countries of origin, they induce a new skill set which may be highly needed. Most international migrants who study computer sciences and algorithm behaviours in their destination countries tend to return back to their countries of origin since these skills are new and limited in their countries. Most migrants’ destinations are far more developed and advanced technologically than migrants’ origins. Recent shift in migration patterns can be attributed to technological differences among countries and regions. Nonetheless, due to poor political regimes and poor education infrastructure, most African migrants are unskilled. According to IOM (2019), 34.9 percent of African migrants have no formal education, 32.5 percent have basic education, 24 percent have intermediate education and only 8.5 percent have advanced education. The proportion of male and female with advanced education in 2016 was 8.6 percent and 8.4 percent, respectively. According to Figure 5.6, the more educated a migrant, the more the chances of getting employed. Immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa living in the USA are more likely to be employed than their counterparts in Portugal, France, and Italy due to their relatively higher education level than their counterparts. In 2015, 93% of US-based Sub-Saharan African immigrants were more employed, compared with 85% in Portugal, 84% in France, and 80% in Italy.

Future Migration Trends The future of migration is underpinned by push factors such as development levels, war, climate change, and rapid population increase, and pull factors such as working-age population decline. As of 2019, the total stock of migrants from the Middle East in EU28 and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries was over eight million, and for Africa over ten mil91

Daniel Makina and Peter Mudungwe 100

93%

92%

90

85%

84%

80%

80 70

69%

60 49%

50

Education Emplyment

40 30%

30

27%

20 10%

10 0

USA

UK

France

Portugal

Italy

Figure 5.6  Percentage of Sub-Saharan Africa Immigrants by Education and Employment in Five Destination Countries (2015)

lion; this largely reflects very different levels of economic development, which have persisted over this period and remain strong push factors for migration flows today (Grieveson et al., 2021, p. 10). Although much of Africa in particular is growing quickly in economic terms, in the coming decades the wealth gap will remain huge, which will continue to “push” migration towards the EU (Grieveson, Landesmann & Mara, 2021, p. 10). Wars and climate change also contribute significantly to current migration from Africa and the Middle East to the EU, and this will continue in future, given the looming wars, particularly in Africa, and recent climate change. A rapid increase in population mounts pressure on existing resources, resulting to the mass movement of people. Africa has been observed in the globe as one of the regions with rapid population expansion, and this will certainly affect future migration flow. Mara, Landesmann, and Grieveson (2021: 13) affirm that the increase in the migrant stock has been especially strong in relation to migrants originating from Africa. According to Mara et al. (2021), future migration flows on the Africa-EU15 corridor are expected to surge by up to 2.5 million by 2029, and the stock of migrants from Africa in the EU15 will be close to 12.5 million in 2029. Figure 5.7 under the baseline scenario shows that future net migration from Africa to EU15 will be 2.4 million in 2029. The net migration simply indicates that in future many Africans will migrate out and only a few migrants from other regions will migrate to Africa. This is a big concern for the continent, meaning that there are no apparent developments in the future to keep Africans in the continent through job creation. This also means wars and civil unrest looms. Figure 5.7 clearly indicates that, irrespective of migration policies, migration to EU15 from Africa will still be significant in future. In recent times, desperate journeys to Europe via the oceans are due to economic pressure, wars, and civil unrest. However, the economic improvement criterion shows the least net migration, but 2.35 million net migrations in 2029 are still significant enough. The reason here maybe due to 92

Patterns and Trends of International Migration within and Out of Africa 2800000 2700000 2600000 2500000 2400000 2300000 2200000 2100000

Baseline scenario

Migration policies: less restrictive

Higher political risks

Higher climate risks

Migration Economic policies: more improvements restrictive

Figure 5.7  Projected Net Mobility from Africa to EU15, 2020–2029

a socio-economic construct portrayed in the continent about emigration. In 2029 Africans may still migrate even if there are major economic improvements. This is related to a long history of migration and lack of trust in the government and economic structures. Recent economic boom in Nigeria did not last. Economic volatility in South Africa is relatively higher compared to Western countries. As such, for Africa migrants to stay home, economic improvements need to be sustainable for a long run. On the other hand, demographic aging on a global scale (whereby the aging North coexists with the youthful South) will determine future labour markets and migration patterns. The Boston Consulting Group6 observes that of the world’s 15 largest economies, responsible for 70% of the global GDP, 12 of them are projected to face skilled labour shortages by 2030. Table 5.3 shows that there will be substantial labour shortages in European, American, and Asia-Pacific countries. While these countries will experience labour shortages, workingage populations will continue to grow in Africa. Thus, these countries are likely to be future destinations of African migrants, especially for the skilled young persons who can afford out of African migration. Underscoring the foregoing observation, Munz (2013) aptly observes: Conventional wisdom has it that people will continue moving from youthful to aging societies as well as from today’s poorer to today’s richer economies. As a result, most policy scenarios assume that the rich countries of the Northern Hemisphere will continue to attract labor and skills from abroad, and that a youthful global South will fill the ranks of an aging Europe, Russia, and North America. In a study on effects of aging on OECD economies, Honda and Miyamoto (2020) observed that in the next 30 years, more than 20 countries would exceed the old-age dependency ratio (defined as the ratio of people 65 and older to those between 15 and 64 years old) of 50 percent which level is unprecedented in global history, and the effect would depress their growth. Hence, among the policy measures they recommend is labour market needs-based immigration in order to increase the output effects in aging societies. Despite many countries increasing immigration restrictions, Esipova, Pugliese, and Ray (2018) report that Gallup World Poll surveys find people’s desire to migrate permanently to 93

Daniel Makina and Peter Mudungwe Table 5.3 Labour Shortages and Surpluses by Country, 2020 and 2030

EUROPE  France  Germany  Italy  Spain  UK  Russia AMERICAS  Brazil  Canada  Mexico  USA ASIA-PACIFIC  China  India  Indonesia  Japan   South Korea

Labour shortage (−)/surplus (+) in 2020

Labour shortage(−)/surplus(+) in 2030

6% −4% 8% 17% 6% −5%

−1% −23% −4% −3% −1% −24%

−7% 3% 6% 10%

−33% −11% −8% 4%

7% 6% 5% 3% −6%

−3% 1% 0% −2% −26%

Source: Boston Consulting Group

another country actually increased between 2015 and 2017. The surveys found that given the opportunity, 15 percent of the world’s adults (that is, more than 750 million people) would migrate to another country, a proportion that is up from 14 percent of the 2013– 2016 period and 13 percent of the 2010–2012 period. As Table 5.4 illustrates, Sub-Saharan Africa leads all world regions in the desire to migrate in Gallup World Poll whereby respondents were asked: “Ideally, if you had the opportunity, would you like to move permanently to another country, or would you prefer to continue living in your own country?” The percentages indicate in Table 5.4 represent those who would like to migrate if they can. It is evident that out of all regions, Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest potential population who desire to migrate if given opportunity and the trend of such desires since 2010 has been steadily upward. Furthermore, demography supports the potential upward trend of African migration in the future as is evident from Koettl’s (2010) projection of changes in the size of the working-age population in some world regions, 2005–2050 shown in Table 5.5. Given the projected deficits of the working age population in advanced economies in the future, the demand for and supply of migrants will increase, and the youthful population of Africa will always have an incentive to migrate to these economies.

Implications for Policy and Programming Migration projections indicate a significant movement across borders in future. This movement is underpinned by economic inequality, climate change, wars, and civil unrest. The greatest among others is the current and projected drop in the working-age population in 94

Patterns and Trends of International Migration within and Out of Africa Table 5.4 Desire to Migrate by Region

Sub-Saharan Africa Latin America and Caribbean Europe (non-European Union) Middle East and North Africa European Union Commonwealth of independent States Northern America Australia/New Zealand/ Oceania East Asia South Asia Southeast Asia World

2010–2012 %

2013–2016 %

2015–2017 %

30 18 21 19 20 15

31 23 27 22 21 14

33 27 26 24 21 15

10 9

10 10

14 9

8 8 7 13

7 8 7 14

8 8 7 15

Source: Gallup World Poll reported by Esipova et al. (2018) Table 5.5 Projected Changes in the Size of the Working-Age Population, 2005–2050 (millions) Age group

SubSaharan Africa

Middle East and North Africa

South Asia

East Asia and Pacific

Eastern Europe and Central Asia

EU and other Europe

North America

15–24 25–39 40–64 Total working age (15–64)

163 262 274 699

10 53 124 187

27 178 450 655

−78 −65 215 72

−26 −14 15 −26

−18 −37 -33 −88

−7 −6 1 −12

Total population

951

270

863

321

−7

−57

22

Source: Koettl (2010)

the Western world, and consequently labour shortage. This automatically acts as a migration pulling factor, attracting many migrants from low-income-level countries. Africa with the most youthful population will continue to be a big player in terms of emigration volumes. It therefore means there will be many policy implications; different countries will tend to address this future influx by putting in place many migration policies, as well as amending current ones. In 2016, following the migration crisis, the EU set out a new plan to deal with migration and asylum with the aim to control external borders and migration flows (Grieveson et al., 2021). It included an important deal between the EU and Turkey, whereby all migrants crossing into Greece from Turkey would be sent back to the latter if they failed 95

Daniel Makina and Peter Mudungwe

to apply for asylum or had their asylum claim rejected (Grieveson et al., 2021). This new approach reduced irregular migration to EU by 90%. Since developed countries are currently facing labour shortage, it means they will certainly make migration policies less restrictive but robust enough to control excess or irregular immigration. They will tend to concentrate more on policies that have to do with the integration of labour migrants with the national labour framework. In 2016, the EU also launched a new partnership framework for migration with third countries, under the European Agenda on Migration with the aim to collect all existing tools and instruments to better manage migration into the EU (Grieveson et al., 2021). According to Maas-Albert (2020), in September 2020, a new pact on migration and asylum was proposed, built on the legislative proposals from 2016 aimed to improve and speed up asylum and migration procedures, and for the fair sharing of responsibility and solidarity. All of these different migration frameworks aim to manage and integrate migrants. However, since Africa is a fresh ground for emigration, with a higher desire to migrate, at a certain stage there must be a meeting point between African migration policies and those of developed countries. Inter-regional migration policies would need to integrate to develop a common framework that guides international migration. The recent migration crisis in Europe and USA has shown that when every country manages migration with no integration with another country, border control becomes an issue, and subsequently this may lead to international conflicts.

Notes 1 https://www​.afdb​.org​/fileadmin​/uploads​/afdb​/Images​/high​_5s​/Job​_youth​_Africa​_Job​_youth​ _Africa​.pdf 2 UNECA, “African Migration: Drivers of Migration in Africa”, October 2017 Draft Report prepared for Africa Regional Consultative Meeting on the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. 3 Ibid. 4 Michael Clemens (2014), “Does Development Reduce Migration?” CGD Working Paper 359, Washington, DC: Center for Global Development. 5 Based on the 2017 World Bank data, the income groups are classified as follows: (i) Low income countries with GNI per capita less than USD 1,005 (current USD); (ii) Lower-middle-income countries with GNI per capita between USD 1,006 and 3,955; (iii) Upper-middle-income countries with GNI per capita between USD 3,956 and 12,235; and (iv) High income countries with GNI per capita of greater than USD 12,235. 6 https://www​.businessinsider​.com​/rainer​-strack​-ted​-talk​-workforce​-crisis​-2030​-2015​-1​?IR​=T​#strack​ -forecasts​-supply​-and​-demand​-for​-his​-native​-germany​-based​-on​-what​-it​-would​-take​-to​-maintain​-the​ -current​-gdp​-and​-productivity​-growth​-theres​-a​-gap​-of​-8​-million​-people​-1. Accessed on 7 Aug. 2018

References Anderson, M. & Lopez, G. (2018). Key facts about black immigrants in the U.S. [Retrieved from https://www​.pewresearch​.org​/fact​-tank​/2018​/01​/24​/key​-facts​-about​-black​-immigrants​-in​-the​ -u​-s/]. Bakewell, O. & Bonfiglio, A. (2013). Moving beyond conflict: Re-framing mobility in the African Great Lakes region. University of Oxford, Oxford, IMI Working Papers Series. Baudassé, T., Bazillier, R. & Issifou, I. (2018). Migration and institutions: Exit and voice (from abroad)? Journal of Economic Surveys, 32(3), 727–766. Chan, E. K. F., et al. (2019). Human origins in a southern African palaeo-wetland and first migrations. Nature, 575(7781), 185–189.

96

Patterns and Trends of International Migration within and Out of Africa Center for Global Development. (2014). Does development reduce migration? (Working Paper 359). Clemens, M., Washington, DC. De Haas, H. (2017). Situation analysis. Patterns, levels and trends of African migration. Draft report prepared for African Regional Consultative Meeting on the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration. Echeverria-Estrada, C. & Batalova, J. (2019). Sub-Saharan African immigrants in the United States. Migration information source, the online Journal of the Migration Policy Institute, November 6, 2019. Esipova, N., Pugliese, A. & Ray, J. (2018). More than 750 million worldwide would migrate if they could. GALLUP. [Retrieved from https://news​.gallup​.com​/poll​/245255​/750​-million​-worldwide​ -migrate​.aspx]. European Parliament. (2020). Intra-African migration. [Retrieved from https://www​.europarl​.europa​ .eu​/cmsdata​/226385​/Study​_Intra​-Africa​_Migration​.pdf]. Giménez-Gómez, J. M., Walle, Y. M. & Zewdu-Zergawu, Y. (2019, January). Trends in African migration to Europe: Drivers beyond economic motivations. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 63 (8), 1–48. Grieveson, R., Landesmann, M. & Mara, I. (2021). Future migration flows to the EU: Adapting policy to the new reality in a managed and sustainable way. [Retrieved from https://wiiw​.ac​.at​/future​ -migration​-flows​-to​-the​-eu​-adapting​-policy​-to​-the​-new​-reality​-in​-a​-managed​-and​-sustainable​-way​ -dlp​-5808​.pdf]. Hoffmann, R. (2020). Climate change, migration and urbanisation: Patterns in sub-Saharan Africa. [Retrieved from https://theconversation​.com​/climate​-change​-migration​-and​-urbanisation​-patterns​-in​-sub​-saharan​-africa​-149036]. International Labour Organisation. (2019). Labour migration in Africa. [Retrieved from https://www​ .ilo​.org​/africa​/areas​-of​-work​/labour​-migration​/lang-​-en​/index​.htm]. International Monetary Fund. (2020). Would population aging change the output effects of fiscal policy? (Working Paper WP/20/92). Honda, J. & Miyamoto, H., Washington, DC. International Organization for Migration. (2017a). African migration to Europe: How can adequate data help improve evidence-based policymaking and reduce possible misconceptions? Data Briefing Series, no. 11, November 2017, p. 7. Geneva, Switzerland. International Organization for Migration. (2018). Global migration indicators 2018. IOM Global Migration Development Analysis Centre, Berlin, Germany. International Organization for Migration. (2018). World migration report. Geneva. [Retrieved from https://publications​.iom​.int​/system​/files​/pdf​/wmr​_2018​_en​.pdf]. International Organization for Migration. (2019). 30,000 irregular migration deaths, disappearances between 2014 and 2018: IOM report. Press release, January 2019. [Retrieved from https:// www​.iom​.int​/news​/30000​-irregular​-migration​-deaths​-disappearances​-between​-2014​-2018​-iom​ -report]. International Organisation for Migration. (2019). African migration report: Challenging the narrative. [Retrieved from https://publications​.iom​.int​/system​/files​/pdf​/africa​-migration​-report​.pdf]. Kanta, et al. (2018). Groundswell: Preparing for internal climate migration. World Bank. [Retrieved from https://openknowledge​.worldbank​.org/ handle/10986/29461]. Koczan, Z., Peri, G., Pinat, M. & Rozhkov, D. (2021). The impact of international migration on inclusive growth: A review. Institute for Capacity Development, International Monetary Fund, Washington, D.C. Koettl, J. (2010). Prospects for management of migration between Europe and the Middle East and North Africa. World Bank, Middle East and North Africa Region. Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network, Washington, DC. Lowell, B. L. & Findlay, A. (2001). Migration of highly skilled persons from developing countries: Impact and policy responses-synthesis report. International Labour Office, Geneva. Maas-Albert, K. (2020). You can’t build on that: Externalisation as the cornerstone of the EU pact on migration and asylum. [Retrieved from https://eu​.boell​.org​/en​/2020​/09​/30​/you​-cant​-build​ -externalisation​-cornerstone​-eu​-pact​-migration​-and​-asylum]. Mara, I., Landesmann, M. & Grieveson, R. (2021). Potential mobility from Africa, Middle East and EU neighbouring countries to Europe. [Retrieved from https://wiiw​.ac​.at​/potential​-mobility​ -from​-africa​-middle​-east​-and​-eu​-neighbouring​-countries​-to​-europe​-dlp​-5807​.pdf].

97

Daniel Makina and Peter Mudungwe Marchand, K., Reinold, J. & Silva, R. D. (2017). Study on migration routes in the East and Horn of Africa. United Nations University. Migration Policy Institute. (2013, September). Environmental change and migration: What we know (Policy Brief No. 2). Martin, S. F., Washington, DC. Migration Policy Institute. (2013, September). Demography and migration: An outlook for the 21st century (Policy Brief No. 4). Munz, R., Washington, DC. Mpandeli, S., Nhamo, L., Hlahla, S., Naidoo, D., Liphadzi, S., Modi, A. T. & Mabhaudhi, T. (2020). Migration under climate change in Southern Africa: A nexus planning perspective. Sustainability, June, 2–14. Omenka, O. I., Watson, D. P. & Hendrie, H. C. (2020). Understanding the healthcare experiences and needs of African immigrants in the United States: A scoping review. BMC Public Health, 20, 27. https://doi​.org​/10​.1186​/s12889​-019​-8127-9 Onafeso, O. D. (2020). Analysis of climate change induced forced migration in Sub-Saharan Africa. [Retrieved from file:​///C:​/User​s/ENO​W/Dow​nload​s/Ona​​feso2​​020​.​p​​df]. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2020). International migration outlook 2020. [Retrieved from https://www​.oecd​-ilibrary​.org​/sites​/0c0cc42a​-en​/index​.html​?itemId=​/ content​/component​/0c0cc42a​-en]. Podesta, J. (2019). The climate crisis, migration, and refugees. [Retrieved from https://www​.brookings​.edu​/research​/the​-climate​-crisis​-migration​-and​-refugees/]. Segal, R. (1995). The Black diaspora: Five centuries of the Black experience outside Africa. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York. Tinker, H. (1974). A new system of slavery: Export of Indian labour overseas, 1830–1920. Oxford University Press, London. United Nations. (2018). Migration for structural transformation: Economic development in Africa report 2018. United Nations Publications, New York. United Nations. (2019). Global trends: Forced displacement in 2019. [Retrieved from https:// reliefweb​.int​/report​/world​/global​-trends​-forced​-displacement​-2019]. United Nations. (2020a). Policy brief: COVID-19 and people on the move. [Retrieved from www​.un​ .org​/sites/ un2​.u​​n​.org​​/file​​s​/sg_​​polic​​y​_bri​​ef​_on​​_peop​​le​_on​​​_the_​​move.​​pdf].​ United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. (2018). Economic development in Africa report 2018: Migration for structural transformation. United Nations, New York and Geneva. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2020a). International migration: 2020 highlights. United Nations, New York. [Retrieved from https://www​.un​.org​/development​/desa​ /pd​/sites​/www​.un​.org​.development​.desa​.pd​/files​/undesa​_pd​_2020​_international​_migration​ _highlights​.pdf]. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2020b). International migrant stock 2020. [Retrieved from https://www​.un​.org​/development​/desa​/pd​/content​/international​ -migrant​-stock]. UNECA. (2017). African migration: Drivers of migration in Africa. Draft Report prepared for the Africa Regional Consultative Meeting on the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, October 2017. Yates, C. (2019). As more migrants from Africa and Asia arrive in Latin America, governments seek orderly and controlled pathways. Migration Information Source, Migration Policy Institute, Washington, DC.

98

6 ISSUES, PATTERNS, AND TRENDS IN CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN MIGRATION TO EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA Charles Temitope Adeyanju and Olabimpe A. Olatunji

Introduction Deserting Africa is like claiming that nothing can be accomplished, established nor enjoyed here. This is a severe problem. Like rats deserting a sinking ship our leaders send their children abroad to study in the most prestigious universities in the world. Their wives give birth abroad in hopes that their children will one day become American or European; in fact, anything but African. They leave behind an African youth feeling lost, frustrated and in despair, yearning to go to the West to escape a seemingly pointless future. The land, sea, and sky become their refuge. Leaving Africa thus becomes a life-long task-to live elsewhere, anywhere, but not here. (Kala, 2007) The opening words are cribbed from the film, Has God Forsaken Africa?: When exile is the only option; an interesting film on Senegal, a synecdoche of Africa. The documentary, made in 2007, has the themes of colonialism, neo-colonialism, identity crises, and “victim blaming.” The film depicts the youth as victims of a bad political and economic system. As a result, the youth feel betrayed by their leaders and institutions. Over time, they lose hope in their continent and feel their salvation is in the West-Europe and North America. Has God Forsaken Africa? is a clear account of the deleterious human material condition of Africa that precipitates the irregular, perilous and desperate migration of African youth to the West. The youth look to migration to the West as a solution to the myriad of problems confronting them and the larger society. Senegal like most African countries, south of the Sahara, has experienced poverty, youth crime, illiteracy, youth unemployment, climate change, etc. due to low economic growth. Nevertheless, Has God Forsaken Africa?: When exile is the only option is not an accurate depiction of the African experience. It echoes Afro-pessimism. While it engages and exposes serious social, economic, cultural, and political problems confronting Africa, within the purview of international migration, it is a partial account of African migration. DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-8

99

Charles Temitope Adeyanju and Olabimpe A. Olatunji

African immigrants in the West are portrayed in the media, and perceived by Western subjects, as cheats, dependent, crime-prone, unhealthy, uneducated, and helpless victims of internecine wars in the “Dark continent” (Ochonu, 2014). Contrary evidence has shown that African migration to the West is not driven by poverty and immiseration per se, as explicated by Has God Forsaken Africa?: When exile is the only option, but by a complex mix of social, economic, and political factors (Flahaux & De Haas, 2016). To a serious mind, Has God Forsaken Africa?: When exile is the only option subdues African women’s subjectivities by giving the impression that only African men have the agency to use migration to the West to enhance their life chances. Flahaux and De Haas (2016, p. 2) claim that the problematization of African migration is “based on assumption, selective observation or journalistic impressions rather than on sound empirical evidence.” They add, the focus of media, policy and research on irregular migration, smuggling, trafficking and the high death toll amongst trans-Mediterranean ‘boat migrants’ reinforce the impression that African migration is essentially directed towards Europe and driven by despair. (Flahaux & De Haas 2016, p. 2) This chapter discusses contemporary African migration to Europe and North America, using secondary sources. The chapter is divided into five sections. The first section discusses the human-material development of Africa, with emphasis on causes of African migration to the West. The second section examines the contemporary patterns of migration to North America and Europe. The third section discusses the lived experiences of African immigrants in Europe and North America. The fourth section examines the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on African migration to Europe and North America. The final section analyzes the implications of African migration to the West, from a transnational perspective.

The Human Material Condition of Africa and Motivations for Contemporary Migration Africa is a continent of contradictions. There is variation in social, economic, and political development in the continent of Africa. In terms of economic development, countries such as South Africa, Botswana, Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya are more developed than the landlocked countries of Chad, Niger, and Mali. Khapoya (2013, p. 218) uses the “comparative measures of freedom” typology to classify African countries in relation to political “freedom.” Countries such as Benin, Botswana, Ghana, etc. are classified as “Free”; Burkina Faso, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, etc. are “partly free,” while Algeria, Chad, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, etc. are classified as “Not Free.” History, geography, economy, and politics have influenced migration within Africa and migration to other continents. Adepoju (2000), a prolific writer on African migration, attributes African migration, within and out of Africa, to political instability, ethnic conflicts, over-population, and poor economic growth rates. Africans migrate for social, economic, and political reasons. Many Africans migrate voluntarily for the purpose of improving their life chances. The migration phenomenon, both within Africa and migration from Africa to other parts of the world, is very complex. Migration from one country to another within Africa may end up being a steppingstone migration to the West. For example, many Eritreans flee to Europe due to political repression via Ethiopia and Sudan, where they have historical and cultural connections (Stark, 2018). 100

Issues, Patterns, and Trends in Contemporary African Migration to Europe and North America

While many Eritreans stay put in Sudan and Ethiopia, a section of them move on to Europe to seek asylum, traveling to Libya from where they reach Europe via the Mediterranean Sea. Although more Eritrean refugees are in the Horn of Africa than in Europe and the US, the media make it look like the latter are the ultimate destinations for the refugees (Stark, 2018). Therefore, migrations of Africans within Africa and to countries outside of Africa are in some instances intertwined. Factors that Mensah (2010) attributes to Black African migration to Canada apply to the emigration of many Africans to North America and Europe. The move is primarily economic, but also political, to some extent: “the yearnings for a higher standard of living and political freedom” (Mensah, 2010, p. 67). The economic situation in many African countries is not sustainable. For example, many African countries such as Ethiopia, Chad, Mali, Somalia, Angola, Sudan, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe suffer from ill-balanced nutrition and inadequate food. Relatedly, many African countries have suffered from internecine wars that affect their economies. Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Eritrea, Ethiopia, Guinea, Liberia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, Cameroon, and others have experienced civil strife and political instability (Falola & Oyebade, 2010). Simmons (2010, pp. 115–118) alludes to a trifecta of motivation, resources, and admissibility to explain immigration to Canada. These factors also have relevance to explaining the migration of Africans to countries in Europe and North America. Africans with means or resources may or may not be motivated. If they are motivated, they can travel extra-continentally because they have the resources. However, they must meet the admissible criteria, such as education, occupational and language skills, good health, etc. Motivated immigrants with resources are more likely to be admissible. In other words, many Africans with means are motivated and are admissible in many European and North American countries. In the particular case of Canada, Simmons (2010) maintains that contemporary Canadian immigration policies are driven by neoliberalism. Given that neoliberalism is global and is the dominant ideology in the world, immigration policies in the West favor highly skilled immigrants and those with resources while they disfavor and despise poor immigrants, including refugees and asylum seekers. Many African countries experience underemployment and unemployment even with a burgeoning youth population. As a result, African countries suffer brain drain. Professionals such as doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, etc. have left Africa for greener pastures. Many African youth have migrated to European countries and North America for higher education without returning upon completion of their education (Alemu, 2014). Widening inequality within African countries and globally is a motivating factor for extra-continental migration of Africans. As Castles et al. (2014) note, “the increased role of global capital and reduced state intervention in Sub-Saharan Africa has led to greater inequality and a real income decline for many” (p. 187). Africa has lost many professionals, including doctors, nurses, lawyers, engineers, teachers, etc., to migration to not only Europe and North America but also to other parts of the world for reasons of poor remuneration and poor conditions of work (Adepoju, 2000). Borrowing an expression from sociologists Davis and Moore (1945), these professionals migrate for “things that contribute to sustenance and comfort…things that contribute to humor and diversion…[and]…the things that contribute to self respect and ego expansion” (p. 243). The social construction of the West or the host society as prosperous and full of comfort by African immigrants and transmigrants via different forms of media influences subse101

Charles Temitope Adeyanju and Olabimpe A. Olatunji

quent migration or a culture of migration (Adeyanju, 2017; Mbaye, 2014; De Haas, 2008; Togunde et al., 2010). The sequestration of time and space by communication technologies of the contemporary era or the “late modern” era, as Giddens (1990) notes, expedites and accelerates interactions and facilitates relationships between transmigrants and co-ethnics in home society and in other places around the world (Johnson, 2013). The media, both traditional and social, have also played a major role in constituting and transforming human subjectivities, and amplifying desires to emigrate to the West. Relatedly, the relative ease of transportation, via seas, roads, and air, offers people more avenues to overcome structural barriers erected by wealthy states against migrants. To draw a curtain of charity, factors that motivate African migration to Europe and North America do not deviate much from factors that have motivated the migration of others across time and space. Globalization and the attendant ease of transportation have sped up immigration for professional Africans with the desire to immigrate. Many European and North American countries now have internet platforms for the processing of varieties of immigration applications for prospective African immigrants.

Contemporary Patterns of African Migration Types of Contemporary African Im/migrants Bauman (1998) explicates two categories of immigrants, thus: For the first world, the world of the globally mobile, the space has lost its constraining quality and is easily traversed in both its “real” and “virtual” renditions. For the second world, the world of the “locally tried”, of those barred from moving and thus bound to bear passively whatever change may be visited on the locality they are tied to, the real space is fast closing up. (p. 88) These antinomies exemplify global inequality and its ramifications for international migration. There are differential opportunities within the nation-state that are expressed in international migration. Deriving from Bauman’s (1998) analysis of migration, one difference between those “high up” and those “low down” is that the first may leave the second behind-but not vice versa…those who can afford it, abandon the filth and squalor of the regions that those who cannot afford the move are stuck to. (p. 86) It is evident that professionals, skilled people, students, etc. migrate to abandon filth, leaving the poor behind. Some members of the mobile class may migrate to avoid “vicarious poverty” (Ochonu, 2014). The “two worlds” identified by Bauman (1998) exist in individual African countries, and the difference between the poor and the rich is very clear. This reality contradicts the commonly held assumption that Africa is a pure type of the “second world.” The following, by Bauman (1998), is didactic: The first travel at will, get much fun from their travel…, are cajoled or bribed to travel and welcomed with smiles and open arms when they do. The second travel surreptitiously, often illegally, sometimes paying more for the crowded steerage of a sinking 102

Issues, Patterns, and Trends in Contemporary African Migration to Europe and North America

unseaworthy boat than others pay for business-class gilded luxuries-and are frowned upon, and, if unlucky, arrested and promptly deported, when they arrive. (p. 89) These two simple, but exaggerated conditions, are found throughout Africa. The first type represents Africans who have immigrated, or are aspiring to immigrate, to the West as international students, investors, upper-tier skilled workers in the service sectors of Western societies, diplomats, etc. Canada, for example, has a special immigration class for the “designer immigrants,” who are selected as immigrants based on their academic qualifications, skills, language proficiency, work experience, liquid assets, etc. (Fleras, 2015). The US and European countries have also put in place immigration policies that attract immigrants with requisite cultural and economic capital. There are also Africans in the peripheries of Western societies, representing the second type. These are refugees, lower-tier low-income workers in the service sectors, asylum seekers, undocumented, etc. in difficult peripatetic states and conditions. Many of these Africans carry over their socio-economic baggage to the destination countries, where they occupy the bottom stratum of society. They do less congenial work than indigenes of their host society. Educated and skilled immigrants are not spared from doing menial jobs or underemployment often attributed to systemic racism and sexism. In the documentary by Newman (2009), entitled, “Up Against Wall,” this type of immigrant is found on the margins of European society or in “fortress Europe.” Many of them are found in cities such as Rome, Brussels, Vienna, London, Lisbon, and in many metropolitan cities across Europe. Bauman (1998) refers to the first type as the “tourists” and the second category of people as “vagabonds”: and so the vagabond is the tourist’s nightmare; the tourist’s “inner demon” which needs to be exorcised, and daily. The sight of the vagabond makes the tourist tremblenot because of what the vagabond is but because of what the tourist may become. (p. 97) “Vagabonds” and “tourists” are crude metaphors that represent the stark realities of a divided world.

Colonization, Post-Colonization, and Diversification of Migration Patterns1 The Maghreb-Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, and Algeria have a longer history of migration to Europe than other regions in Africa. This development makes Castles et al. (2014, p. 187) state that immigration to Europe used to be considered a “Maghrebi affair.” Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, and Algeria have significant numbers of emigrants to Europe than any other region in Africa (Idemudia & Boehnke, 2020, p. 17). These observations make Flahaux and De Haas (2016) describe the Maghreb as “Africa’s emigration region par excellence” (p. 10, italics original). Flahaux and De Haas (2016) attribute this development to Maghreb’s “geographical proximity to Europe, their strong colonial and post-colonial links to France and the labour recruitment agreement these countries signed with European countries since the 1960s” (p. 10). Sub-Saharan Africa now has an increasing share of migration to Europe. Although Europe used to be the popular destination for Africans, due to its proximity and cultural-colonial affinity, North America has become an attraction to Africans because of globalization and North America’s liberalized immigration policies. 103

Charles Temitope Adeyanju and Olabimpe A. Olatunji

The migration of Africans to Europe was influenced by the colonial affinities between many African countries and Europe. For example, in 1960, most extra-continental migrants left for the UK and France because the two countries were major colonizers of the African continent (Flahaux & De Haas, 2016, p. 13). Anderson and Connor (2018, p. 5) claim that many SubSaharan immigrants living in former colonizing countries of Portugal, France, and the UK were born in countries that were once colonized by these European countries. For example, citizens of former French and Belgian colonies (Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Senegal, Mali, etc.) tended to migrate to France or Belgium; those of former Portuguese colonies (Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea Bissau, etc.) were attracted to Portugal (Johnson, 2013); and citizens of former British colonies (Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Ghana, etc.) were drawn to Britain. One main factor of influence may be the language. Citing United Nations (UN) data, Anderson and Connor (2018) state that most Sub-Saharan immigrant populations in the US and UK come from countries where English is spoken. A similar pattern is obtained in Canada. Anderson and Connor (2018, p. 5) add that English is the dominant language in six of the ten biggest source countries for Sub-Saharan African immigrants in the UK and the US. These are Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania. In the same vein, many of the top Sub-Saharan African immigrants in France are from French-speaking African nations or territories of Madagascar, Senegal, or Ivory Coast. They account for 34% of all Sub-Saharan migrants living in France. In Portugal, the three largest countries of birth for Sub-Saharan African immigrants are Mozambique, Angola, and Cape Verde, which used to be under Portuguese rule (Anderson & Connor, 2018, p. 6). Evidence shows that colonial history or affiliation no longer determines the directional flows of African migration. For example, Adepoju (2000, p. 390) notes that Senegalese began to emigrate to New York rather than France in the early 1980s. Since the 1960s, Africa is witnessing “patterns of diversifications of European destinations, with countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Portugal and Spain becoming important destinations” (Flahaux & De Haas, 2016, p. 13). Moreover, there is an increase in African migration to non-European countries, especially Saudi Arabia, Canada, Australia, and the US (Flahaux & De Haas, 2016, p. 13). Flahaux and De Haas (2016, p. 13) note that this development is not unrelated to the decline of colonial influence on Africa. Besides, Adepoju (2000, p. 390) has observed that many African immigrants in Europe who have found Europe intolerable, racist, and hostile have crossed to the US for greener pastures while Flahaux and De Haas (2016, p. 22) hypothesize that immigration restrictions by former colonies and other European countries have played a major role in the diversification of extra-continental African migrations, making Africans with skills and education move to destinations such as Canada and the US with more favorable immigration and settlement policies. All in all, it is a mix of closed immigration opportunities in Europe and more favorable immigration policies in North America that is responsible for the diversification (Flahaux & De Haas, 2016, p. 22). New immigrants from Africa in the US represent the fastest-growing population of immigrants to the US (Simmons & Etta, 2020). The West African region has more immigrant representation in the US than other regions. The breakdown is: 29% of African immigrants in the US come from East Africa, 17% from North Africa, and 36% of African immigrants have come from the West African region, particularly from Nigeria and Ghana (Simmons & Eta, 2020, p. 84). Sub-Saharan Africans are often more educated than their native Americans (Anderson & Connor, 2018). The African population in Canada, compared to populations of immigrants from Asia and the Caribbean, is low. Most Black immigrants to Canada came 104

Issues, Patterns, and Trends in Contemporary African Migration to Europe and North America

from the Caribbean, especially Jamaica and Haiti (Simmons, 2010). The top countries of birth for Black immigrants admitted to Canada between 2011 and 2016 were Haiti, Nigeria, Jamaica, Cameroon, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Statistics Canada, 2019). The United States has been more liberal to African immigration than European countries. Historically, European countries were more receptive to African immigration due to the colonial affinities between Africa and several European countries, including Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, and Belgium. Since the second half of the 20th century, the US immigration has become more receptive to immigration from Africa while the opposite was taking place in Europe. The 1986 Immigration and Control Act granted amnesty to 3,000 Africans while the 1990 Immigration Act created the visa lottery, officially known as the “Diversity Visa Program” (Simmons & Eta, 2020, p. 84), from which many Africans have been beneficiaries. Approximately two decades ago, Adepoju (2000) noted that professional women from Nigeria, Ghana, and Tanzania engaged in international migration, often leaving their spouses at home to cater for their children. With reference to Nigeria, Adepoju (2000) stated that female doctors and nurses were recruited to work in Saudi Arabia and the US for better employment incomes, benefits, and working condition. This development has remained a situation with female migration to various European countries and North America. Female professionals and non-professionals from various African countries travel with or without spouses to the US and Canada and various European countries for social, psychological, and economic reasons, signifying an important shift in gender relations in Africa. There is also a growing number of African women migrating to Europe and North America as independent professionals, students, asylum seekers and refugees, and members of family (joining their spouses). Some African women are trafficked, especially girls and women of Edo extraction in Nigeria, to Italy and Spain and European metropolises for sex trade (Osezua, 2018).

Voluntary and Forced Migration2 Africa experiences both forced/involuntary and voluntary migration. Many skilled and educated Africans “voluntarily” migrate to the West, where their skills and expertise are required, but many Africans migrate “involuntarily” for reasons of war and political conflict. It is worthy of note that both educated and non-educated Africans migrate “irregularly” due to visa restrictions in destination countries (Newman, 2009).

Illegal/Irregular Migration An overview of contemporary African migration to Europe and North America is not complete without alluding to “irregular migration,” also referred to as “illegal migration” in some literature (Mbaye, 2014).3 Violence, smuggling, human trafficking, neo-slavery, and even death characterize irregular migration within and outside of Africa. The hardship, inhumanity against humanity, violence, and dehumanization that are associated with irregular migration are beyond computation. Children and women are smuggled and trafficked under the most inhumane condition (see UNICEF, 2017). Adeniyi (2019) catalogues his brother’s unsuccessful efforts to reach Europe through illegal means in a book entitled From Frying Pan to Fire: How African Migrants Risk Everything in Their Futile Search for a Better Life in Europe. The accounts by Adeniyi (2019) reveal the experiences of many African youth in 105

Charles Temitope Adeyanju and Olabimpe A. Olatunji

their desperation to reach Europe and North America and lend further credence to social, political, and economic conditions that precipitate irregular migration of African youth. Idemudia and Boehnke (2020) identify five major routes used by migrants from Africa and the Middle East to reach Europe. They are: The Central Mediterranean Route (CMR); the Western Mediterranean Route (WMR); the Western African Route; the Eastern Mediterranean Route (EMR); and the Western Balkan Route. The first three of these routes are plied by African migrants. The CMR is the most commonly used route to reach Europe by African migrants. Italy and Malta are the first countries of entry (Idemudia & Boehnke, 2020, p. 35) via the route, and many African migrants have lost their lives on the route. Between 2014 and 2018, for example, 13,000 migrants lost their lives (Idemudia & Boehnke, 2020, p. 37). Libya has been a transit country for Sub-Saharan African migrants, plying this route, for a number of factors. First, the ease of entry into Libya due to a breakdown of law and order following the Ghaddafi era; second, Libya is close to some of the world’s poorest countries and conflict-ridden countries; third, its proximity to southern Italy and Malta; fourth, irregular migration activities in neighboring countries have a spill-over effect, e.g., Morocco; and lastly, Libya’s history as a destination country of migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa (Hamood, 2006). Migrants plying this route (CMR) are from countries in North Africa, West and Central Africa, East Africa, and the Middle East. The migrants are a mix of those with refugee and protective claims who are mostly Syrians and Eritreans, migrants fleeing violence and instability, for example, Somalians; and economic migrants who are mostly those of West African origin. The WMR connects Morocco to Spain and the Spanish enclaves of Melilla and Ceuta and is widely used by nationals from Morocco and Algeria to transit to the Spanish territories for the purpose of relocating or reaching other countries in Europe. Other nationals, especially from Guinea and Mali, have been detected on the WMR (Idemudia & Boehnke, 2020, p. 40). The Western African route is plied by irregular West African migrants to transit to the Canary Islands, an autonomous section of Spain. The Eastern Mediterranean route and the Western Balkan route have no direct links to Europe for irregular African migrants (Idemudia & Boehnke, 2020, pp. 41–42). Migrant expectations, networks, and restrictive immigration policies are factors responsible for irregular migration to the West (Mbaye, 2014). African youth have high expectations of social and economic opportunities in the West, which they perceive as an Eldorado. Their views and perceptions of expectations in the West are often influenced by the network of families, peers, and associates they have in the destination country, transit spots, and home countries. Some of the information they receive may or may not be accurate, but it informs prospective irregular migrants’ decision to migrate. While restrictive measures by host countries may have deterred some prospective irregular immigrants, especially those who are willing to migrate legally, they are less effective in containing irregular migration (Mbaye, 2014, p. 14). Restrictive measures in Euro-American countries have also caused the south-to-south migration. For example, South Africa is a popular destination for citizens of frontline states like Zimbabwe, Angola, Mozambique, and other African countries like Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo while the Senegalese have adopted to travel to Argentina as a reaction to travel restrictions to Europe (Vammen, 2019). The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) documentary entitled “Up Against the Wall” (Newman, 2009) harps on restrictive immigration measures by the West. As mentioned earlier, post-industrial immigration policies in Euro-American countries are influenced by neoliberalism (Fleras, 2015). Newman (2009) documents barriers and structures that are put in place by the US and European countries to control the “influx” of immigrants from the 106

Issues, Patterns, and Trends in Contemporary African Migration to Europe and North America

southern border of the US and some corridors of Europe that open the US and European countries to irregular migration, respectively. The restrictive measures target certain categories of immigrants – low skilled poor Africans and asylum seekers. Although the walls on the southern fringes of the US serve as bulwarks against Mexicans and Latin Americans, they also serve the purpose of preventing poor migrants from other parts of the world, including Africans. For example, Cameroonians travel across the Atlantic Ocean to Columbia, from where they migrate north to Mexico in an effort to claim asylum in the US (Solomon, 2019). The US has recently become a stepping stone to Canada for African immigrants. The US and Canada have a “safe third country” agreement, requiring asylum seekers to make claims in the first country of arrival (Satzewich, 2021). Since the election of President Donald Trump in 2016, many Africans in the US, especially Nigerians and Ghanaians, have been crossing over to Canada through “illegal borders” to make asylum claims. For example, many Nigerians who have procured visitor visas to the US have traveled north to make asylum claims on Canada-US borders. Economic problems confronting Nigerians and Boko Haram insurgence in the North Eastern part of Nigeria are the bases for much of Nigerians’ move to Canada. Similar political and economic problems in different African countries have necessitated moves by undocumented and non-resident Africans in the US to Canada in search of asylum.

Diasporic Experience of Africans: Victims of Bivalent Oppressions Sub-Saharan African immigrants in the US and Europe tend to be more highly educated than native born. In addition, immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa in the US are more highly educated than their counterparts in top European destinations, such as the UK, France, Italy, and Portugal (Anderson & Connor, 2018). This is understandable because immigrants are “cherry-picked” based on their skills and education (Fleras, 2015; Simmons, 2010). Similar pattern is obtained in Canada where the Canadian immigration policies since the 1960s have selected immigrants based on the point system, determined by education, age, skill, language, experience, adaptability, liquid asset (with respect to the Business and Investor class), and offer of employment (Satzewich, 2015). Simmons (2010) and Fleras (2015) describe the contemporary Canadian immigration policies as “neoliberal,” referring to skilled and resourced immigrants from Asia and Africa as “designer im/migrants.” African immigrants in North America appear to integrate better than those in Europe. Anderson and Connor (2018) note that immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa living in the US are more likely to be employed than their counterparts in European countries of Italy, France, and Portugal. In 2015, for example, nearly 93% of US-based Sub-Saharan immigrants claimed they had a paying job, compared with 80.3% in Italy, 83.7% in France, and 84.9% in Portugal. About 92% of Sub-Saharan African immigrants working in the UK had a paying job, compared to 92.9% in the US (Anderson & Connor, 2018, p. 3). Fraser (1995) uses the concept of bivalence to explain two types of injustice in the contemporary world. Bivalent groups suffer both socio-economic oppression and cultural devaluation, referred to as “material maldistribution” and “cultural misrecognition,” respectively, by Fraser (1995). Maldistribution is evident where African immigrants do less congenial work than native-born, while misrecognition is represented in racism or devaluation of culture experienced by African immigrants in Europe and North America. Economically, many Sub-Saharan African immigrants are disadvantaged due to unemployment and underemployment caused by a lack of credential accreditation and systemic racism. Culturally, Africans are 107

Charles Temitope Adeyanju and Olabimpe A. Olatunji

demeaned in the press and are racialized by key institutions of society, including the judiciary, politics, education, etc. The convergence of these two axes of injustice, cultural misrecognition and material maldistribution, makes them “bivalent collectivities.” In the West, in general, African immigrants experience discrimination based on race, on one hand, and ethnicity, on the other. The study of African immigrant women in the health care sector in the US by Showers (2015), for example, demonstrates ways that African immigrant women experience individual racism from White clients and patients and structural discrimination that blocked their upward mobility in the professions. Apart from their race, African immigrants are also distinguished by their African accents, which African Americans and White Americans use to single them out for special treatment. This is also the case in Canada, as demonstrated by the work of Creese (2010) in her study of African immigrants in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada where African immigrants experience discrimination based on their African accents, in addition to race. Therefore, ethnicity/cultural backgrounds are an added disadvantage for many African immigrants in the West.

Transnational Practices of Africans The diasporic narratives are not often accurate. African immigrants act on the “front stage,” giving certain impression of “self” to peers and co-ethnics in both home and host societies (Adeyanju & Oriola, 2011). Many distort their stories and embellish narratives of success to impress successful peers and the poor that are left behind. Their representations have influence on the decision of different categories of people, both the middle class and the lower class, to migrate. It is in the “back stage” that the negative aspect of the migration experience of racism, poverty, and inequalities in the host society is kept away from peers and co-ethnics back in home country. Idemudia and Boehnke (2020) identify the “costs” and “benefits” of extra-continental migration to Africans. From the perspective of transnational migration (Basch et al., 1994; Tiilikainen, 2017), African immigrants continue to maintain economic, social, political, and cultural ties with country of origin. Remittances or transfer of money and material resources to sending countries by immigrants is in the typology of transnationalism developed by Vertotec (1999). In the words of Caselli (2019), transnational activities “include the massive flow of economic resources generated in the form of bank transfers. In quantitative terms, for many countries, this flow is higher than official aid provided for development, and it is comparable to direct foreign investments” (p. 986). Idemudia and Boehnke (2020, p. 25) use the World Bank data to explain the importance of remittances by immigrants to the economic development of African countries. In 2017, for example, the remittances to Sub-Saharan Africa were US$38 billion (Idemudia & Boehnke, 2020, p. 25). In 2017, Nigeria and Egypt (African but not Sub-Saharan) received US$ 22 billion and US$ 20 billion, respectively, in remittances. These numbers qualified them in 5th and 6th places, respectively, among countries that received huge remittances in the world in 2017 (Idemudia & Boehnke, 2020, p. 25). In Sub-Saharan Africa, in addition to Nigeria, largest remittances went to Senegal (US$ 2.2 billion) and Ghana (US$2.2 billion) (Idemudia & Boehnke, 2020, p. 25). It is evident that remittances blunt poverty in receiving countries, empower women, and reduce death in adult and child populations. Apart from remittances, transfer of skills and knowledge acquired in foreign countries to sending African countries contributes to the development of the latter, as the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program (ADF) has shown. Through the ADF fellowship funding, African-born scholars in colleges and universities in Canada 108

Issues, Patterns, and Trends in Contemporary African Migration to Europe and North America

and the US are sent to private and public universities in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda to collaborate with African scholars in research and teaching for a range of 14 days to 90 days (https://www​.iie​.org​/Programs​/Carnegie​-African​-Diaspora​-Fellowship​ -Program​/How​-to​-Apply​/For​-African​-Born​-Scholars). This program is a good example of knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer. However, there are costs associated with African migration to other continents. One of the pitfalls of migration of Africans for higher education is brain drain. Most students who travel to Europe and North America from Sub-Saharan Africa hardly return home. Alemu (2014) describes internationalization of education “as the new mode of imperialism, due to the recruitment of the best brains for ‘brain power’” (p. 76). Furthermore, many African countries have lost health researchers and medical doctors to Europe and North America, and countries in the Middle East. Conversely, migrant-sending countries in Africa are able to recoup some of their losses from remittances from migrants/immigrants in the Diaspora. Remittances contribute more to the development of households and regional communities, but less to national development (Tiilikainen, 2017, p. 65). Immigrants do not employ remittances to attenuate tribal and ethic fissions, created by colonialism, that exist in many African states. That is, remittances to different African countries lack a pan-nationalist or pan-Africanist target. They are only meant for individual households, kin, or ethnic groups. Idahosa’s discussion of diasporas and home-country politics is didactic and corroborates the evidence that remittances only have a pan-ethnic interest (History Watch Project, 2018). Moreover, the seminal work by Basch et al. (1994) copiously argues that transnationalism is hegemonic in the sense that it only sustains and maintains the existing class, gender, and racial inequalities in post-colonial states.

COVID-19 Pandemic and Possible Impacts on African Migration Many racialized immigrants fall under the category of people Ball and Tepperman (2021) refer to as “vulnerable, disadvantaged, or even (sometimes) victimized” (p. 33). As stated previously, racialized immigrants in the West experience a “double jeopardy” of racism and socio-economic inequality (see Showers, 2015; Creese, 2010; Anderson & Connor, 2018). They are often susceptible to unemployment, underemployment, poverty, and stigmatization in their Western destinations (Newman, 2009). Their social and economic conditions have been made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic in North America and Europe. Many African im/migrants are frontline workers in the lower tier of the service sector economy, as cleaners, elderly and child care aides, cashiers, security guards, etc., where they are exposed to the virus. In France, for example, the mortality figure for immigrants during March and April 2020 was 48% compared with 22% for the natives, and, astonishingly, +114% for SubSaharan African migrants (Gosselin et al., 2021). This high mortality rate was attributed to the precarity of their work. Many states and regions in the world have introduced travel restrictions to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus, and in some cases contravening international laws and conventions meant to protect human rights (Meer & Villegas, 2020). Lockdowns meant refugees and asylum seekers from Sub-Saharan Africa could not traverse the Sahara Desert en route to Europe. Countries like Belgium, Greece, Italy, the UK, Germany, and the Netherlands closed access to asylum as part of their containment measures. Canada and the US also closed access to asylum in 2020 following the COVID-19 outbreak (Meer & Villegas, 2020). These measures have impacts on refugee movements and asylum claims by Africans in Europe and 109

Charles Temitope Adeyanju and Olabimpe A. Olatunji

North America. For example, in March 2020, Canada’s unusual Quarantine Act prohibited asylum claimants from the US, some of whom were Africans, from entering Canada for refugee protection (Humphreys, 2020; Meer & Villegas, 2020). As mentioned previously, some Africans had crossed into Canada from the US through “irregular” entry points under the “safe third country” agreement (Humphreys, 2020). The Quarantine Act prohibition temporarily halted the movement of asylum seekers from the US to Canada. Processing of immigrant visa applications for tourism, international education, family reunification, etc. now takes longer to complete in European and North American embassies and consulates in different countries in Africa due to disruptions from lockdowns and local COVID-19 protocols. Apart from the economic insecurity that is associated with lockdowns during the pandemic, life-threatening contagious diseases, like COVID-19, Ebola, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, create an ontological insecurity in the society. Ontological insecurity over health panics can lead to the scapegoating of the racial Other (Washer, 2004). Travel restrictions imposed on a select number of African countries following the “discovery” of a more contagious variant of the virus were met with controversy in November/December 2021. Travel restrictions were first imposed on Southern African countries by the European Union and the UK in November/December 2021, followed by the US and a host of other countries. Because contemporary African migration to the West has often been problematized by its media and politicians (De Haas, 2008), many attributed this reaction (i.e., the travel restrictions) to xenophobia and ostensibly anti-African racism. The actual effects of the pandemic on remittances from the West to African countries are yet to be copiously documented. Many African immigrants are losing jobs in various European and North American societies due to lockdowns and economic instability. Lowincome earnings of African migrants will lead to low remittances. As stated earlier, families and communities rely on remittances for social reproduction, and paucity in remittances will exacerbate poverty in many countries in Sub-Saharan African countries where the economies are already struggling. If this situation continues, it can further precipitate both regular and irregular emigration from Sub-Saharan Africa.

Conclusion Diversity of destinations, changes in aspirations, mixed social locations, gender inclusivity, etc. characterize contemporary African migration to Europe and North America. While Europe was the destination for many Africans largely because of geographical proximity and colonial affinities that it has with most African countries, extra-continental migration of Africans in the contemporary era is extended to other parts of the world, including North America and the Gulf region. The changing pattern and trend of African migration is not unrelated to globalization, transnationalism, liberalized immigration policies in North America, and labor needs especially in the oil rich regions in the Middle East. It is apt, based on the evidence, that Africans’ migration aspirations are akin to those of other peoples in the world, contrary to engrained notions in the West by the media, politicians, and scholars that African migration is driven by immiseration, war, and underdevelopment on the African continent. As Flahaux and De Haas (2016, p. 2) point out, contemporary African migration is not “exceptional,” because “more and more micro-evidence emerges indicating that most Africans migrate for family, work or study…as is the case in other world regions.” It may be a surprise to many that Africans are more involved in intra-continental migration (migration 110

Issues, Patterns, and Trends in Contemporary African Migration to Europe and North America

within Africa) than migration to other continents. It is important to (re)iterate that African migration to the West is not a zero-sum game. There are “costs” and “benefits” associated with the migration of Africans to Europe and North America. Although Africa experiences brain drain from migration to Europe and North America, it also benefits from skill transfers and remittances from its Diaspora populations. In terms of “costs” and “benefits,” of African migration to Europe and North America, the metaphorical glass is “half full” rather than “half-empty.”

Notes 1 Most African migration occurs within the African continent (Flahaux & De Haas, 2016, p. 2; Idemudia & Boehnke, 2020, p. 17). 2 We are being cautious of our use of “voluntary” and “forced” migrations, as the boundary between the two is blurry. While many in the former category emigrate out of their volition, their emigration is compelled by the unfavorable social and economic conditions of their home country caused by political decisions and policies. 3 We deliberately refrain from using “illegal” migrants or immigrants. “Irregular” migrants or immigrants are preferred. It “covers those who illegally cross borders, legal entrants who overstay their entry visa or work without permission, family members of migrant workers who enter illegally, and asylum seekers who fail to qualify as refugees” (Fleras, 2015, p. 39).

References Adeyanju, C. T. (2017). “The west of their imagination”: Transnational impression management and Canadian migration in the Nigerian youth imaginary. African Studies Review, 60(3), 141–158. Adeyanju, C. T., & Oriola, T. (2011). Colonialism and contemporary African migration: A phenomenological approach. Journal of Black Studies, 42(6), 943–967. Adepoju, A. (2000). Issues and recent trends in international migration in sub-Saharan Africa. International Social Science Journal, 52(165), 383–394. Adeniyi, O. (2019). From frying pan to fire: How African migrants risk everything in their futile search for a better life in Europe. Ibadan: Bookcraft. Alemu, S. K. (2014). An appraisal of the internationalization of higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa. C.E.P.S. Journal, 4(2), 71–90. Anderson, A., & Connor, P. (2018). Sub-Saharan African immigrants in the U.S. are often more educated than those in top European destinations. Pew Research Center (pp. 1–24). Retrieved April 19, 2020, from https://www​.pewresearch​.org​/global​/2018​/04​/24​/sub​-saharan​-african​-immigrants​ -in​-the​-u​-s​-are​-often​-more​-educated​-than​-those​-in​-top​-european​-destinations/ Ball, J., & Tepperman, L. (2021). The stacked deck: An introduction to social inequality (2nd ed.). Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press. Basch, L., Glick Schiller, N., & Blanc-Szanton, C. (1994). Nations unbound: Transnational projects, postcolonial predicaments, and deterritorialized nation-states. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers. Bauman, Z. (1998). Globalization: The human consequences. New York: Columbia University Press. Caselli, M. (2019). ‘Let us help them at home’: Policies and misunderstandings on migrant flowsacross the Mediterranean border. Journal of International Migration and Integration, 20(4), 983–993. Castles, S., De Haas, H., & Miller, M. J. (2014). The age of migration: International population movements in the modern world (5th ed.). New York: The Guilford Press. Creese, G. (2010). Erasing English language competency: African migrants in Vancouver, Canada. Journal of International Migration and Integration / Revue de l’Integration et de la Migration Internationale, 11(3), 295–313. Davis, K., & Moore, W. E. (1945). Some principles of stratification. American Sociological Review, 10(2), 242–249. De Haas, H. (2008). The myth of invasion: The inconvenient realities of African migration to Europe. Third World Quarterly, 29(7), 1305–1322.

111

Charles Temitope Adeyanju and Olabimpe A. Olatunji Falola, T., &Oyebade, A. (2010). Hot spot: Sub-Saharan Africa. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood. Flahaux, M., & De Haas, H. (2016). African migration: Trends, patterns, drivers. Comparative Migration Studies, 4(1), 1–25. Fleras, A. (2015). Immigration Canada: Evolving realities and emerging challenges in a postnational world. Vancouver: UBC Press. Fraser, N. (1995). From redistribution to recognition? Dilemmas of justice in a ‘post-socialist age.’ New Left Review, 212, 68–93. Giddens, A. (1990). The consequences of modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Gosselin, A., Melchior, M., Desparat, D., Devetter, F., Pannetier, J., Valat, E., & Memmi, S. (2021). Were immigrants on the frontline during the lockdown? Evidence from France. European Journal of Public Health, 31(6), 1278–1281. Hamood, S. (2006). African transit migration through Libya to Europe: The human cost. The American University in Cairo: Forced Migration Studies, 1–85. History Watch Program. (2018). The politics of remembering: The many diasporas of Africa. Retrieved November 11, 2020, from https://soundcloud​.com​/historywatch​/the​-politics​-of​-remembering​ -the​-many​-diasporas​-of​-africa Humphreys, A. (2020). With COVID-19 clampdown, number of asylum seekers at Canada-U.S. borders slows to a trickle. National Post. Retrieved January 20, 2022, from https://nationalpost​.com​ /news​/with​-covid​-19​-clampdown​-number​-of​-asylum​-seekers​-at​-canada​-u​-s​-border​-slows​-to​-a​ -trickle Idemudia, E., & Boehnke, K. (2020). Psychosocial experiences of African migrants in six European countries: A mixed method study. Cham: Springer. Johnson, C. M. (2013). Culture’s calling: Mobile phones, gender, and the making of an African migrant village in Lisbon. Anthropological Quarterly, 86(1), 163–190. Kala, D. M. (2007). Has God forsaken Africa?: When exile is the only option. Montreal: A National Film Board of Canada Production. Khapoya, V. (2013). The African experience (4th ed.). Boston: Pearson. Mbaye, L. M. (2014). “Barcelona or die”: Understanding illegal migration from Senegal. IZA Journal of Migration, 3(21), 1–19. Meer, N., & Villegas, L. (2020). The impact of COVID-19 on global migration. Working paper: Governance of the Local Integration of Migrants and Europe’s Refugees (GLIMER). Mensah, J. (2010). Black Canadians: History, experience, social conditions (2nd ed.). Halifax: Fernwood Publishing. Newman, D. (2009). Up against the wall. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Documentary. Retrieved April 24, 2020, from https://www​.youtube​.com​/watch​?v​=7EHwetstjGM Ochonu, E. M. (2014). Africa in fragments: Essays on Nigeria, Africa, and global Africanity. New York: Diasporic African Press. Osezua, O. C. (2018). The ethnography of the sex trade among Bini women in southern Nigeria. In A. Adebusuyi & L. O. Ikuteyijo (Eds.), Africa now!: Emerging issues and alternative perspectives (pp. 321–340). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Satzewich, V. (2021). “Race” and ethnicity in Canada: A critical introduction. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press. Satzewich, V. (2015). Points of entry: How Canada’s immigration officers decide who gets in. Vancouver: UBC Press. Showers, F. (2015). Being black, foreign and woman: African immigrant identities in the United States. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38(10), 1815–1830. Simmons, A. (2010). Immigration and Canada: Global and transnational perspectives. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press. Simmons, M., & Eta, M. (2020). Untold stories: Newark’s burgeoning West African population and the in-school experiences of African immigrant youth. In M. L. McLean (Ed.), West African youth challenges and opportunity pathways (pp. 79–99). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Solomon, D. B. (2019). U.S. dream pulls African migrants in record numbers across Latin America. Reuters. Retrieved April 9, 2020, from https://www​.reuters​.com​/article​/us​-usa​-immigration​-africa​ /u​-s​-dream​-pulls​-african​-migrants​-in​-record​-numbers​-across​-latin​-america​-idUSKCN1U01A4 Stark, E. (2018). Eritrea and the migration dilemma in the horn of Africa. International Research Scape Journal, 5(3). https://scholarworks​.bgsu​.edu​/irj​/vol5​/iss1​/3.

112

Issues, Patterns, and Trends in Contemporary African Migration to Europe and North America Statistics Canada. (2019). Diversity of the black population in Canada: An overview. https://www150​ .statcan​.gc​.ca​/n1​/en​/pub​/89​-657​-x​/89​-657​-x2019002​-eng​.pdf​?st​=YaC0yskK. Tiilikainen, M. (2017). ‘Whenever mom hands over the phone, then we talk’: Transnational ties to the country of descent among Canadian Somali youth. Migration Letters, 14(1), 63–74. Togunde, D., Ojebode, A., & Vocke, A. (2010). Media representation of America and youth migration intentions. In E. Yewah & D. Togunde (Eds.), Across the Atlantic: African immigrants in the United States diaspora (pp. 7–38). Champaign, IL: Common Ground Publishing. UNICEF. (2017). A deadly journey for children: The central Mediterranean migration route. United Nations Children's Funds. Vammen, I. M. (2019). New contested borderlands: Senegalese migrants en route to Argentina. Comparative Migration Studies, 7(8), 2–17. Vertotec, S. (1999). Conceiving and researching transnationalism. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22(2), 447–462. Washer, P. (2004). Representations of SARS in the British newspapers. Social Science and Medicine, 59(12), 2561–2571.

113

7 THE CONTEMPORARY “AFRICAN COOLIE” IN THE MIDDLE EAST Interrogating the Narratives of the Modern-Day African Slaves Chris C. Opesen, Opolot Amos and Mathew Amollo

Introduction Current evidence indicates that 281 million people migrated from their countries of origin, with migrant workers constituting more than 60% of the global migrant population in the year 2021 (IOM, 2022). International Organization for Migration (2022) also suggests migration as selective by age, with most of the international migrants being of working age. The majority of global migrants under the age of 35 years originate from eastern, central and western Africa (El Ouassif, 2021) with labor migration from Africa to the Middle East conspicuously showing an upward trend (Atong et al., 2018). For instance, the 2019 estimates show that 460,000 Ethiopians migrated to the Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCCs) between 2008 and 2013 with women constituting more than two-thirds of the Ethiopian migrant workforce in the region (IOM, 2019). In East Africa, the majority of migrant workers driven out of their countries by conflict, poverty, climate change and development changes are largely smuggled into the GCCs through the Horn of Africa (Majidi & Oucho, 2016; Offia, 2019). Other studies associate these recent migration patterns from the African continent with development processes that push Africans to voluntarily explore opportunities within the continent and in other continents, particularly, in the GCCs, Europe and Oceania (Flahaux & De Haas, 2016; Manning, 2022). Migrant employment is beneficial to both host and home countries (Ayele, 2018; Bisong, 2021). For example, migrant workers make significant remittances to their home countries, although recent epidemics such as COVID-19 saw a decline in global remittances from $719 billion in 2019 to $702 billion in 2020 (International Organization for Migration, 2022). For the host countries, migrant employees have provided a reliable source of cheap skilled workforce requiring minimal investments in training and human resources entitlements. And while there are notable cases of exploitation and abuse of African migrant workers in the Middle East (Aldridge et al., 2018; Atong et al., 2018), these have been attributed in part to the weaker migrant employment regulation and limited political will to combat human 114

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-9

The Contemporary “African Coolie” in the Middle East

trafficking that have partly facilitated human trafficking in Africa (International Organization for Migration, 2022).

The Context and Rationale of the Chapter In the era of the slave trade (1500–1900), strong and fit African men and women were forcefully captured and exported by Arabs and colonial powers to provide cheap labor in their plantations and homes. This trade went on until the industrial revolution rendered manpower less useful (National Humanities Center 2007). And after securing a Colony (Kenya) and a Protectorate (Uganda) in East Africa, the British in the late 1800s shipped in 12,800 cheap Indian laborers that came to be known as the “Indian Coolies” to build the Uganda railway (UK Parliament Hansard 1899). They were exploited, were eaten by wildlife and many were killed by diseases like malaria, diarrhea, dysentery, liver complaints, scurvy and ulcers. To be exact, 16 out of every 1000 laborers died annually, while the hospitalization rate ranged between 10% in a bad season and 2.5% in a good season (Ibid). Raising it as a concern in the House of Commons on Thursday, February 23, 1899, Sir W. Wedderburn observed: I beg to ask the Secretary of State for India whether his attention has been drawn to the mortality among the Indian coolies employed on the Uganda Railway; and what arrangements are made for their protection, both at the port of emigration and in Africa? Today, reports indicate lots of African migrants being subjected to abuse and exploitation by their sponsors (employers) in the Middle East much like their ancestors that were sold as slaves. Some have returned with vitals harvested and like Indian coolies in the late 1800s, and recent reports capture incidents of premature deaths and questionable hospitalizations (Dessiye & Emirie, 2018; Mburu, 2020; Mlambo & Zubane, 2021; Pande, 2013). Yet, unlike their ancestors who were forcefully taken for the slave trade, the young African men and women that, for purposes of striking comparative historical imageries, are addressed here as “African coolies” continue to a larger extent “voluntarily” migrate to these countries in search for opportunities. In the context of the current global discourses (M. de Haas & Frankema, 2022; Flahaux & De Haas, 2016; Ssebwami, 2020), we conducted a systematic review to seek answers to the following three intriguing questions: (a) Why do African workers migrate to the Middle East? (b) What is driving African migrant workers to the Middle East? (c) What challenges are faced by African migrant employees in the Middle East? (d) What has been done to secure the African Migrant worker in the Middle East?

Theoretical Framework The chapter is anchored on Lee’s Push and Pull theory. Lee conceptualizes that migration is associated with four main factors: (1) actors associated with the area of origin; (2) factors associated with the area of destination; (3) intervening obstacles; and (4) personal factors (Lee, 1966). This theory has been used to unpack migration intentions in social sciences, health and international migration studies (Castelli, 2018; Lee & Moon, 2013; Mlambo & Adetiba, 2017), and there are now attempts to modify it to include the context and circumstances under which migration occurs. Lee in this theory recognizes that migration occurs as a result of complex interaction between micro-, meso- and macro-level factors (Van 115

Chris C. Opesen, Opolot Amos and Mathew Amollo

Hear et al., 2018). To account for the gaps in Lee’s Push and Pull theory, we incorporate the global capitalism theory (Aglietta, 1979) and dual labor markets theory (Piore, 1975). The former theory recognizes migration as an integral component of global capitalism with the emergence of transnational capitalists seeking to exploit market opportunities including cheap labor from low developed countries to support production for developed economies (Robinson, 2006, 2012); whereas the latter postulates international migration as rooted on the intrinsic labor demand of modern industrial societies that deliberately recruit cheap foreign labor to be employed in the unregulated and often less paying-secondary labor market (Doeringer & Piore, 1975; Piore, 1975). Using these theories as frameworks, we interrogate factors driving African migration to the Middle East, challenges faced by African migrant workers and efforts to secure African migrant workers in the Middle East.

Materials and Methods This rapid systematic review was conducted from August to October 2022 and registered for peer review on the PROSPERO online registry.

Search Strategy We included all studies, qualitative or quantitative published in peer-reviewed journals between January 01, 2015, and October 25, 2022, written in English, conducted in any part of the world in only Google Scholar, Cochrane and PubMed databases. On the other hand, literature reviews, studies outside the scope and objectives of this synthesis, duplicated studies or studies with only abstracts with no detailed reports were excluded. Researchers searched for English language studies from Google Scholar, Cochrane and PubMed databases. The key search words included are indicated in the matrix below against the respective research question.​

Data Extraction Inclusion criteria: Qualitative and quantitative studies with clear methodology followed and published in peer-reviewed journals between January 01, 2015, and October 25, 2022, written in English, conducted in any part of the world in Google Scholar were included. Table 7.1 Summary of search words by research questions Research question

Search words

Why do Africans migrate to the Middle East? What is driving African migrant workers to the Middle East? What challenges are faced by African migrant employees in the Middle East? What has been done to secure the African Migrant worker in the Middle East?

Marketability, employment, jobs, Migration, Middle East African Migrants, Migrant work, migrant employee, migrant sponsor Domestic worker abuses, migrant worker abuses, human rights protection of African migrants, risks of migrant employment, Kafala Migration Laws, regulation, bilateral agreements

116

The Contemporary “African Coolie” in the Middle East

Exclusion criteria: Studies with only abstracts and no detailed reports were excluded from this synthesis. Condition or domain understudy: Marketability of the contemporary African migrant employee, benefits, risks and protection structures in the Middle East. Participants/population: All studies covering African migrant employees in the Middle East were targeted. Context: Researches conducted in African countries addressing any of the four domains of marketability, benefits, risks and protection are included in this review. Types of outcome measures: The outcome measure considered under this review is the marketability of African migrant employees in the Middle East. Risk of bias (quality) assessment: Studies deemed relevant had their full-text articles obtained and skimmed through to evaluate their quality and eligibility. Journal articles and books available on Google Scholar were all assumed to be high-quality research, and therefore, included in the review. Data synthesis and presentation: We extracted information on all four subthemes of the review developed from the research questions. All data extraction and coding were done using Microsoft Excel computer software. All selected studies were then uploaded and analyzed thematically and content-wise using Microsoft Excel. Using this dual approach, meaningful, clear and complete excerpts and numbers as contents were selected and linked to appropriate coded themes. The outcome of this analysis has largely been used in presenting the methodological characteristics and outcomes of the study. The characteristics of the studies reviewed and their authors are summarized in the results section and in a detailed matrix in Annex 1 to enhance the textual commentary. The matrix specifies the author and the year, the context/country, the objective of the study, the study sample/number of participants in the study, type of the study and the design. The findings from the synthesis are presented and discussed under the respective themes of inquiry in the results section of the report before conclusions and recommendations are made.

Identification and screening 1487

Duplicates dropped

Content not about Africa

500

797

Eligibility (Number selected for screening)

Number included in the review

987

51

Full text articles absent 139

Articles Dropped

Figure 7.1  Flowchart showing the process followed to select articles for the review

117

Chris C. Opesen, Opolot Amos and Mathew Amollo

Outcome of the Review This review identified an initial number of 1,487 articles from Google Scholar. From the initial download, 500 (34%) were identified as duplicates and were dropped and 987 (66%) articles were retained for eligibility screening. After screening, 936 (95%) of the articles were further dropped because the content was not focused on African migration work in the Middle East or were not full-text articles. The reviewers finally retained 51 (5%) of the articles for the rapid review.​

Findings The results of the review interrogating the  narrative of  the modern-day self-facilitating African slave (the contemporary African Coolie) in the Middle East are presented using themes created from the four research questions interrogated.

(a) Why Do Africans Migrate to the Middle East? The first question this review attempted to answer is, why do Africans migrate to the Middle East? Evidence the review unfolds indicates that the contemporary “African Coolie” is generally marketable in the Middle East because it is the cheapest source of labor compared to the natives. Unlike a migrant worker from the rest of the world that is addressed as an expatriate, “African Coolies” are derisively addressed as Kadamas. Predominantly, female African Coolies are engaged in domestic work particularly, house cleaning, vacuuming, cooking, laundry and caregiving (Ayele, 2018). Opportunities in security and construction on the other hand are available for their male counterparts (Atong et al., 2018; Bisong, 2021). These expressions are explained by the dual labor markets theory (Doeringer & Piore, 1975; Piore, 1975) and the global capitalism theories (Robinson, 2006, 2012).

High Vulnerability of the African Workers Several factors within the African countries make Africans particularly interested in migrating to other countries in search for better opportunities. This vulnerability has made Africans an easy target for cheap secondary labor. For example, some agent companies dupe them to travel with tourist visas and not work visas. Without work visas and with expired tourist visas, they cannot get jobs in the formal sector. This leaves domestic work or survival sex the only options available if they are not jailed. Those with work visas that end up as domestic workers are obliged to surrender their passports to the household master on arrival so that they cannot escape and they are enslaved to work until they are satisfied that the money paid in agent fees and commissions has returned an equitable value. Unfortunately, the African Coolie seldom knows where the middleman company that connected him to the employer is. Often too, the smartphone s/he came with is confiscated or crushed to cut communication with family members back home or peers in the social media under the same trade lest s/he gets peer support (Dessiye & Emirie, 2018; Fernandez, 2013; Kandilige, Teye, Setrana, & Badasu, 2022). While migrant workers from other regions are vulnerable too, the vulnerability of an African Coolie is much more spread and incomparable, making it more enticing to pay agent fees for them than for Coolies from other regions. This vulnerability is made possible because domestic work in most Middle East countries is not regulated by existing laws, 118

The Contemporary “African Coolie” in the Middle East

making the migrant worker-employer relationship exploitative (Dessiye & Emirie, 2018; Mlambo & Zubane, 2021; Pande, 2013).

Emic Voices Economic considerations sit at the heart of most girls’ decision to migrate. As life gets tough, a mother starts to continuously blame her daughter for not going to an Arab country, saying that, “If it is not for your laziness, you could have gone to an Arab country and help us improve our life as does the daughter of our neighbour.” (Adult in focus group discussion) When you hear bad things, your interest in going decreases. But again, when you hear the good things, such as somebody bought a car after going there or somebody built a house after going there, you will forget all the sufferings and accidents that can happen. (Adolescent girl planning on migrating) (Jones et al., 2018, p. 24) Respondents in Hara in particular observed that today’s adolescents, seeing their economic goals frustrated, are less likely than their slightly older peers to value schooling. A girl from Hara summarized the situation quite succinctly: “In this community, going abroad is like having a master’s degree” (Jones et al., 2018, p. 25). “The main reason why I migrated to Qatar was for career growth and for financial benefit. You know things are not always the best in Africa, so mainly it was for financial gain and benefit.” (Amos, male) “I left Africa because what I have back home would not really make me comfortable. We don’t have jobs so I came to some kind of a constrained society just to make ends meet.” (John, male) (Imerion, 2017, p. 66) A strong desire to travel outside of the country and the search for job opportunities, family responsibilities and financial problems are the other factors stimulating international migration, as reported by another female participant: I had financial problems; I was not working, only my husband was working and the kids were not going to school. I found a job in Qatar, and my husband said I should go. He takes care of the kids, I send money home, and they visit me once a year and I visit them in December. (Jessica, female) (Imerion, 2017, p. 67) Traingulating this, Mohamed (2016) adds: Women leave to change their material and social circumstances, or as they often put it, “do something” – as opposed to getting married and living what they described as a predictable and difficult rural life, a life most framed as “not doing something.” In this district, the women who migrate to the Middle East are often in their teens or twenties with middling levels of education, usually failing to finish secondary schooling. The decision to leave falls at an important moment of transition in their life course as they navigate the path from 119

Chris C. Opesen, Opolot Amos and Mathew Amollo

childhood to adulthood. In some cases, the decision to leave is an active pursuit of capital, one worth leaving their education to pursue. As one aspiring migrant put it, “Education is important, [but] migration is a quicker and more sure way to change your life.” In other cases, the decision to leave is taken when one life trajectory, education, closes, and the alternative – generally marriage and early motherhood – is considered undesirable. Migration has become a way to disrupt an otherwise predictable future. Under various circumstances, young women mentioned migration to the Middle East as a way to not only improve their lives materially, but to gain “freedom,” to “do something with my life,” to “change my life and the life of my family” (Schewel, 2022, p. 1629).

The Aspiration for Change Women often framed the decision to migrate as a sacrifice and an investment for themselves and their families. As one woman put it, “First I want to do something for my family, and the rest I will use for myself.” Shiko took that approach. Born in Wayisso, she left after finishing seventh grade. The first time she worked abroad for 2 years, and with the money she sent back, her family built a new home in Wayisso and bought cattle. She paid the 30,000 Ethiopian birr (1,400 USD) gabara, or dowry, for her brother to get married. After coming home and resting for several months, she left again, but this time, her father says, “We are only listening to her voice. Now she tries to live for herself.” She has her own bank account in Ziway, and the family has not received any of her earnings. “Maybe she has a boyfriend,” her brother speculated. Whatever the case, it was clear the family saw the money as hers.

Constrained Capabilities Migration abroad for domestic work is often not the first desired pathway to change. Most girls and young women would prefer to realize their aspirations through formal education and securing decent work in Ethiopia. In many ways, attending secondary and higher education is one way young women postpone the responsibilities of adulthood as they strive to develop the capabilities needed to realize the adult lives they desire. When education is no longer viable, however – whether because they fail the qualifying exams or their families no longer support their schooling – adulthood is thrust upon them, often in the form of marriage or migration. This was the situation Damitu faced when she left for Saudi Arabia at the age of fourteen. “My family was not able to send me to school. Not even a government school. They needed money to survive.” Her three older brothers were in school, but as she expressed, “there is extra pressure for the girl to stop school.” Her father wanted her to marry, but Damitu knew of other girls who had gone abroad and had an idea. “I convinced my father that migration would be better than getting married now. I would be able to make some money to send home, then I could return and get married. My father agreed, and he arranged for me to go.” For Damitu, migration to Saudi Arabia was the best option among a poor set, but one she negotiated with her family.

Presence of Abject Poverty More precisely, a focus group participant, Mrs. “Y” presented poverty as the main challenge of their community and the central factor for the youth migration to the Middle East. She also added: “Migration to the Middle East rests on the limited opportunities available in the 120

The Contemporary “African Coolie” in the Middle East

community. The prevailing poverty affects not only individuals but also affects the Mehoni town in general” (woman 18, fieldwork, 2015). In a comparable way, other participants of the focus group discussion agree that poverty hinders them from achieving their desires and the desires of their family. Consequently, the community members pressured youths to bring a change and alleviate the prevailing poverty through migration to the Middle East (Mohamed, 2016, p. 28).

Misconceptions and Attitudes of the Local Community Many of the graduate students of Raya-Mehoni town had started to work in part-time jobs to acquire income after their graduation. Amina, a potential migrant to the Middle East, after her graduation, her family and the neighbors expected her to be employed in a government office. However, the situation did not allow her to meet the status they expected. Then she was asked to join some cooperative work like in wood work and metal work micro enterprises with other unemployed Youths of Raya-Mehoni town. Then, the community’s perception toward her changed dramatically. This has influenced her strength to continue working out of her professional “box.” Amina explains the perception and misconceptions of the community have a negative psychological impact on her work and employment. Currently, she chose to migrate to the Middle East through agents and work contracts to Saudi Arabia (Mohamed, 2016, p. 31).

Migration as an Opportunity for Marriage Surprisingly, marriage is another driving force for the youth of the community. Among the inhabitants of Raya-Mehoni town, individuals who have been married and divorced are the main targets for migration to the Middle East. Demelash explains it as a method of relief from psychological stress. In a similar way, women who have lost their opportunity for getting a fiancé in their home country use migration as a way out. Women who have got disputes at home flee to the Middle East to get relief from their problems (Mohamed, 2016, p. 32).

Absence of Interest-Free Loans Kamil and other fellow potential migrants agree that they need to work in new businesses in their town but they need initial capital to commence it. So, the absence of interest-free loans combined with other factors motivated youths to migrate to the Middle East. Amina and Azeb, one of the potential migrants, said that it was not the fate of Raya-Mehoni town community to recurrently migrate to the Middle East: “we can bring a change in our community. However, absence of free interest loans hinders them from engaging in business.” Though they needed to work in her hometown, the conditions in the town urged them to migrate to bring initial capital to start a private business (Mohamed, 2016, p. 33). Though poverty and migration are directly linked, it is not the poor who always migrates. Various studies indicate that people also migrate due to pressures from friends, false promises from brokers, forced and early marriage and conflict with family members. Selam’s migration story is one instance that proves that poverty is not the only driver of migration. Selam returned in 2016 after working as a cleaner and caregiver to a sick elderly in Kuwait for three years. She is single and continues her college education after returning to Ethiopia. When interviewing her, she narrates the reason for her migration in the following way: 121

Chris C. Opesen, Opolot Amos and Mathew Amollo

My father was economically better off. I was able to pass the grade-10th national examination with a GPA of 3.2/4.00. My father fulfils me whatever I want. However, the frequent quarrel with my stepmother was the main problem I had. She wanted to distance me from my father. As a solution, my father wanted to marry me against my will. Eventually, I approached a returnee mi-grant in our neighbourhood to introduce me to a broker. I convinced my father to give me 5,000 ETB to cover all travel related costs (field notes, July 2018, Maichew, Ethiopia). (Ayele, 2018, p. 31)

Failure to Attain Required Marks to Enable Pursuance of Further Education Respondents in both sites also noted that “being not successful in one’s education is the other reason for migration.” Several tenth grade adolescents shared one girl’s view: “If I don’t get a passing mark to the preparatory school, then I will go to a foreign country” (Jones et al., 2018, p. 26).

The Unemployment of the Youth In addition to this, Demelash said: “for the youth being unemployed is high risky. Most of the unemployed are drug addicted and always in conflict with their family. Some of my friends are also engaged in crimes in Ray-Mehoni town” (Demelash 20, fieldwork, 2015). The engagement of the youth in crime poses an immense impact on the family and the community. Taking the word of the above research participant, drug use leads the youth to crimes such as theft and robbery. This further enhances the chance for the absence of peace and order in society. Consequently, society prefers that the youths migrate to the Middle East (Mohamed, 2016, p. 28).

Deception, Corruption and Fraudulent Recruitment Practices A critical area of focus for fair migration largely ought to be on how migrants are facilitated to leave, especially the recruitment industry and its practices including how it is regulated. Cases of ignorance on the part of migrants and deception by recruitment agencies and their intermediaries are always matters of concern. In fact, well-informed and sensitized public can allow prospective migrants to make informed choices and avoid the risks and exploitations involved. An important objective of the study, therefore, was to ascertain how migrants hear about recruitment agencies and get recruited, prepare to leave as well as the behavior of agencies in general. Evidence from interviews conducted in the four labor sending countries to the GCC states (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda) suggests that the recruitment procedures and corrupt practices by recruitment agencies and employing company personnel in the receiving country place unskilled workers in a highly vulnerable position prior to departure from their home countries.

Emic Voices KENYA

It did not take many days. I went to the agency to enquire if it was indeed genuine to travel and work, and they told me they are genuine and had no problem. They col122

The Contemporary “African Coolie” in the Middle East

lected 30,000 Shillings (USD300) as top up for the processing while they paid the rest, and l had my passport with visa within 5 days. They organized everything including my ticket.

GHANA

One trade union respondent described the difficulty in acquiring a passport in Ghana as one of the sources of exploitation. He indicated that, If you are prepared to pay more you get it on time and it is the prospective emigrant that must bear the cost. It has nothing to do with your source of information and whether the agency is licensed or not licensed.

NIGERIA

The researcher, who led a team to some of these travel agencies, has this to report: A day earlier when the team first visited to make travel enquiries, not less than 16 girls were found waiting with some sitting on the floor in the verandah. Some of the young women had travelled from different parts of the country to the capital city. On this second visit, only three of the girls could be seen. Muhammad (the manager of this travel agency) apologized for his absence the previous day, saying he had gone to the Immigration office to pick up a new batch of international passports. All you need to do is to pay N80, 000 for processing here and N20, 000 for airport payment but the total money will be N120, 000 including medicals and police character letter which we shall do it by ourselves. We have policemen that work closely with us. They will write for you a good character letter signed by the DPO (Divisional Police Officer) saying you are a good girl; that you have never been involved in any crime, especially prostitution. UGANDA

One agent in a “travels and tours” agency ventured that: our services include ticketing and visa procurement assistance for our clients, including helping persons to get jobs abroad. When asked if his agency has that mandate to engage in recruitment services, he offered that the agency has affiliation with some recruitment agencies in the GCC states, notably Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and Oman. The researcher noted that the response was meant at avoiding the question and also seeking ways to legitimize their involvement in recruitment services alien to the tourism facilitation services they are registered for. Emilia, a returnee migrant from Saudi Arabia has this to say: when I was leaving to Saudi Arabia, my agent, who collected UGX 1,500,000 (about $400) to facilitate my departure, told me that I will be going to work for a family in the capital city and will be paid monthly. Contrary to these promises, I discovered that my employer already paid for my coming. The madam use me to do chores in the houses 123

Chris C. Opesen, Opolot Amos and Mathew Amollo

of her sisters and friends. The painful thing for me is that the money I gave my agent was borrowed... I’m still paying back.

The Role of Brokers Respondents also noted that in Hara brokers are not only key to the process of migration (see Box 3), but they also drive it. Indeed, both adults and adolescents were clear that brokers have become endemic and dangerous. One man explained, “The illegal brokers advertise the good things children can get by migrating.” The Hara kebele administrator continued, “The brokers search for the young and persuade them to go abroad.” Girls said brokers actively disseminated false information. One, for example, who migrated at 16 and was sent home after only five months, said her broker told her, “If you work hard and work as you should, then they will treat you as their own child. They will not abuse you” (Jones et al., 2018, p. 26; Mong’na, 2018, p. 79).

(b) The Drivers of African Migrant Workers to the Middle East This review found four main dimensions of drivers of African Coolies to the Middle East, notably, the economic, governance, environmental and social (Ayele, 2018; Bisong, 2021; Carter & Rohwerder, 2016; Ayele, 2018; Jones et al., 2018; Majidi & Oucho, 2016). From an economic dimension, migration of workers to the Middle East is seen as an escape route out of poverty. To facilitate this path out of poverty, parents mobilize local resources to pay for the cost of a flight ticket to the Middle East (Ayele, 2018). The limited quality of job opportunities available locally makes journey to the Middle East for the skilled youth for a short-term and long-term work stay the most accessible option (El Ouassif, 2021). The implication is that the lack of correlation between educational attainment and realization of life economic goals in Africa is pushing young people to prioritize migration to the Middle East as a quick way of making money (Jones et al., 2018). In Ethiopia it’s estimated that two to three million young people join the job market every year and yet there is little investment in the private sector to absorb this skilled workforce (Carter & Rohwerder, 2016). The few locally available job opportunities are also squeezed out of access for the poor by systemic inequalities in many African communities leaving the Middle East as the only door for meaningful employment and participation in development processes in their own countries (Ayele, 2018). The success of the returnee migrants re-fuels expectations among other African coolies for potentially life-changing opportunities in the Middle East (Atong et al., 2018; Ayele, 2018). Seeing the remittances from the migrant workers, many African countries have mainstreamed labor exports using fancy labels (such as the labor externalization program in Uganda) in order to benefit from the remittances that flow to the migrant worker families and the economy (Bisong, 2021). Governance-wise, poor leadership and insecurity in some countries have motivated young skilled Africans to seek for safety and better environments. The leadership in many of the African countries is dictatorial and corrupt. This has created despair and apathy among Africa’s young people who have had to bottle down their frustrations (Carter & Rohwerder, 2016). Related to this is the issue of weak regulations that have in part contributed to human trafficking. For instance, among the East African countries, Rwanda, Burundi, the United Republic of Tanzania, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda have signed and ratified the Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air. On the other hand, 124

The Contemporary “African Coolie” in the Middle East

Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan have neither signed nor ratified this protocol. This has handicapped the management of illegal migration in the region (Majidi & Oucho, 2016). From an environmental dimension, climate change, characterized by prolonged droughts and flush floods that have affected livelihood, escalated the disease burden and cut off affected communities from service delivery, on the other hand, is another key driver of African coolies to the Middle East (Majidi & Oucho, 2016). Uganda, Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia and South Sudan are some of the countries in Africa that, for example, have experienced catastrophic famines largely due to prolonged drought and histories of armed conflict (Carter & Rohwerder, 2016). While the Middle East is naturally also in a desert and could have had a much harsh environment, it has capable leadership with optimal management mechanisms in place that make it safer and more provident than their African countries of origin. From a social dimension, negative gender norms such as child marriages are forcing mainly the girl child to drop out of school and give birth while still a child. The uncomfortable truth is that many of these child marriages don’t see past their first anniversaries before they break down. All these increase vulnerability and the shame of divorce among these girl children who then choose to export themselves to the Middle East as African Coolies (Jones et al., 2018). Lastly, the migration of Africans to the Middle East is reflective of individual agency (H. de Haas, 2021). The African migrant workers voluntarily move to the Middle East since they see better opportunities and have the freedom to migrate to work in these countries (Ayele, 2018; M. de Haas & Frankema, 2022).

(c) Challenges Faced by African Migrant Employees in the Middle East This review further explored challenges faced by African migrant employees in the Middle East. Migrant workers in the Middle East live in precarious conditions characterized by uncertainty, limited social protection, low incomes and limited legal entitlements (Atong et al., 2018; Faraday, 2021; Mburu, 2020). This is because of the four key challenges they interface with: xenophobia, sexual abuse and exploitation, structural inequality and exploitation and accommodation-related challenges in the construction industry.

Xenophobia Indicating xenophobia, African Coolies in the Middle East are facing opposition from the indigenes because they provide cheap labor, take up available job opportunities and lower the bargaining power of the locals (Buehler et al., 2020). The xenophobia against the African Coolie has also been attributed to racial discrimination and religious differences between Muslim employers and their non-Muslim African Coolies (Buehler et al., 2020; Imerion, 2017; Rosenberg, 2019). This leads to Disparity in Remuneration between Different Nationalities and Working Conditions The majority of the participants said that their nationality was more of an influencing factor on access to jobs, workplace politics and remuneration. Particularly, participants reported that there were disparities in remuneration based on nationalities.

Structural Inequality and Exploitation African migrant workers are treated as slaves, properties of the sponsors and their employers (Atong et al., 2018). The Kafala sponsorship system, in particular, that ties migrant workers 125

Chris C. Opesen, Opolot Amos and Mathew Amollo

to an individual sponsor for visa and employment has been singled out as a perpetrator and an exacerbator of slavery in the Middle East (Atong et al., 2018; Imerion, 2017; Mlambo & Zubane, 2021; Pande, 2013). As a system, Kafala gives power to the Kafeel (sponsor/employer) to rule over the migrant worker. Unfortunately, this power is often abused by the kafeel with cases of deliberate salary delays/denial, beating of migrant worker, confiscation of passports of migrant workers, organ harvesting and murder being frequently reported (Mlambo & Zubane, 2021; Imerion, 2017). Though most of the African migrant employees move primarily to get meaningful employment and pay while in the middle, this hope is sometimes not realized. Some of the migrant employees do not return home with the money they sought to obtain while in the Middle East. Unfortunately, many return to worse life when they come back home because they sold everything to facilitate the job hunt in the Middle East (Mburu, 2020). The exploitation also emanates from the language barrier; most African laborers cannot read and interpret the contracts. Language barrier has always been erected in the employment contract documentation between the African migrant workers and the sponsors, and employers, which perpetuates the practice of migrant workers’ contract substitution. Most Sub-Saharan African migrant low-skilled workers do not write or understand the Arabic language that is used in the contract. The employment documents are first presented to migrant workers in their official languages in their countries of origin and signed before such contracts are rewritten in countries of destination usually in the Arabic language with false information and reduced wages and the migrant workers are forced to re-sign such new documents. Besides, the Arabic language is spoken in most homes and offices where migrant workers are employed (Amanda, 2021; Akpomera, 2022, p. 56). The vulnerability of African labor migrants to the Arab States is in two major perspectives –the country of residence and country of destination. Exploitation of migrant workers begins in the home country by the recruitment agents. This is done in the form of false or deceptive information provided to the migrant workers by the recruiting or employment broker or agency by overstating the monthly wage. Lowskilled migrant workers are always deceived as regards their monthly salaries. Worse still, the recruitment agencies also engage in contract substitution which is the process of presenting unenforceable employment contracts that are substituted with an alternative contract written in Arabic and signed upon arrival in the destination country. Besides, brokers and agencies charge exorbitant recruitment fees, with very high-interest rates leading to the migrant worker’s debt bondage. This situation forces the workers to remain in exploitative conditions in the destination country (Akpomera, 2022, p. 55).

Lack of Documentation and Detentions without Trial The other challenge is that there are many cases of African Coolies that often lose their legal statuses as a result of over staying in their host countries. Those opting for informal stay are detained without trial often if caught, and if they get work, they are more vulnerable to exploitation (UN Women, 2017) and nonpayment (Imerion, 2017). This challenge is exacerbated by the growing number of unregistered migrant recruitment agencies that have primarily perpetrated abuses and human trafficking. They pay for short tourist instead of long-term work visas (Atong et al., 2018; Mburu, 2020).

Limited Access and Use of the Justice System The African migrant employees in the Middle East have limited access and use of justice mechanisms (Mburu, 2020). This limitation has exacerbated abuses and negative conse126

The Contemporary “African Coolie” in the Middle East

quences to the African Coolie including death (Aldridge et al., 2018). The limited access and use of justice mechanisms has largely been attributed to the low awareness of existing legal structures that are protective, informal migration status and over-dependence on the migration agents to mitigate any human rights concerns faced by the migrant employee. A study in Ghana that focused on the role of brokers, state and employers in facilitating Ghanaian migrant workers to obtain gainful employment in the Middle East and Myanmar, for example, found that the brokers and the state are co-facilitators of human trafficking, debt-bondage and forced labor, where some state actors become conspirators (Deshingkar, Awumbila, & Teye, 2019). Freedom of association of migrant workers is denied in most Gulf Cooperation Council countries, and as a consequence, the inability of migrant workers to bargain collectively. There is the significant exclusion of migrant workers, especially domestic workers, from labor laws protection, and where offered, inferior and at the discretion of the sponsor or employers. There exists very limited access to justice from the national legal system, and the governmental operations do not promote such rights and benefits for migrant workers, especially in the informal sector and the gig economy (ILO, 2009, 2019; Akpomera, 2022, p. 56).

Other Challenges There are other challenges faced by the African coolies. One of these is sexual abuse and exploitation. The commonest form of sexual abuse the review found is rape by employer family members (Aldridge et al., 2018; Atong et al., 2018), (Mburu, 2020). Secondly, like the Indian Coolies, the African migrant workers working in the construction industry in the Middle East are also faced with health challenges as a result of overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions at accommodation facilities (Bisong, 2021) as well as discrimination on the basis of gender (Nampewo, 2021, p. 26), Salary Delay, Job Insecurity (Imerion, 2017, pp. 112–113) When participants spoke of direct exploitation they tended to focus on the experiences of others, most especially other low and middle-skilled workers. Similarly, a female participant said that she had not experienced any exploitation but she referred to her friends who were recruited as low and middle-skilled workers. In her words: I have never felt exploited but I hear what they do to people. I have an advantage because I’m under my husband’s sponsorship so I can change jobs anytime. I have friends who work in other places, they are under paid, and they work 6 days a week and for longer hours. Sometimes they work from 5 or 4am, the companies don’t pay by hours they pay by salary and it doesn’t matter if you work overtime and the companies don’t follow the contract. They give them different salaries and jobs different from what they stated when they were recruiting them. The people who exploit them are agents. (Peace, female) For example, a participant spoke about how he escaped being exploited by agents and how agents took advantage of other migrants: I was very lucky; firstly, I didn’t come broke. I’m a boss back home and I came ready to go back if my stay is not ok. For others who had nothing back home, they were able to manipulate, kick out and make them go through a whole lot of stress and at the end 127

Chris C. Opesen, Opolot Amos and Mathew Amollo

of the day they didn’t get their ID. Anyway, God has been very faithful; my testimony is that of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego5. (Mark, male) (Imerion, 2017, p. 109)

Discrimination on the Basis of Gender The recounted experiences by the female returnees manifested gender discrimination. One of the indications of this is the differential treatment and general underpayment of female domestic workers – with monthly salaries as low as USD 135 as seen in the testimony of Prudence Nandawula-compared to the payment given to their male counterparts. The gender inequality in this instance arises from the differential treatment attached to the femaledominated field of domestic work, which is undervalued vis-a-vis other types of work where the males are involved. One of the key respondents interviewed for this study who profiled herself as having previously worked in the Kingdom of Jordan suggested that the tendency of Middle East employers to underpay female domestic workers is occasioned by their negative attitude toward domestic work, which such employers regard as insignificant and therefore unworthy of good payment (Nampewo, 2021, p. 26). Many returnees from Saudi Arabia worked in elementary occupations and expressed that some of their rights were limited during their work abroad. The findings of this study show that many companies in Qatar do not have a proper structure or fixed date as to when employees should expect their salaries. Most of the participants in this study complained that their salaries are not paid on time and this problem varies from one company to another. According to a participant: “In my previous company, there was a structure; you get paid every 25th but in other companies I have worked there is no specific date when you are paid” (Stella, female). Another participant argues: “Sometimes, it comes on the 5th, 18th and one time it came on the 30th of the next month” (Lizzy, female). Another participant put a similar view forward but he argued that free visa holders are more vulnerable during their early days in Qatar: “Some companies pay early while some will owe for like 2,3,4,5 months. The fake company that employed us does not pay us so you can be here for one year with those ‘kind’ [unusual] visa, they will not pay” (Mark, male) (Imerion, 2017, p. 111). Even though all the participants spoke positively about their physical security, they all shared the same opinion of job insecurity in Qatar. For example, a female participant (Stella) asserts that “there can never be job security in the Middle East; you don’t have permanent residence so nothing is secured.” Organization-sponsored workers are more vulnerable to job insecurity than free visa holders. Migrant workers can lose their jobs with no fault of theirs as a participant narrates: You can just get up one morning and your employer tells you your job is kalas! That’s the word they usually use, it’s over, kalas, and they don’t need you anymore. Most often, they don’t pay you end of contract benefit and they just tell you blablabla, the company is in bad shape, they have some financial difficulties, they cannot keep you and you have to terminate your contract with them and since it is a sponsorship business they terminate your visa too. (Jerry, male) (Imerion, 2017, pp. 112–113)

Emic Voices KENYA

They told me my contract will have to be renegotiated after l arrived in Saudi Arabia... that l will have to be paid 800 Riyal and not 2,000 Riyal. The sad thing is that I was 128

The Contemporary “African Coolie” in the Middle East

told to work for 3 months without pay because monies given to Crown Agency were to be paid back. I was shocked since I was told in Kenya everything was for free. (Atong et al., 2018, p. 50) Zainab again noted how she suffered under her employer, “I will wake up at 04:00 am and sleep at 12:00 midnight and was sleeping in the laundry room. Their sons were sleeping with me in turns. They would come and roll over my blanket when l am asleep.” She further claimed: when l told madam l no longer want to work, she locked me up for days with no food and l was in my menstruating period. I stole a phone to communicate and one of the sons helped me out. I think he had a soft spot for me. (Atong et al., 2018, p. 51) GHANA

Temaa, a returnee domestic migrant worker from Saudi Arabia, noted: I was taken to Saudi to look after their old mother. I bath and feed her and in addition I clean their 4 floor storey building and the wash cars. I worked eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, without any rest. I worked like a slave and was treated like one. They talk to me anyhow. The son of Madame tried to rape me several times. I was always inside and not allowed to go out. (Atong et al., 2018, p. 52) UGANDA

There is a Ugandan lady who was murdered in Oman after completing her two-year contract as a housemaid. The day she was leaving the house because she was now free to go, her Madam ordered that she be locked up in the room, stripped naked and slaughtered like an animal. The justification her boss’ wife made was that the Ugandan maid had slept with her husband (IOM, 2011; Atong et al., 2018, p. 53).

Lack of Pre-Departure Orientation Lack of pre-departure orientation has been a major challenge prior to migrants moving to the GCC states. This sometimes makes migrants unaware of what is expected of them in terms of their rights and responsibilities. For instance, Kenyan migrants in the UAE were found to be more vulnerable because they had limited legal and rights awareness due to lack of pre-departure information (Atong et al., 2018, p. 16).

(d) Efforts to Secure the African Coolie in the Middle East The fourth question this review attempted to answer is, what has been done to secure the African Migrant worker in the Middle East? 129

Chris C. Opesen, Opolot Amos and Mathew Amollo

Though African migrant workers still have little protection from their home governments while in the Middle East (Atong et al., 2018), Middle East countries such as Oman and Saudi Arabia have enacted laws to protect migrant workers, especially those working in domestic care (Atong et al., 2018; UN Women, 2017). Within the African continent too, there are current efforts to strengthen bilateral and regional laws to protect migrant workers from the African continent in the Middle East. In 2020, countries from East and Central Africa, for example, signed a cooperation agreement aimed to protect migrant workers working in Gulf and Middle East countries. This agreement was a result of a high-level ministerial engagement triggered by numerous reports of abuse and exploitation of low-skilled African workers in the Middle East and Gulf countries (Ssebwami, 2020). At a country-specific level, Uganda and Ethiopia have reviewed their legal and regulatory frameworks in line with international standards in an attempt to protect their citizens from exploitation (International Labour Organization, 2019). However, weak implementation of migration laws remains a challenge in these countries (Offia, 2019). Scholars indicate that the African Union and regional bodies are not doing enough to protect the African migrant worker in the Middle East (Mlambo & Zubane, 2021; Pande, 2013). The Kafala system continues to thrive largely because of existing gaps in the protection of African migrant workers which include: human rights protection has been left to the Middle East countries, the system relegates human rights protection to the household, lack of cooperative agreements between Gulf Cooperation Council and African countries, reluctance among the Middle East countries to complete remove the Kafala system (Mlambo & Zubane, 2021). Therefore, the African Union and regional bodies such as ECOWAS, IGAD and EAC fill the African migrant workers protection gap by establishing strong regulatory frameworks to protect low-skilled migrant workers from Africa (Bisong, 2021; International Labour Organization, 2019).

Emic Voice Please help us because they say we have been sold to them. We are going through hell. Their police is always on their side. Nobody will listen to our cries. The Nigerian embassy officials do not care about what is happening to their citizens. (Atong et al., 2018, p. 53) For instance, Zainab noted: I stayed for one year in Saudi Arabia and return. I did not know of any embassy of Kenya in Saudi Arabia let alone labour attachees that help Kenyan workers over there. (Atong et al., 2018, p. 58)

Discussion This review sought to explore factors driving migration of African workers, challenges faced by African migrant employees and efforts undertaken to secure the African Migrant worker in the Middle East. Using the global capitalism and dual markets theories as a framework for discussion, this chapter highlights the drivers of migration from Africa to the Middle East as economic, governance, environmental, social as well as individual factors. Specifically, this chapter highlights the agency of migrant workers in identifying, negotiating available 130

The Contemporary “African Coolie” in the Middle East

opportunities with employers (Ayele, 2018; H. de Haas, 2021; M. de Haas & Frankema, 2022). Factors that have been identified to facilitate agency among migrant workers include presence of success stories among returnees, availability of opportunities for employment, perceived ability to fulfill both social and personal expectations such as providing financial support to their families and escaping poverty. These aspirations are supported by empirical studies showing a correlation between migration work and improvement in household wellbeing (Kuschminder et al., 2018). Evidence presented in this review, however, indicates that migrant workers do not necessarily get better jobs or working conditions abroad (Mallett, 2018). Nevertheless, it appears that a majority of African migrant workers migrate to the Middle East often after perceiving the benefits as outweighing risks. Based on these expectations, this migrant economy continues with the support of a highly connected labor export network and the push factors in many Sub-Saharan African countries such as widespread poverty, limited employment opportunities and conflict among other things. From the segmented labor perspective, the employers and/sponsors enjoy an influx of cheap skilled and exploitable labor force since they don’t require significant investments in training and the nature of employment has little or in other cases no legal protection (Leighton, 2015; Mburu, 2020; Mlambo & Zubane, 2021). The comparative living conditions and opportunities in the host and home countries continue to motivate African migrants to seek migrant employment in the Middle East (Mburu, 2020; Nampewo, 2021). With limited opportunities available within their home countries, many young African migrant workers are also seeking better opportunities across national borders, and the Middle East has over the last two decades been an attractive destination (Nampewo, 2021). Protection of migrant workers though essential is challenging since a significant number of migrant movements are not documented and the majority of African countries do not have migration cooperative agreements with Gulf cooperation countries (Mlambo & Zubane, 2021; Mong’ina, 2018; Pande, 2013). International and regional labor instruments such as ILO Convention 97 on Migration for Employment; ILO Convention 143, the Migrant Workers Convention; and the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of Migrant Workers and Members of their Families; African Common Position on Migration and Development and African Union Migration Policy Framework for Africa and Plan of Action provide frameworks to strengthen implementation of migrant labor laws (International Labour Organization, 2019).

Conclusion African migration to the Middle East constitutes a key migrant route globally. Several factors have been identified to facilitate this phenomenon. We note that African migration to the Middle East is largely self-facilitating driven by individual aspirations and capacities, social-cultural and environmental factors. The benefits of migration work can be far-reaching including direct benefits to the migrants, local development back home and sustained economic growth of developed economies. However, abuse and exploitation of African migrant workers are key challenges. The weak migrant labor regulatory framework and obsolete labor laws such as the Kafala system have continued to undermine mutual benefits that could be realized from migrant employment. There is therefore a need for stakeholders to further review migrant employment arrangements in the Middle East to ensure adequate protection for the workers and their employers if this arrangement is to yield sustainable positive outcomes. 131

Chris C. Opesen, Opolot Amos and Mathew Amollo

References Aglietta, M. (1979). A theory of capitalist regulation: The US experience. NLB. Akpomera, E. (2022). Sub-Sahara Africa – Arab States labour migration corridor: Exploitation crisis and emerging trends of protection for migrant workers. Ife Social Sciences Review, 30(1), 51–59. Retrieved from https://issr​.oauife​.edu​.ng​/index​.php​/issr​/article​/view​/165. Aldridge, R. W., Nellums, L. B., Bartlett, S., Barr, A. L., Patel, P., Burns, R., … Friedland, J. S. (2018). Global patterns of mortality in international migrants: A systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet, 392(10164), 2553–2566. Amanda, B. (2021). Regional solutions: Regulating recruitment and protection of African migrant workers in the Gulf and the Middle East. Discussion Paper No. 222. www​.ecdpm​.org. Atong, K., Mayah, E., & Odigie, A. (2018). Africa labour migration to the GCC states. The case of Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda: An African Trade Union overview. African Regional Organisation of the International Trade Union Confederation (Lome, ITUC-AFRICA), 2018. Retrieved from https:// www​.ituc​-africa​.org​/IMG​/pdf​/itucafrica​_study​-africa​_labour​_migration​_to​_the​_gcc​_states​.pdf Ayele, G. H. (2018). Young Ethiopian women’s migration to the middle east: Agency, decision-making processes and empowerment. A Research Paper presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for obtaining the degree of Master of Arts In Development Studies, International Institute of Social Studies, Netherlands, November 2018 Bisong, A. (2021). Regional solutions. Regulating recruitment and protection of African migrant workers in the Gulf and the Middle East. European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM) Discussion Paper, 08 February 2021 Buehler, M., Fabbe, K. E., & Han, K. J. (2020). Community-level postmaterialism and anti-migrant attitudes: An original survey on opposition to Sub-Saharan African migrants in the Middle East. International Studies Quarterly, 64(3), 669–683. Carter, B., & Rohwerder, B. (2016). Rapid fragility and migration assessment for Ethiopia. Rapid Literature Review, 2, 1–47. Castelli, F. (2018). Drivers of migration: Why do people move? Journal of Travel Medicine, 25(1), tay040. de Haas, H. (2021). A theory of migration: The aspirations-capabilities framework. Comparative Migration Studies, 9(1), 8. https://doi​.org​/10​.1186​/s40878​-020​-00210​-4. de Haas, M., & Frankema, E. (2022). Migration in Africa: Shifting Patterns of mobility from the 19th to the 21st century. Routledge. Deshingkar, P., Awumbila, M., & Teye, J. K. (2019). Victims of trafficking and modern slavery or agents of change? Migrants, brokers, and the state in Ghana and Myanmar. Journal of the British Academy, 7(s1), 77–106. Dessiye, M., & Emirie, G. (2018). Living and working as a domestic worker in the Middle East: The experience of migrant returnees in Girana town, north Wollo, Ethiopia. African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, 11(1), 69–86. Doeringer, P. B., & Piore, M. J. (1975). Unemployment and the dual labor market. The Public Interest, 38, 67. El Ouassif, A. (2021). The challenge of the youth bulge in Africa and the Middle East: Migration and the brain drain. NATO Southern Hub. Policy Center for the New South, January 2021. Retrived from: https://www​.africaportal​.org​/publications​/challenge​-youth​-bulge​-africa​-and​-middle​-east​ -migration​-and​-brain​-drain/ on May 17, 2023 Faraday, F. (2021). The empowerment of migrant workers in a precarious situation: An overview. KNOMAD Paper 39, December 2021. Retrived from https://www​.knomad​.org​/publication​/ empowerment​-migrant​-workers​-precarious​-situation​-overview on May 17th 2023 Fernandez, B. (2013). Traffickers, brokers, employment agents, and social networks: The regulation of intermediaries in the migration of Ethiopian domestic workers to the Middle East. International Migration Review, 47(4), 814–843. https://doi​.org​/10​.1111​/imre​.12049. Flahaux, M.-L., & De Haas, H. (2016). African migration: Trends, patterns, drivers. Comparative Migration Studies, 4(1), 1–25. Imerion, E. (2017). Transnational labour migration: Experiences of mid-to-highly skilled African migrant workers in Doha, Qatar. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Faculty of Social Sciences, Brock University St. Catharines,

132

The Contemporary “African Coolie” in the Middle East Ontario, 2017. Retrived from https://dr​.library​.brocku​.ca​/bitstream​/handle​/10464​/12968​/ Brock​_Imerion​_Eneze​_2017​.pdf​?sequence​=1​&isAllowed=y on May 17, 2023 International Labour Organization. (2019). Policy brief – Key findings and recommendations from survey on labour migration from Ethiopia to Gulf cooperation council states and Lebanon. [Press Release]. Retrieved from https://www​.ilo​.org​/wcmsp5​/groups​/public/--​-africa/--​-ro​-abidjan/--​ -sro​-addis​_ababa​/documents​/publication​/wcms​_712236​.pdf. International Organization for Immigration. (2019). Fatal journeys volume 4: Missing migrant children. https://publications​.iom​.int​/books​/fatal​-journeys​-volume​-4​-missing​-migrantchildren. International Labour Organization (ILO). (2009). The cost of coercion: Global report on forced labour. www​.ilo​.org​/global​/topics. International Organization for Migration. (2022). World migration report. International Organization for Migration. IOM (2011). World Migration Report 2011: Communicating Effectively About Migration. International Organization for Migration, Geneva, Switzerland, 2011. https://publications.iom. int/system/files/pdf/wmr2011_english.pdf Jones, N., Presler-Marshall, E., Emirie, G., & Tefera, B. (2018). Rethinking the future-seeking narrative of child migration: The case of Ethiopian adolescent domestic workers in the Middle East. African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal, 11(1), 20–32. Kandilige, L., Teye, J. K., Setrana, M., & Badasu, D. M.. (2022). ‘They'd beat us with whatever is available to them’: Exploitation and abuse of Ghanaian domestic workers in the Middle East. International Migration. https://doi​.org​/10​.1111​/imig​.13096. Kuschminder, K., Andersson, L., & Seigel, M. (2018). Migration and multidimensional well-being in Ethiopia: Investigating the role of migrants destinations. Migration and Development, 7(3), 321–340. Lee, E., & Moon, M. (2013). Korean nursing students’ intention to migrate abroad. Nurse Education Today, 33(12), 1517–1522. https://doi​.org​/10​.1016​/j​.nedt​.2013​.04​.006. Lee, E. S. (1966). A theory of migration. Demography, 3(1), 47–57. Leighton, M. (2015). The price of rights: Regulating international labor migration. de Martin RUHS, 1 June 2015. Majidi, N., & Oucho, L. (2016). East Africa. Migrant Smuggling Data and Research, 55. A global review of the emerging evidence base, IOM: Geneva. Mallett, R. (2018). Decent work, migration and the 2030 agenda for sustainable development. Overseas Development Institute. Manning, P. (2022). Counting and categorizing African migrants, 1980–2020: Global, continental, and national perspectives. In Migration in Africa (pp. 355–375). Routledge. Mburu, A. N. (2020). Human rights challenges for migrant workers: A case of returning Kenyans from the gulf region. University of Nairobi. Mlambo, V. H., & Adetiba, T. C. (2017). Effects of brain drain on the South African health sector; analysis of the dynamics of its push factors. Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies, 9(4(J)), 62–72. Mlambo, V. H., & Zubane, S. (2021). No rights, no freedom: The Kafala system and the plight of African migrants in the Middle East. ADRRI Journal of Arts and Social Sciences, 18(1(6)), April– June 2021, 1–16. Mong’ina, E. A. (2018). Migrant labour issues in international relations-Kenyan workers in Saudi Arabia. University of Nairobi. Muhamed Seid Ebrahim (2016). Migration of Ethiopian youth to the Middle East and its impacts on the migrants’ sending community: Raya-Mehoni Town. Master’s thesis in Globalization, Politics and Culture Submitted to Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Spring 2016. https://ntnuopen.ntnu.no/ntnu-xmlui/handle/11250/2449787. Nampewo, Z. (2021). The illusion of greener pastures: Violence and justice for female Ugandan migrant workers in the Middle East. Strathmore LJ, 5(1), 11. National Humanities Centre. (2007). Annual report 2006–7. https://nat​iona​lhum​anit​iescenter​.org​/ wp​-content​/uploads​/2015​/10​/anrpt200607​.pdf. Offia, F. (2019). Human trafficking in Uganda: Law, policy and practice. Policy and Practice (December 2, 2019). Irish Centre for Human Rights Working Paper Series. Pande, A. (2013). “The paper that you have in your hand is my freedom”: Migrant domestic work and the sponsorship (Kafala) system in Lebanon. International Migration Review, 47(2), 414–441.

133

Chris C. Opesen, Opolot Amos and Mathew Amollo Piore, M. J. (1975). Impact of immigration on the labor force. Monthly Labor Review, 41–44 (4 pages). Robinson, W. I. (2006). Beyond the theory of imperialism: Global capitalism and the transnational state. Societies Without Borders, 2(2007), 5–26. Robinson, W.I. (2012). Global capitalism theory and the emergence of transnational elites. In A. Kakabadse & N. Kakabadse (Eds.), Global elites. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi​.org​/10​ .1057​/9780230362406​_3. Rosenberg, A. S. (2019). Measuring racial bias in international migration flows. International Studies Quarterly, 63(4), 837–845. Schewel Kerilyn (2022). Aspiring for Change: Ethiopian Women’s Labor Migration to the Middle East. Social Forces, 100(4), 1619–1641. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soab051. Ssebwami, J. (2020). How new cooperation agreement among East African states help to address overseas worker exploitation. Retrieved from https://www​.pmldaily​.com​/news​/2020​/01​/how​ -new​-cooperation​-agreement​-among​-east​-african​-states​-help​-to​-address​-overseas​-worker​-exploitation​.html. UK Parliament Hansard (1899). Indian coolies on the Ugandan railway, Volume 63 debated on Thursday 23 February 1899. https://hansard​.parliament​.uk​/Commons​/1899​-02​-23​/debates​ /03dd0293​-6310​-4d30​-a26d​-767b1d2dfa37​/Ind​ianC​ooli​esOn​TheU​gand​aRailway UN Women. (2017). Women migrant workers’ journey through the margins: Labour, migration and trafficking. UN Women. Van Hear, N., Bakewell, O., & Long, K. (2018). Push-pull plus: Reconsidering the drivers of migration. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44(6), 927–944. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/1369183X​ .2017​.1384135.

134

8 LESOTHO–SOUTH AFRICA RELATIONS A Case for Free Movement of Persons across the Common Border Khabele Matlosa

Introduction This chapter makes a case for the free movement of persons across the common border between Lesotho and South Africa, given the special type of their relationship. Compared to South Africa’s relations with other Southern African countries (i.e. through the Southern African Customs Union-SACU and the Southern African Development Community-SADC), Lesotho-South Africa relations are very unique and require a unique approach. There are multivarious factors that explain the special nature and uniqueness of Lesotho-South Africa relations, chief among which are three. First, unlike any other Southern African country, Lesotho is totally landlocked within South Africa. No other country is completely encircled by South Africa except Lesotho. The closest to this situation is Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) which is landlocked between South Africa and Mozambique. Thus, migratory flows between Lesotho and South Africa cannot be treated like any others from other countries within or outside the SADC region, given the peculiarity of Lesotho’s geopolitical location inside the belly of South Africa. Second, and linked to the first factor, Lesotho and South Africa share strong geographic, historical, socio-cultural and politico-economic bonds. Basotho, the dominant ethnic group in Lesotho, have strong socio-cultural affinity and even blood relations with Basotho in South Africa especially in the Free State Province. Sesotho language, the dominant language in Lesotho, is one of the official languages in South Africa. Politically, the two countries share the plight of the oppressive apartheid regime and together joined hands in the liberation of South Africa. Basotho chiefs participated actively during the Kliptown conference that adopted the Freedom Charter of the African National Congress in 1955. Following the banning of the liberation movements by the apartheid regime in the early 1960s, Lesotho hosted South African refugees, despite its landlockedness, and bore the brunt of apartheid military, political and economic destabilization. Basotho contributed immensely to the liberation of South Africa against apartheid, some of whom paid the ultimate price, losing their lives. DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-10

135

Khabele Matlosa

They endured the wrath of the apartheid regime, most notably the South African Defence Force (SADF) military raids of 9 December 1982, in which 42 people were killed (30 South African refugees and 12 Basotho nationals). On 21 December 1985, another SADF military raid in Maseru claimed nine lives. Thirdly, Basotho have contributed significantly to South Africa’s economic advancement. Unskilled Basotho have contributed to the economic advancement of South Africa through their employment as extra-cheap mine labour, farm labour and domestic labour. There has also been a considerable amount of skilled labour migration (brain drain) from Lesotho to South Africa over the years, which has largely benefitted the latter at an enormous cost to the former. Although there are currently about 400,000 Basotho migrants in South Africa (Afrobarometer, 2018), Moloto suggests that all in all, there are more Sotho-speaking people in South Africa (estimated at four million) than in Lesotho (estimated at two million) (Moloto, 2022: 5). In essence, the two countries belong together culturally, socially, economically and politically despite the colonially imposed borders that divide them. The intriguing irony, though, is that instead of emphasizing those elements of their relations that unite them, the leadership of both countries has tended to give pride of place to those elements that divide them, such as the colonially imposed borders which are both artificial and meaningless to the lives and livelihoods of ordinary people. For instance, border communities living adjacent to the border between Lesotho and Free State crisscross these borders daily for livelihood purposes. In the same vein, cross-border traders, who are predominantly women, undertake regular cross-border journeys to South Africa to purchase merchandise they sell back home in South Africa. Their business now extends to China. Moloto sums up the predicament facing Lesotho-South Africa relations succinctly thus: South Africa wholly surrounds the Kingdom of Lesotho. Due to this geographical arrangement, Basotho feel they are prisoners in their own land. Many of them feel like they are a big herd of cattle locked in a kraal with a shepherd or owner who has forsaken them. Due to hunger and thirst, they are supposed to force their way out. There is a consensus among the majority of Basotho stakeholders that any cooperation agreement which does not deal with the burning issue of the free (easy and effortless) movement across the border would not be addressing the pertinence of Basotho's interests and aspirations. More than 70% of Basotho regard free movement between South Africa and Lesotho as the main priority issue that needs urgent attention. (Moloto, 2022: 1) The main thrust of this chapter is that Lesotho and South Africa have to redefine their relationship away from their colonial and apartheid character towards a more equitable integration that benefits their citizens. The chapter calls for a change of mindset and a paradigm shift for Lesotho and South Africa to develop a unique and special type of relationship that will transform their common border from being a barrier to being a bridge that facilitates the free movement of persons, within the framework of the letter and spirit of the Protocol to the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community Relating to Free Movement of Persons, Right of Residence and Right of Establishment adopted by the African Union (AU) in 2018. The chapter is divided into seven sections, including this introduction. The second section presents the conceptual and normative frameworks on free movement of persons. The 136

Lesotho–South Africa Relations

third section provides a historical-cum-contextual background to our understanding of the political economy of Lesotho-South Africa relations. The fourth section highlights the limits of previous bilateral initiatives aimed at redefining Lesotho-South Africa relations. The fifth section looks at the impediments posed by COVID-19 to cross-border migration and mobility between the two countries. The sixth section makes a case for free movement of persons. The seventh and final section concludes and wraps up the discussion, distilling key findings.

Conceptual and Normative Frameworks Free movement of persons denotes unrestricted mobility or migration of people across borders for various livelihood needs. The notion of free movement of persons in this chapter refers to travel of Basotho and South Africans across the common border between Lesotho and South Africa on the basis of an open visa policy as against the current restrictive measures, which require the use of a passport for a limited stay of travellers/visitors. The AU defines free movement of persons as the right of nationals of a Member State to enter, move freely and reside in another Member State in accordance with the laws of the host Member State and to exit the host Member State in accordance with the laws and procedures for exiting that Member State. (AU, 2018: 11) Free movement of persons is currently a major agenda of the African Union (AU) within the framework of Agenda 2063 – The Africa We Want: the current long-term development blueprint for Africa’s structural transformation. Free movement of persons is one of the 14 flagship projects of Agenda 2063. Of the seven aspirations of Agenda 2063, aspiration 2 envisions “an integrated continent politically united and based on the ideals of Pan-Africanism and the vision of Africa’s Renaissance” (AU, 2014). As part of the commitment to promote free movement of persons, African leaders have envisaged a continent with seamless borders, and management of cross border resources through dialogue … [in which] … a continent where free movement of people, capital, goods and services will result in significant increases in trade and investment amongst African countries rising to unprecedented levels, and strengthen Africa’s place in global trade. (AU, 2014) This is the normative commitment of the AU towards the free movement of persons on the continent. Does the normative commitment match the practical reality on the ground in terms of both bilateral and multilateral inter-state relations in Africa? This is the question at the centre of this chapter with special reference to Lesotho-South Africa relations. In January 2018, the 55-member African Union (AU) adopted the Protocol to the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community Relating to Free Movement of Persons, Right of Residence and Right of Establishment. The protocol envisages free movement of persons in Africa evolving along four main stages: (a) relaxation of visa regimes, (b) promotion of the right of entry by migrants, (c) promotion of the right of residence and (d) promotion of the right of establishment. 137

Khabele Matlosa

The impetus for free movement of persons has been enhanced by the adoption of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) aimed at accelerating intra-Africa trade, which commenced in January 2021. Acceleration of intra-Africa trade can succeed more with the concomitant acceleration of free movement of persons. The two (free trade and free movement of persons) are flipsides of the same coin. Whereas both Lesotho and South Africa have ratified the AfCFTA protocols, they have not yet ratified the free movement protocol – an indicator of their reluctance to allow free movement of persons within the SADC region and even across their common border. South Africa, as the regional hegemon, has been (and still is) reluctant to embrace free movement of persons for fear of allowing an exodus of migrants into its territory. This perception has, in part, contributed to the upsurge of xenophobia and afro-phobia in the country. The success or failure of the AU’s free movement of persons agenda is highly dependent upon the commitment and actions of its 55 member states and the eight Regional Economic Communities (RECs) that form the building blocks for its regional integration agenda. All these RECs have developed the normative frameworks for free movement of persons. Be that as it may, it is worth noting that of the five regions of the continent, two are far more advanced, while three lag behind. According to the 2021 Visa Openness Report of the African Development Bank (AfDB), of the top 20 most visa-open countries, 45% are in West Africa, followed by 30% in East Africa (AfDB, 2021: 20). In essence, throughout the African continent, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the East African Community (EAC) are the trailblazers in terms of advancing free movement of persons, using the EAC Passport and ECOWAS Passport as major catalysts. Currently, efforts are underway to introduce a regional electronic Identity Document for EAC and ECOWAS citizens to complement their regional passports. Of the top 20 most visa-open countries, the Southern Africa and North Africa regions account for only 20% and 5%, respectively (AfDB, 2021: 20). This means that both the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) still have a long way to go in order to catch up with EAC and ECOWAS. There is no single country from Central Africa in the top 20 most visa-open countries (AfDB, 2021: 20). There are no regional identity documents and/or travel documents in Southern Africa and North Africa. In Central Africa, some countries have introduced a regional travel document whose effectiveness is unclear if the findings of the 2021 AfDB visa openness report are anything to go by. Lesotho and South Africa are also member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) which, in August 2005, adopted the Protocol on the Facilitation of Movement of Persons. Unlike the AU Protocol, this Protocol does not commit SADC member states to free movement of persons. Consequently, there is no official commitment of SADC member states to free movement of persons, but mere facilitation of human movement across borders. This may explain, in part, the pervasive problem of xenophobia and afro-phobia in the region especially in South Africa, to which Basotho themselves are not immune. The next section provides a historical context to Lesotho-South Africa relations for a better understanding of the contemporary dilemmas facing cross-border human movement.

The Historical Context As indicated earlier, Lesotho and South Africa share strong socio-cultural and politico-economic bonds. Added to these bonds, their geographic proximity suggests that these coun138

Lesotho–South Africa Relations

tries belong together by a quirk of history. Ironically, the colonially determined borders that divide them tend to be given more pride of place in their co-existence than these features that unite them. This situation continues to hamper the free movement of persons across the common border of these countries, yet the borders were imposed by the colonialists without the consent of the affected indigenous populations on both sides. The historical context of Lesotho-South Africa relations is predicated fundamentally on four main realities (see Bardill and Coobe, 1985; Strom, 1991986). Firstly, the capitalist penetration in Southern Africa was such that it created South Africa as the industrial hub of the regional political economy with the other countries such as Lesotho as the periphery meant to supply extra-cheap labour. This is the foundational stone of migration between Lesotho and South Africa today. This, by definition, is an unequal relationship. The dominant South African economy exploits cheap labour from the Lesotho periphery in a relationship predicated upon dependency. It is worth emphasizing that this unequal economic arrangement characterized the Basutoland economy under the British colonial domination and during the apartheid era. Interestingly, the post-apartheid political landscape under the African National Congress government has not transformed this exploitative and unequal relationship between Lesotho and South Africa. Second, Lesotho is one of the few countries in the world totally surrounded by another, and more powerful, country. Motlatsi Thabane (2020) reminds us that throughout the world there are only three such enclaves namely Lesotho, San Marino and the Vatican. In the case of San Marino and the Vatican, their relationship with Italy was achieved amicably and peacefully by mutual consent. In contrast, Lesotho’s awkward geo-political location was achieved coercively through a combination of malevolent Boer conquest and deliberate British colonial neglect. Lesotho’s enclavism, therefore, is a curse and so long as the country remains a dependent enclave, as is the case currently, prospects for endogenous and autonomous development are non-existent. The country is bound to perpetually remain overwhelmingly dependent upon exogenous factors of production such as aid, foreign direct investment and revenue from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), among others. Two main commodities that Lesotho exports to South Africa are its human resources (both skilled and unskilled) and water (popularly referred to as White Gold). South Africa gets these resources from Lesotho for a song as it determines demand (i.e. quality and quantity) and supply (i.e. price). Third, Lesotho lacks a robust national economy of its own that is self-sufficient and selfsustaining, given three stark realities: (a) it remains a labour reserve servicing the industrial, mining and agribusiness needs of South Africa through cheap Basotho labour; (b) Lesotho depends overwhelmingly on imported goods from South Africa for almost every aspect of lives and livelihoods of its 2.2 million population, which essentially means the country survives on a borrowed economy and (c) given its overwhelming socio-economic dependence on South Africa, by extension, Lesotho’s politics is susceptible to geo-strategic interests of South Africa. A perfect example of South Africa’s geo-strategic interest at work in Lesotho was demonstrated vividly in 1986. In January of that year, the apartheid regime mounted pressure on Lesotho, closing borders before facilitating a military coup, led by Major General Metsing Lekhanya, that toppled Prime Minister Leabua Jonathan and his Basotho National Party (BNP) government (Edgar, 1987). Two strategic objectives of the apartheid regime were to (a) arm-twist Lesotho into signing the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) and (b) push the South African refugees out of Lesotho further afield beyond the Limpopo River with a view to postponing the decolonization of the country 139

Khabele Matlosa

by liberation movements, including the African National Congress (ANC). Both objectives were achieved. Fourth, although Lesotho enjoys autonomy in respect of fiscal policy, it only enjoys nominal independence in respect of the monetary policy. The government has the power to impose and collect taxes as well as determine government revenue and expenditure. This is an indicator of some modicum of fiscal independence. However, despite the fact that the country does have its own currency, the Loti, this is pegged at one-to-one parity with the South Africa Rand. Together with Eswatini and Namibia, Lesotho belongs to the 1974 Rand Monetary Area (RMA) along with the regionally dominant South Africa (Collings, 1978). The RMA changed its name to the Common Monetary Area in 1986 (Nchake, Edwards and Rankins, 2018). The Rand dominates the economies of these three countries and circulates as legal tender over and above their own currencies. Botswana withdrew from the RMA in 1976 and disentangled its currency, the Pula, from the South Africa Rand. As indicated earlier, the RMA was transformed into the Common Monetary Area (CMA) a de facto monetary union “where members’ currencies are pegged one-for-one to the South African Rand and South African monetary policy is adopted” (Nchake, Edwards and Rankins, 2018: 155). All these countries (Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia and South Africa) belong to the 1910 Southern African Customs Union (SACU), the oldest regional integration scheme in Africa. The above four predicaments provide solid evidence that Lesotho’s economy is part and parcel of the South African economy. It is, therefore, irrational to simply promote preferential trade and commerce through SACU and the harmonization of currencies through CMA without promoting the free movement of persons, despite the centuries-old history of migration between the two countries. In sum, from the three-pronged description of the contemporary political economy of Lesotho-South Africa relations, it is abundantly evident that Lesotho is overwhelmingly dependent on South Africa in a relationship in which the former dances to the tune played by the latter, as the English aphorism goes: he who pays the piper calls the tune. Preferential trade, common monetary policy and migration between landlocked Lesotho and South Africa are mutually reinforcing and ought to be pursued simultaneously. For migration to be mutually beneficial to both countries, free movement of persons is the most appropriate policy preference. It is worth noting that the 1909 Union of South Africa Act provided that the British protectorates, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (BLS), would become part of the Union upon independence. This was part of a strategy for the annexation of BLS by South Africa. This attempt at the annexation of the BLS received widespread opposition, internally within BLS and externally. Internally, BLS leaders repulsed attempts at the annexation of their countries by the racist apartheid state. In fact, Basotho leaders have contributed to the evolution and execution of the liberation struggle in South Africa in more ways than one. Historical records show that the Paramount Chief of Lesotho, Letsie II, played an important role in the formation of the South African Native National Congress (now African National Congress) and became its Honorary President when it was founded in Bloemfontein in 1912. Externally, the concerted opposition came from the United Nations. During its 17th session held on 18 December 1962, the UNGA resolved that “any attempt to annex Basutoland, Bechualand or Swaziland or to encroach upon their territorial integrity in any way, will be regarded by the United Nations as an act of aggression violating the Charter of the United Nations” (UN, 1962). 140

Lesotho–South Africa Relations

Until 1963, Basotho were not required to produce passports at the border while travelling to South Africa. It was “only the security concerns of the apartheid government that led to travel documents being required” (Sechaba Consultants, 2002: 1). The apartheid regime took this drastic measure two years after the formation of the uMkhonto we Sizwe by the African National Congress (ANC) on 16 December 1961 as the armed wing of the liberation movement. It was evident that the apartheid state decided to tighten border controls in order to forestall possible military incursions into the country by the liberation movements which were banned in South Africa, including uMkhonto we Sizwe, the then armed wing of the ANC. Moloto corroborates this observation by arguing that the apartheid regime introduced passports as a measure meant to restrict and control the movement across the borders to address the regime's security concerns. The primary aim was to monitor the movement and activities of the liberation movement's fighters after banning these movements. (Moloto, 2022: 2) Contrary to the annexation overtures by the apartheid regime, upon their independence in the late 1960s, BLS countries became sovereign states and not part of apartheid South Africa. Compared to Botswana and Swaziland, Lesotho’s position was more precarious as it is totally surrounded by South Africa. In contrast to the nefarious agenda of the apartheid state, the African National Congress (ANC) held a different position in respect of the relations between a liberated South Africa and the BLS states. The 1955 Freedom Charter provided that “the people of the protectorates-Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland-shall be free to decide for themselves their own future” (ANC, Freedom Charter, 1955). Following the transition of Lesotho from military rule to a multi-party democracy in 1993 and the liberation of South Africa from apartheid colonial domination and oppression in 1994, the two countries have thus far failed to transform border management and the migration system away from their colonial and apartheid parentage. Ahead of the liberation of South Africa and during the transition from military rule to a democratic dispensation in Lesotho, a new type of relationship between Lesotho and South Africa should have been top on the agenda during the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) negotiations and through bilateral consultations of the two countries (Santho and Sejanamane, 1990). Primarily because it was the brain-child of the apartheid regional destabilization project, the then military regime in Lesotho did not see the strategic importance of negotiating a new and transformative type of relationship with South Africa. When Lesotho transitioned from military rule to multiparty democracy, it was the Basotho Congress Party (BCP) of Ntsu Mokhehle that assumed the reigns of state power. The BCP position on the so-called return of the conquered territory of Lesotho from South Africa was not only impolitic and imprudent, but it was also impractical diplomatically, given the 1964 Cairo Declaration of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) that recognized colonially determined borders as sacrosanct and inviolable. A few positive steps were taken just after the liberation of South Africa, which, if sustained, could have changed Lesotho-South Africa relations for the better. The first was the resolution adopted by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in South Africa in April 1991, on the re-definition of Lesotho-South Africa relation more towards integration of the two into one state in whatever form and shape. According to Moloto, this has primarily been due to the sheer numbers and assertiveness of the Basotho component of the NUM member141

Khabele Matlosa

ship. This resolution acknowledged the interdependence of the two countries and the critical contribution made by Basotho mineworkers to the economic development of South Africa, highlighting the defects of Lesotho’s economy and its future viability. NUM resolution further noted that the demand for the return of the lost territories (the Vaal, the whole of the Free State and the areas around Matatiele) is not feasible due to the Organisation of African Unity’s (OAU) resolution not to temper with colonial borders (Moloto, 2022: 3). In a bid to implement the resolution, a NUM delegation was sent to Lesotho to explain and engage Basotho stakeholders on the Union’s congress resolution. Moloto reminds us that a platform for engagement was organised and hosted by the Lesotho Council of NonGovernmental Organisations (LCN) on behalf of NUM in 1991. Most stakeholders, including political parties, embraced the idea of unification of Lesotho and South Africa, except for a few, such as the Lesotho labour party (LLP) and Basotho Congress Party (BCP). The BCP was the most popular party at this period, poised to win the next general elections. Ntsu Mokhehle, its leader, refused to meet with the NUM delegation, charging that he was not prepared to discuss the future of Lesotho with Foreigners. He contended that he could only meet with the Basotho men component of the delegation. The NUM delegation refused to accede to his demand and thus opted to go back without a meeting with the BCP. (Moloto, 2022: 3) One of the major achievements of the NUM resolution, lobby and advocacy was granting of Basotho mineworkers by the South African authorities the right to vote in the 1994 Democratic elections. The second step in the right direction was the 1995 grating of permanent residence permits to Basotho mine workers in South Africa since 1985 as a once-off offer under the first President of a free South Africa, Rolihlahla Nelson Mandela. Ahead of its first democratic local government elections in 1995 South Africa, under the leadership of Nelson Mandela as the President, granted Basotho Migrant mineworkers permanent residence status provided they would have entered the country before 13 June 1986. This was a once-off offer. Mandela made this decision following his official visit to Lesotho in 1995 where he outlined a new policy of the post-apartheid government in which a state of affairs in which there was a vibrant South African economy alongside increasing poverty in neighbouring countries could not be sustained…. Thus, the president sought to assure the people of Lesotho that Basotho’s employment in the RSA mining industry was guaranteed for as long as the market conditions permitted. (Central Bank of Lesotho, 1996: 14) In part, this was in response to mounting pressure from the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) demanding the end of discrimination against foreign migrant workers, especially when it came to the issue of permanent residence. All along, foreign workers were denied permanent residence status. They were employed on the basis of one-year contracts. Upon expiry of these contracts, migrants were forced to return to Lesotho. Their contracts could only be renewed upon production of proof that they left RSA and entered Lesotho. This 142

Lesotho–South Africa Relations

arrangement denied migrants permanent residence status because the apartheid-era Aliens Control Act provided that foreigners qualified for permanent residence if they had lived in South Africa for a continuous period of five years. The NUM raised concerns that this practice was discriminatory as European mineworkers had qualified under the same law, while African miners from the neighbouring countries were denied the same benefit even after working in South Africa for more than five years. The NUM even threatened to take the matter to the Constitutional Court (Central Bank of Lesotho, 1996: 15). Following intensive talks and negotiations between NUM and government representatives, an agreement was reached by Nelson Mandela, the then President of RSA, the then Home Affairs Minister, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and the then NUM President, James Motlatsi, on 31 October 1995, only a day before the local government elections of 1 November 1995. A key component of the agreement provided that all persons who have participated in the April 1994 election with a temporary voters’ card and who have not yet obtained an identity document are nevertheless regarded as permanent residents of RSA and should be afforded an opportunity to apply for such a document. (Central Bank of Lesotho, 1996: 47) This agreement was a significant turning point in the history of the migrant labour system. The Central Bank of Lesotho shows how: mineworkers from foreign countries who have worked in the RSA for a period of more than five years could now apply for permanent residence status in the RSA. In this way, the RSA-Lesotho labour migration was changed for the better. Mineworkers from Lesotho, like all other international migrants, could now exercise their choice to take up South African residence or continue as weekenders. (Central Bank of Lesotho, 1996: 15) The offer of permanent residence status to Basotho migrant workers was a positive step in the direction of a free movement of persons’ regime between Lesotho and South Africa. Since the 2000s, the governments of Lesotho and South Africa have publicly discussed their relations and agreed on protocols for how best to improve them, with a specific focus on cross-border migration. However, the exploitative and asymmetrical relations between Lesotho and South Africa continue today long after colonialism and apartheid. The asymmetries between the two countries have been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite COVID-19 and other inhibitions, this chapter makes a case for the transformation of the relations between Lesotho and South Africa in the spirit of Pan-Africanism and African Renaissance. It argues that one important aspect of this transformation can be brought about by the implementation of free movement of persons between the two countries. The next section discusses the limits of previous initiatives aimed at redefining the relations between the two countries.

The Limits of Previous Initiatives The issue of Lesotho-South Africa relations remains one of the widely researched and deeply studied aspects of the political economy of Lesotho. This is more so in relation to migration 143

Khabele Matlosa

from Lesotho to South Africa, wherein the extant literature posits that the former has historically evolved as the labour reserve for the latter (Murray, 1981; Bardill and Cobbe, 1985; Santho and Sejanamane, 1990; Matlosa, 1992; Matlosa, 1993; Eldredge, 1993). However, few of the above studies tackle the issue of the free movement of persons. In earnest, a serious debate on migration from Lesotho to South Africa that began to broach the idea of free movement of persons is traceable to the early 1990s with the seminal volume edited by Sehoai Santho and Mafa Sejanamane in 1991. The specific context of that volume explains its uniqueness. This volume was published during the dawn of both the transition of Lesotho from military rule to multi-party democracy and the liberation of South Africa at the time when the CODESA negotiations for the dethronement of apartheid were underway. This volume arose from a conference organized by progressive academics from the National University of Lesotho (NUL) who were genuinely concerned about Lesotho and Basotho’s future in the context of the then emerging post-apartheid landscape. This volume made extensive policy recommendations for re-engineering Lesotho-South Africa relations, which to date remain relevant but unimplemented (see also Matlosa, 1995; Matlosa, 1996; Matlosa, 1998; Matlosa, 2001; Matlosa, 2006). Besides the initiatives by the NUM and Nelson Mandela that granted Basotho mineworkers permanent residence status, there are three major initiatives that have been put in place towards improving Lesotho-South Africa relations since the demise of apartheid and transition from military rule in Lesotho. The first came in the form of a bilateral agreement between Lesotho and South Africa when the two countries established the Joint Bilateral Commission of Cooperation (JBCC) in Cape Town, South Africa, on 19 April 2001. The overall goal of the bilateral cooperation was mainly to guide the strategic socio-economic partnership between the two countries. Of the seven key objectives of the JBCC, two are worth highlighting for the purpose of this paper: (a) to “promote mutually beneficial economic integration between the two countries with the aim of closing the existing economic disparities” and (b) to “facilitate movement of people goods and services between (the) two countries taking into consideration the unique geographic position of Lesotho” (Government of Lesotho, 2001: 2–3). Its five-year lifespan was to last until 2006. In order to make the agreement operational, four clusters/working groups were established as follows:

• • • •

Economic cluster Social cluster Good governance cluster Security and stability cluster

Migration and human movement issues fell within the purview of the social cluster of the JBCC. However, this noble effort has proved to be sheer political talk and less deliberate action aimed at improving the lot of the majority of the poor, especially in Lesotho. In short, the 2001 JBCC was never implemented by both sides, especially Lesotho, which is the party that has more to gain from the arrangement. The second initiative came on 19 June 2007, when the governments of Lesotho and South Africa again signed an agreement on the “facilitation of cross-border movement of citizens of the Kingdom of Lesotho and the Republic of South Africa”. The agreement covers the following aspects, among others: (a) regulation of entry and departure; (b) temporary and permanent residence permits; (c) labour agreement; (d) diplomatic and consular staff and (e) exclusions. It is worth noting that despite the title of the agreement, which points 144

Lesotho–South Africa Relations

to “facilitation”, the document is heavily inclined towards “regulation” and “control” of human movement across the common borders of both countries in a more securitized and bureaucratized manner. Highly securitized and heavily bureaucratized regulation and control of human mobility is not amenable to free movement of persons. It is, therefore, not surprising that this agreement did not have a specific section on the free movement of persons as it seems to be inspired by the SADC Protocol referred to earlier which focuses on “facilitation of movement of persons”, which in essence means regulation and control of human mobility and migration. This happens when a securitized lens, rather than a development-oriented lens, is applied in addressing cross-border migration and mobility issues. This is the main problem confronting the way Lesotho and South African governments approach migration and mobility issues across their common border. Perhaps, a major achievement following the signing of the 2007 agreement was the adoption of the 2015/16 Lesotho Special Permits (LSP) for those working or studying in South Africa. However, this LSP was frozen for the most part since the onset of COVID-19 in 2020. It was only resuscitated in 2021. The third initiative came into being on 20 November 2020, when high-level government delegations of both countries met in Maseru, Lesotho, to revive and revamp the JBCC and transformed it into the Bi-National Commission (BNC). The delegations were led respectively by Ms. Matsepo Molise-Ramakoae, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Relations of Lesotho, and Dr. Naledi Pandor, Minister of International Relations and Cooperation of South Africa. Much of the discussion during this latest meeting was the rehash of the previous two initiatives of 2001 and 2007, with few exceptions. The meeting agreed to elevate the BNC to the Heads of State and Government of both countries in terms of regular meetings and consultations when it comes to actual implementation. Four priorities were highlighted with a tight schedule of implementation, namely (a) implementation of the One Stop Border Post Management; (b) revival of negotiations on the facilitation of movement of persons and goods; (c) implementation of easier movement of scholar transporters from Lesotho to various neighbouring schools in South Africa and (e) facilitation of movement of patients from Lesotho to South Africa undergoing frequent medical appointments for specialist treatments. As part of a recognition of the failure of the first two JBCC agreements, the 2020 meeting reiterated the need for the renegotiation of the 2007 Agreement. While the meeting seemed to focus the spotlight on the facilitation of cross-border movement of Basotho Mineworkers, Lesotho Special Permit holders, patients and school children, it is imperative that these efforts extend to all Basotho and clear actions must be spelled out towards free movement of all citizens of both countries across their common border through the six designated ports of entry/exit. The parties also agreed to undertake a joint study of the free movement of persons between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland with a view to drawing lessons for Lesotho-South Africa’s cross-border human movement. They also agreed to study relevant African examples for lessons-learning and experience sharing that could inform the re-engineering of cross-border human movement between the two countries. All these agreed action points were supposed to be implemented by June 2021. At the time of writing this chapter, progress on these agreed action points is not known to this author. Today, a people-centred regional integration from below is imperilled by the onset of the coronavirus disease of 2019 (commonly known as COVID-19) which reached the shores of Lesotho and South Africa in 2020, compounding the already problematic cross-border human movement. 145

Khabele Matlosa

The Perils of COVID-19 Free movement of persons in Africa is surely one of the major casualties as a result of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Cross-border human movement between Lesotho and South Africa is no exception. In response to COVID-19, both countries have employed various strategies, including states of emergency/disaster, lockdowns, curfews, border closures and severe restrictions on intra-state and inter-state migratory flows. While previously a number of African states had raised national security concerns in respect of allowing for free movement of persons, with the onset of COVID-19, the security concern is now bolstered by reference to health threats of migrants. Today, migrants suffer double jeopardy: (a) they are considered a security hazard and (b) they are also considered a health threat. Since even World Health Organization (WHO) and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa-CDC) do not know how long COVID-19 will be with us, it keeps mutating into new variants; it is highly probable that free movement of persons will be held in abeyance for some time to come. South Africa and Lesotho have been ravaged by the COVID-19 since March and May 2020, respectively. In January 2021, the two countries experienced a resurgence of the second wave of the virus, which seemed more rampant and virulent. As part of the policy arsenal in response to the virus, Lesotho and South Africa have instituted lockdowns, including border closures. For the most part, between 2020 and 2021, in order to cross borders into South Africa, Basotho were supposed to undergo a COVID-19 test at a cost ranging between M750.00 and M1300.00, a heavy toll on livelihoods that have been whittled by the pandemic itself. Only recently have relatively cheaper COVID-19 tests ranging between M150.00 and M450.00 been introduced. Partly as a result of the closure of official ports of entry and exit and due to the exorbitant cost of the COVID-19 tests in Lesotho, most migrants tended to resort to irregular cross-border movement and most perilously swimming across the Caledon River, with scores drowning and losing their lives (Sello, 2020; Charumbira, 2021a). Cross-country spread of COVID-19 between Lesotho and South Africa intensified during the festive seasons of December 2020 and January 2021. Media reports indicate that about 130,000 Basotho migrants came back home from South Africa in December 2020 without COVID-19 test certificates, while others crossed the border illegally through informal border points (Charumbira, 2021a). They were neither tested on the South African side nor the Lesotho side of the common border. They proceeded to enjoy holidays with their families, mainly in rural areas. No wonder, then, that between December 2020 and January 2021, COVID-19 cases in Lesotho soared exponentially by more than 50%. In December 2020, Lesotho had recorded 2,137 COVID-19 cases. By mid-January 2021, the country had a COVID-19 caseload of 4,137 (Charumbira, 2021a). The majority of the migrants could not return to South Africa as they were turned back to Lesotho at the border upon testing COVID-19 positive. Around December is the period when migrants go home to Lesotho for Christmas and New Year holidays and return back to South Africa in January of the following year. It was recognized by both sides that the heavy cross-border movement constituted a super-spreader event, hence the closure of borders on 12 January 2021 by President Cyril Ramaphosa and the imposition of a hard lockdown in Lesotho by Prime Minister Moeketsi Majoro on 13 January 2021. There is absolutely nothing wrong with these hard-nosed responses by both governments. However, it should be acknowledged that they come at a huge cost to

146

Lesotho–South Africa Relations

the livelihoods of citizens, especially in Lesotho. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), about 580,000 Basotho (about 26.36%) are food insecure (Charumbira, 2021b). The net effect of prolonged drought, COVID-19 lockdowns, joblessness, border closures and skyrocketing food prices is bound to worsen food insecurity in Lesotho, given the country’s dependence on South Africa. According to the FAO, approximately a quarter of Lesotho’s population needed food aid between January and March 2021 due to COVID19 restrictions, including border closure (Charumbira, 2021b). What needs to be emphasized, though, is that such closure of borders that hampers crossborder mobility and free movement of persons should not be a permanent state of affairs. It should be temporary and its application should be tantamount to the scale and magnitude of the problem. Even as they address the challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic, both countries should simultaneously redouble their efforts towards the free movement of persons in line with the agreed action plan of the Maseru meeting on 20 November 2020. Since 2022, the intensity and severity of the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided considerably, resulting in relaxed restrictions on human movement including cross-border migration. All the six border exits/entry points between the two countries have been opened. The LSP has been re-instated. The JBCC has been revamped and transformed into the BNC. What still remains is concrete action towards institutionalizing and effectively implementing measures for free movement of persons.

Towards Free Movement of Persons This chapter makes a two-pronged clarion call for Lesotho and South Africa to redouble their efforts towards institutionalizing the free movement of persons across their common border, building on the current momentum started in November 2020. Firstly, even as the two countries make concerted efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19, they should redefine their migration policies and border management systems (Pinaar and Zingel, 2004). With a reliable civil registration system on both sides and better identification of their citizens, both countries should allow free movement of persons. To facilitate this system, preferential treatment of citizens of both countries should be agreed upon and implemented in respect of border entry/exit, right of residence and right of establishment. For instance, there is no need for citizens of both countries to use passports when crossing borders. Citizens of both countries should be allowed visa-free entry into these countries. They should be allowed the right of residence. They should be allowed the right of establishment without hindrance. Secondly, since both countries now have legal provisions for dual citizenship, they should start immediately extending this facility to their citizens. In Lesotho, this is provided for in the 1993 Constitution as Amended, and in South Africa, this is provided for in the 1995 South African Citizenship Act. Results of the 2018 Afrobarometer survey show strong popular support for dual citizenship between Lesotho and South Africa among Basotho. This study shows that two-thirds (65%) of Basotho find it “difficult” or “very difficult” to cross borders. Of those considering emigrating, the study found that 80% would prefer South Africa as their destination. More instructively, 52% of Basotho say “Lesotho can only realise meaningful development if it becomes part of the Republic of South Africa. This proportion has increased from 40% since 2014” (Nkuebe, Malephane and Isbell, 2018: 2). The transformation of the integration of the two countries towards people-to-people integration and the granting of dual citizenship promise to become major catalysts for the free movement of persons between the two countries. These countries share strong socio-cultural 147

Khabele Matlosa

and politico-economic bonds which were further cemented by their shared solidarity during the liberation struggle against apartheid.

Conclusion This chapter has dealt with key aspects of Lesotho’s political economy: migration and mobility to South Africa. The overall thrust of the chapter is premised upon the 2014 Agenda 2063 – The Africa We Want. One of the flagship projects of Agenda 2063 is the free movement of persons in Africa. Aspiration 2 of Agenda 2063 implores member states of the strive towards free movement of persons. One of the lessons drawn from the migration pattern between Lesotho and South Africa is that the security-oriented nature of managing the colonially imposed borders in Africa is inimical to facilitation of free movement of persons. This militarization of borders is oblivious to the reality that colonial borders separated that shared common socio-cultural norms and bonds into separate countries. This militarized and security-oriented approach of managing borders should be replaced with a developmental approach that promotes free movement as a vehicle for regional integration aimed at advancing lives and livelihoods of ordinary people. While the chapter has noted the noble strategic goals of Agenda 2063, including its aspiration for free movement of persons, it has also bemoaned the reluctance of the leadership in Lesotho and South Africa towards ratification, domestication and implementation of the 2018 Protocol on the free movement of persons. It is recommended that Lesotho and South Africa ratify, domesticate and implement the free movement protocol much the same way that they have done with respect to the AfCFTA protocols: free trade and free movement of persons are flipsides of the same coin. The chapter has made a case for accelerated efforts towards the free movement of persons between Lesotho and South Africa, given the special circumstances that characterize their historical and contemporary relations. That Lesotho is a landlocked, impoverished labour reserve for South Africa brooks no controversy. The overwhelming dependence of the former over the latter forms the foundation stone of cross-border migratory flows. One of the major hindrances is that the regional integration framework pursued through both SACU and SADC is heavily weighted in favour of the state-to-state and market-to-market models which benefit the political and corporate elites at the expense of the poor masses. It is imperative that these countries re-engineer their relations along the people-to-people integration model that privileges interests of the poor people. This should include abolishing the use of passports for citizens when crossing borders, allowing visa-free entry, prompting the right of residence and the right of establishment of citizens across borders, including facilitation and implementation of dual citizenship. With or without the COVID-19 pandemic, it is imperative that Lesotho and South Africa vigorously pursue the free movement of persons premised upon a people-to-people model of integration. It is this people-centred regional integration model that has the huge potential to benefit the citizens of both countries, particularly Basotho.

References African Development Bank (AfDB). 2021. Africa Visa Openness Report, Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire: African Development Bank. African Union (AU). 2014. Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: African Union Commission.

148

Lesotho–South Africa Relations African Union (AU). 2018. Protocol to the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community Relating to Free Movement of Persons, Right of Residence and Right of Establishment, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: African Union Commission. African National Congress (ANC). 1955. The Freedom Charter, Kliptown, Johannesburg, South Africa. Bardill, J. and J. Cobbe. 1985. Lesotho: Dilemmas of Dependence in Southern Africa, Boulder: Westview Press. Central Bank of Lesotho. 1996. ‘Emerging trends in the migration of Basotho miners’, Research report, Central Bank of Lesotho, Maseru, March. Charumbira, S. 2021a. ‘We can’t cope’: Lesotho faces Covid-19 disaster after quarantine failures’, The Guardian, 9 January. Charumbira, S. 2021b. ‘Landlocked Lesotho faces food crisis amid Covid border closures’, The Guardian, 19 January. Collings, F. 1978. ‘The rand and the monetary systems of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 16(1), 97–121. Edger, R. 1987. ‘The Lesotho coup of 1986’, South African Review, 4, 373–382. Eldredge, E. 1993. A South African kingdom: The pursuit of security in the nineteenth-century Lesotho, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Government of Lesotho. 2001. ‘The joint bilateral commission of cooperation between Lesotho and South Africa’, Maseru (Mimeo). Moloto, S. 2022. Reflection on South Africa-Lesotho bilateral relations and cooperation: Practical diplomatic perspective, Maseru, Lesotho, South African High Commission, July. Murray, C. 1981. Families divided: The impact of migrant labour in Lesotho, Johannesburg: Raven Press. Nchake, M., L. Edwards and N. Rankins. 2018. ‘Closer monetary union and product integration in emerging economies: Evidence from the Common Monetary Area in Southern Africa’, International Review of Economics and Finance, 54, 154–164. Nkuebe, M., L. Malephane and T. Isbell. 2018. ‘Basotho increasingly favour legalizing dual citizenship, unifying with South Africa’, Dispatch No. 205, Afrobarometer, 15 May. Santho, S. and M. Sejanamane (Eds.). 1990. Southern Africa after apartheid: Prospects for the inner periphery in the 1990s, Harare: SAPES Books. Sechaba Consultants. 2002. The border within: The future of the Lesotho-South African Boundary, Southern African Migration Project, Institute for Democracy in South Africa, Migration Policy Series No. 26. Sello, L. 2020. ‘Illegal crossings into SA reach crisis levels’, Lesotho Times, 11 November. Thabane, M. 2020. ‘Can any lessons be learnt from relations between Lesotho and Apartheid South Africa, 1966–1972?’, Paper presented at a seminar organized by the Academic Forum for the Development of Lesotho (AFDEL) under the overall theme: Can RSA-Lesotho integration achieve our sustainable development agenda of inclusive prosperity and lasting political stability, 15 October. United Nations (UN). 1962. Question of Basutoland, Bechuanaland and Swaziland, General Assembly Resolution 1817 (XVII, New York, USA.

149

PART III

Migration Governance, Forced Displacement and Irregular Migration

9 MIGRATION POLICY FRAMEWORKS IN AFRICA Tsion Tadesse Abebe and Peter Mudungwe

Introduction Migration policies are a critical part of migration governance. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) defines migration governance as “the combined frameworks of legal norms, laws and regulations, policies and traditions as well as organizational structures (sub-national, national, regional and international) and the relevant processes that shape and regulate States’ approaches with regard to migration in all its forms, addressing rights and responsibilities and promoting international cooperation” (IOM 2019). The different aspects of migration governance are fundamental to the coherent management of migration. To a large extent, the state of the migration governance system determines the national level as well as the regional body’s ability to manage migration. Over the years, the African Union (AU) and Regional Economic Communities (RECs) have adopted a number of policies on migration that comprise legal, policy and coordination frameworks aimed at enhancing legal migration in a comprehensive manner. The legal provisions consist of hard laws in the form of treaties, protocols and conventions, as well as soft laws in the form of declarations. The policy frameworks cover a wide range of issues, including free movement of persons, goods, services and capital; labour migration; refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs); and human trafficking and migrant smuggling. These policy frameworks provide the fundamental basis for continental, regional and national migration policymaking. Against this background, this chapter presents summaries of migration policy frameworks adopted by AU and RECs in two sections. The first section discusses continental migration policies, and the second section covers regional economic communities. Aspects of implementation of these policies are not covered in this chapter, although it mentions a few examples. Although different relevant United Nations policy frameworks on migration are also applicable in Africa, this chapter covers relevant policy frameworks by the AU and RECs.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-12

153

Tsion Tadesse Abebe and Peter Mudungwe

Context Migration within and out of Africa has been shaped by pre-colonial exigencies, and colonial and post-colonial governance approaches. Some 80,000 years ago (Gugliota 2008) before colonization by the Europeans in the late 18th century, the region witnessed the movement of Homo sapiens from Africa as they spread throughout the rest of the world (Samir 1995). The trans-Atlantic slave trade (16th–19th century) saw the forcible movement of at least 12 million Africans to the “New World” (Obi 2010). Other examples of pre-colonial movements include the Guruuswa, which was the movement of the pastoralist Bantu people from the Great Lakes region to southern parts of Africa mainly in search of pasture (Shoko 2007) and the Mfecane, a period of violent wars and political upheaval over land and resources among ethnic groups in Southern Africa which occurred between 1820 and 1835, and which led to forced migrations in the Southern and Central Africa regions (Mensah 2016). The phenomenon of forcible movement within, from and to the continent continued throughout the colonial period, mainly to provide labour for the advancement of colonial economies. Notable forcible movements to Africa during the colonial period include the movement of Indians to East Africa and South Africa by the British to work as labourers, and the movement of captured slaves by the Dutch from Madagascar, India, Ceylon and the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) as early as the 16th century to the Cape of Good Hope (present-day Cape Town).1 Post-colonial African migration, on the other hand, is predominantly intra-continental. In 2020, 50.8% of African migrants, i.e., 21 million of the 40.5 million African migrants lived within the continent (McAuliffe and Triandafyllidou 2022). The number of African migrants in the continent showed a significant increase. In 2015, approximately 18.5 million African migrants lived within the continent, which increased to 21 million in 2020 (McAuliffe and Triandafyllidou 2022). South Africa is the most significant destination country in Africa, hosting around 2.9 million international migrants (McAuliffe and Triandafyllidou 2022). Other African countries with high immigrant populations as a proportion of their total populations include Gabon (19%), Equatorial Guinea (16%), Seychelles (13%) and Libya (12%) (McAuliffe and Triandafyllidou 2022). Multiple factors drive migration both within and out of Africa, including poor socio-economic conditions, low wages and high levels of unemployment. In addition, various political and social factors such as political instability, conflict, climatic shocks, poor governance and corruption lead to migration of both skilled and unskilled labour in Africa. Globalization and information technology have also played a part in shaping migration trends by opening new frontiers and avenues for movement. Further, socio-economic ties that have existed since colonial times also play a significant role in shaping and facilitating migration. In their quest to manage migration on the continent, the AU Commission and RECs have formulated or instituted a number of treaties and frameworks that provide Member States and RECs with guidelines for managing migration and enhancing cooperation, dialogue and capacity building on migration issues. These are discussed below. Further to providing Member States and RECs with guidelines on migration issues, the significance of the AU migration frameworks also lies in that they provide the continent with a common position on migration issues. A good example is the formulation of the African Common Position on the Global Compact for Migration (GCM), which to a large extent was informed by the African Common Position on Migration and Development, and the AU Migration Policy Framework for Africa.

154

Migration Policy Frameworks in Africa

Continental Migration Frameworks OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa (1969) Africa is one of the first continents to have developed a legal regime on forced migration. In a bid to address the challenges faced by the large numbers of African refugees who were fleeing conflicts resulting from anti-colonial struggles, in 1969 the then Organisation of African Unity (OAU), now the African Union (AU), adopted a continental convention on refugees: the OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa.2 The convention came into force on 20 June 1974 and was registered with the United Nations on 31 March 1976. The convention is ratified by 46 of the 55 African Member States.3 The Convention complements the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees and provides an expansive definition of refugees by including flight from aggression, occupation, foreign domination and events that led to serious public disorder as grounds for claiming asylum (Sharpe 2012). Similar to the 1951 UN Convention on Refugees, the OAU Convention obliges Member States to receive refugees and secure the settlement of those who are unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin. It re-affirms the principle of non-refoulement and places the responsibility on states unable to grant asylum to people who arrive at their frontiers, to work with other Member States to obtain asylum for them. In addition, it encourages Member States to grant temporary residence to failed asylum seekers, pending their re-settlement. The expanded definition on refugees is one of the significant contributions of the convention as it has included development of national laws and policies across the continent and contributed to increased use of the prima facie approach to refugee status determination (Abebe, Abebe and Sharpe 2019).

The Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community (1991) Migration is addressed in the 1991 Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community (the Abuja Treaty),4 which established the African Economic Community (AEC). The Abuja Treaty focuses on establishing the AEC through coordinating and harmonizing policies among existing and future RECs, and aims to achieve sustainable economic development in Africa and transform small and fractioned economies through regional integration. One of these objectives, therefore, includes strengthening the existing RECs, establishing new RECs in regions without one and harmonizing their policies towards the establishment of the AEC. Its objectives are geared towards achieving self-reliant, endogenous and sustainable development that raises the standard of living of African people. Among its recommendations are establishing a framework for continental development to mobilize and utilize the human and material resources of Africa and encourage cooperation in all fields of human endeavour.5 Free movement of persons and capital is a key focus area of the treaty. In this regard, the treaty aims to achieve “the gradual removal, among the Member States, of obstacles to the free trade, movement of persons, goods, services and capital and the right of residence and establishment.6 Chapter VI of the treaty is dedicated to the free movement of persons, as well as the right of residence and establishment. It provides for six stages as modalities in establishing the AEC, where the fifth stage focuses on establishing the free movement of persons and the right of residence and establishment. The Abuja Treaty is thus an important legal 155

Tsion Tadesse Abebe and Peter Mudungwe

framework for migration, as it is the first accord to focus on the free movement of persons and capital to enhance regional integration and development in Africa.

The AU Migration Policy Framework for Africa (2006 and 2018) The AU Migration Policy Framework for Africa (MPFA) was adopted in 2006 as an endeavour by AU Member States to promote migration and development and address migration challenges on the Continent. Following its evaluation in 2016 the 2006 MPFA was revised in 2017 (and adopted in 2018). The MPFA (African Union 2018) recognizes that migration is one of the major topics in the 21st century, and articulates the AU’s position on migration, which is that wellmanaged migration has the potential to yield significant benefits to both origin and destination countries. It emphasizes that well-managed migration holds benefits for both origin and designation countries. Mismanaged migration, on the contrary, can lead to tensions between host communities and migrants, and give rise to xenophobia, discrimination and other social ills. It takes cognizance of the AU’s Agenda 2063, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and international migration management policies and standards, projects that migration will be one of the major topics that will engage African policymakers in the 21st century. The MPFA provides AU Member States and RECs with policy guidelines and principles to assist them in the formulation of their own migration policies in accordance with their priorities and resources (African Union 2018). In this regard, the MPFA elaborates and provides recommendations on eight migration thematic areas, namely Migration Governance; Labour Migration and Education; Diaspora Engagement; Border Governance; Irregular Migration; Forced Displacement; Internal Migration; and Migration and Trade. It also reflects on eleven cross-cutting issues and provides policy recommendations for consideration by AU Member States and RECs under each of the thematic areas and cross-cutting issues. Unlike its predecessor, the revised MPFA has a plan of action for the period 2018–2030.

The African Common Position on Migration and Development (2006) The African Common Position on Migration and Development (African Union 2006) reflects Africa’s broader consensus on issues of migration and development. It acknowledges that well-managed migration has a positive impact for the development of both countries of origin and destination, and that mismanaged or unmanaged migration can have negative consequences for States’ and migrants’ welfare, including potential destabilizing effects on national and regional security. Further, it states the root causes, dynamics and consequences of migration, and it contains a set of recommendations at national, continental and international levels which are aimed at addressing migration and development issues, including a call on Member States to harmonize their legislation with international conventions, protect the rights of migrants and enact policies on preventing discrimination, racism and xenophobia. The document covers key priority policy areas such as Migration and Development; Human Resources and the Brain Drain; Remittances; Trade; Migration and Peace, Security and Stability; and Migration and Human Rights, Gender and Access to Social Services. The African Common Position on Migration and Development notes that managing migration has become one of the major challenges facing countries in the new millennium. Pointing out the great diversity of migrants, it highlights the growing number of African 156

Migration Policy Frameworks in Africa

women migrants and provides recommendations at national, continental and international levels. It urges Member States to mainstream migration in their development strategies and allocate the necessary financial resources towards its implementation, and calls on Member States to harmonize their national legislation with international conventions to ensure the rights of migrants are protected and to enact policies on preventing discrimination, racism and xenophobia, among others.

Ouagadougou Action Plan to Combat Trafficking in Human Beings, Especially Women and Children (2006) The Ouagadougou Action Plan to Combat Trafficking in Human Beings Especially Women and Children (Ouagadougou Action Plan) (African Union Commission 2006) recognizes the precarious situation of women and children in Africa, mainly due to cultural traditional practices, the increase in sex tourism and other sexual exploitation and abuses of women and children. It points out the trafficking in human beings as a scourge which states are determined to address and is a declaration of the will to fight human trafficking. It provides specific recommendations to be implemented by the RECs and Member States based on international and regional legal instruments and declarations on human rights, particularly the conventions on trafficking in person, elimination of discrimination of women and protection of the rights of the child, and prioritizes Prevention and Awareness Raising; Victim Protection and Assistance; Legislative Framework, Policy Development and Law Enforcement; and Co-operation and Co-ordination. In 2018 the AUC evaluated the Ouagadougou Action Plan. The evaluation exposed both policy and operational gaps in terms of continental and regional responses to address trafficking in persons on the continent, and noted the urgent need for AU Member States and RECs to provide a solid policy and legal framework to prevent and address not only the trafficking in persons but also the smuggling of migrants on the continent. In this regard the evaluation recommended the revision of the Ouagadougou Plan of Action in order to address the current dynamics and challenges of trafficking in persons and the smuggling of migrants on the continent (African Union Commission 2019). In considering the evaluation, AU Member States recommended for the formulation of two policies, one to address trafficking in persons, and another to address the smuggling of migrants. The formulation of two separate policies was born of the need to address the confusion between Trafficking in Person (TiP) and Smuggling of Migrants (SoM) and the respective initiatives to address the two phenomena. In this regard, between 2019 and 2021, the AUC formulated two policies as follows: the Policy on the Prevention of Trafficking in Persons in Africa and the Policy on Prevention and Countering Smuggling of Migrants in Africa. Both policy documents were approved by the 4th Specialized Technical Committee on Migration, Refugees, and IDPs in April 2022, and await adoption by the AU Executive Council.

The AU Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa (2009) In response to the prevalence of internal displacement in Africa, the AU developed the AU Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa (the Kampala Convention), (African Union Commission 2009), the primary objectives of which are promoting and strengthening regional measures to tackle the root causes of internal displace157

Tsion Tadesse Abebe and Peter Mudungwe

ment, and establishing a legal framework to prevent internal displacement and provide assistance and protection to IDPs. The convention also seeks to promote the development of relevant cooperation frameworks among Member States to address internal displacement and its consequences. It recognizes the rights of IDPs as provided for and protected in international human rights and humanitarian law, and as set out in the 1998 United Nations Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, which are recognized as an important international framework for the protection of IDPs. It affirms the need to respect, protect and fulfil the rights of IDPs. The convention sets out obligations pertaining to the AU, including support to Member States to protect and assist IDPs, and the AU’s right to intervene in a Member State under grave circumstances, namely war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity (Article 4(h) of the AU’s Constitutive Act). In addition, the convention has a number of special provisions, including the obligations of state parties relating to sustainable return, local integration or relocation; compensation; registration and personal documentation of IDPs; and monitoring of and compliance with the convention. The convention also sets down rules for members of armed groups. Without legitimizing such groups, it states the consequences of violating the rights of IDPs and provides a list of prohibited acts.

Protocol to the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community Relating to Free Movement of Persons, Right of Residence and Right of Establishment (2018) Adopted in January 2018, the Protocol to the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community Relating to Free Movement of Persons, Right of Residence and Right of Establishment (the Free Movement Protocol) (African Union Commission 2018) is one of the flagship projects of Agenda 2063.7 Agenda 2063 seeks to deliver on a set of Seven Aspirations each with its own set of goals which if achieved will move Africa closer to achieving its vision for the year 2063. The Free Movement Protocol seeks to remove restrictions on Africans’ ability to travel, work and live within the continent as envisioned in the 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the 1991 Treaty establishing the African Economic Community. As of September 2022, four years after adoption, the protocol has received 32 signatures8 and four ratifications9 from the 55 AU Member States. Fifteen ratifications are required for the Protocol to come into force. The ratification of the protocol is directly linked to the implementation of the African Passport as well. The AU Summit launched the African Passport in July 2016 during its 27th Ordinary Session held in Kigali, Rwanda. At the time, the AU Assembly requested the African Union Commission to provide technical support to Member States to produce and issue the African Passport to their citizens. Since then, the AU Commission in collaboration with Member States and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has developed the specifications and security features of the African Passport, which were adopted by the AU Assembly in January 2019. The issuance of the African Passport shall be determined by the entry into force of the Free Movement Protocol. In view of promoting the ratification of the Free Movement Protocol, in 2018 the AU commissioned and disseminated a “Study on the Benefits and Challenges of Free Movement of Persons in Africa” (African Union Commission and IOM 2018). Further, in 2021, the AU Commission held several regional meetings to discuss and appreciate the challenges that the Member States and their RECs are facing in the area of free movement with a view to crafting strategies for promoting ratification. 158

Migration Policy Frameworks in Africa

In general, it has transpired that the ratification of the protocol has been slow due to concerns over security, the validity of travel documents and the impact of immigration on the job market in receiving countries.

Common African Position on Safe Orderly and Regular Migration (2018) The Common African Position (CAP) (African Union Commission 2018) on the Safe Orderly and Regular Migration was adopted in January 2018. It aimed to reflect Africa’s priorities and position during the Global Compact for Migration (GCM), making Africa the only continent to have articulated its position through a regionally agreed document (Abebe 2018). The CAP presents its messages under six thematic areas: (i) drivers of migration, (ii) human rights of migrants, (iii) smuggling and trafficking of migrants, (iv) international cooperation and governance of migration, (v) irregular migration and regular pathways and (vi) contributions of migrants and the diaspora. Adopted in 2018, the GCM (IOM 2018) is the first internationally agreed framework on global migration governance. Guided by its 23 objectives, the GCM covers all aspects of migration.

Regional Migration Policy Frameworks In Africa, RECs are important stakeholders in the development and implementation of migration frameworks. This is mainly owing to the fact that they have been the primary drivers of economic integration. Most have been instrumental in implementing the Abuja Treaty, especially in terms of promoting free movement of people, goods and capital. The RECs’ establishing treaties and protocols on free movement of people supplement the AU’s migration provisions. Unlike AU treaties which apply to all Member States, RECs’ treaties are limited to their member states. As indicated previously, RECs are regional groups of African states confirmed or established under the 1991 Abuja Treaty with the purpose of facilitating regional economic integration among African states through the wider AEC. Currently the AU recognizes eight RECs as follows: the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU), the  Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN-SAD), the Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community (EAC), the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC). To date, COMESA, ECOWAS, IGAD and SADC have adopted free movement of people protocols, while the EAC covers the issue in its common market protocol. ECCAS, AMU and CEN-SAD also include provisions for free movement of people, capital and the right to establishment in their respective treaties of establishment. The following section presents the existing regional migration frameworks and protocols/ establishment treaties with a specific focus on the free movement of persons.

The Arab Maghreb Union (1989) The Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) is a grouping of Arab country States that are located primarily in the Maghreb in North Africa. AMU was established in 1989 with the overall objective of facilitating the economic and political integration of its Member States (Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia). Its objectives include achieving free movement of persons, services, goods and capital among its Member States. Article 2 of 159

Tsion Tadesse Abebe and Peter Mudungwe

the treaty establishing the AMU envisages working gradually towards the achievement of the free movement of persons and transfer of services, goods and capital among its Member States.10 Thus far, Tunisia is currently the only state that allows citizens from fellow Member States to access its territories freely. The remaining require a travel visa for residents of Member States. Moreover, permission to reside in the territory of a Member State must be obtained by applying for a permanent or temporary residence permit from the authorities of the concerned State. Challenges to implementation of free movement of persons include infrastructural constraints, in particular road transport. The high occurrence of roadblocks set up by national security forces and illegal blockades as well as other security issues in the region securities in the region are major impediments to the free movement of persons in the AMU.11

Treaty Establishing the Community of Sahel-Saharan States (1998)31 CEN-SAD was established in 1998 and became a REC in 2000. It has 24 Member States, namely Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, the Comoros, Côte d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Togo and Tunisia.12 Article 1 of the Treaty Establishing CEN-SAD mentions free movement of people as a core objective of the REC. The treaty stipulates that the rights, advantages and obligations of a Member State’s citizens will apply to nationals of signatory countries as well.34 Although the implementation of this objective has been slow, a number of CEN-SAD countries have been increasingly liberalizing their visa regimes to foster the intraregional movement of people. Further, overlapping memberships with ECOWAS, which is advanced in liberalizing cross-border movement, have been partially responsible for this success.13 In 2004, Ministers in Charge of Interior and Public Security recommended that all measures be taken to ensure the legal implementation of free movement of persons and goods. In this regard the REC drafted an “Agreement on the Free Movement and Establishment of Persons within the Territory of Member States of the Community of Sahel- Saharan States”. The draft agreement stipulates that movement within the region is permitted for ordinary passport holders in possession of an entry visa, valid passport, medical certificate and clean criminal record. It exempts the following people from an entry visa: holders of diplomatic passports, special passports and service passports; members of an official delegation; and the spouse and children of a resident who is in possession of a valid visa. The draft agreement also stipulates that nationals of Member States are guaranteed the right of establishment, but this depends on their purpose and duration of stay, as well as the laws and regulations of the host state. The draft agreement has not yet entered into force (IOM 2010). THE COMESA PROTOCOL ON THE FREE MOVEMENT OF PERSONS, LABOUR, SERVICES, RIGHTS OF ESTABLISHMENT AND RESIDENCE (2001)

COMESA was established in 1994 and replaced the Preferential Trade Area, which had existed since 1981. COMESA has 2114 member states, namely Burundi, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eswatini, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sudan, Somalia, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. 160

Migration Policy Frameworks in Africa

The COMESA Protocol on the Free Movement of Persons, Labour, Services, Rights of Establishment and Residence is the main supplement to the COMESA Treaty on these issues.15 The protocol was developed to facilitate free movement of citizens of its Member States to achieve a genuine common market. As a result, the protocol calls for the removal of restrictions on the free movement of persons, labour, services, rights of establishment and residence. It defines the scope of cooperation among Member States to include the establishment of mechanisms for free movement of citizens and employment, as well as the removal of all restrictions that hinder these activities. In a bid to ease travel within the common market, the protocol stipulates that its Member States agree to replace prior visa requirements with visa upon arrival. The maximum duration of stay in such cases is 90 days, which also applies to private vehicles registered in any of the territories of Member States. Further, the aspiration of the protocol is to fully eliminate visa requirements within six years of its entry into force. In cases pertaining to citizen(s) whose entry is considered detrimental to national security or public health, each Member State reserves the right of refusal to enter. Further, Member States are given the option to temporarily suspend, with prior notice to the COMESA Secretary General, the relaxation of visa requirements and entry without visa requirements for up to 90 days on the grounds of public security or influx of persons as refugees arising from disturbances in the territory of another Member State. The protocol highlights Member States’ agreement to cooperate in providing assistance to and managing refugees. Cooperation in the prevention of and fight against criminal acts that involve abusing freedom of movement within the free-market area is another issue covered by the protocol. Regarding labour, Member States agree to progressively remove all restrictions to the movement of labour, except in the case of employment in the public service. Member States further agree to gradually work towards removing all restrictions to the right of establishment in their territories. Some of the proposed measures include drawing up a programme for the abolition of restrictions to the right of establishment within two years after adoption of the protocol, and issuing a directive for the detailed implementation of the general programme. Likewise, citizens of the Common Market have the right of residence in their territories within a timeframe to be determined by the council.

The East African Community (EAC) Common Market Protocol (2010) The EAC was established in 1967, dissolved in 1977, but links between the original three Partner States – Kenya, the United Republic of Tanzania and Uganda, were reaffirmed with the establishment of the Permanent Tripartite Commission for East African Co-operation in November 1993. That body continued the mission of the EAC until July 2000, when the Treaty for the Establishment of the East African Community entered into force. It consists of seven Partner States: Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, the United Republic of Tanzania and Uganda. The EAC Common Market Protocol (2010)16 was signed in November 2009 and entered into force in July 2010. In line with Articles 76 and 104 of the Treaty, it is an overarching framework that emphasizes the importance of the free movement of goods, persons, services, labour, and capital as well as the rights of establishment and residence as critical elements to accelerate economic growth and development in the common market. The Protocol provides for the progressive implementation of different measures in these areas. 161

Tsion Tadesse Abebe and Peter Mudungwe

Under Article 7 (1) and (2) of the Common Market Protocol Partner States guarantee the free movement of persons who are citizens of the other Partner States, within their territories, and agree to ensure non-discrimination of the citizens of the other Partner States based on their nationalities by ensuring entry, exit, stay and movement within the territory of the Partner State without any visa restrictions in accordance with Regulations 5 (1) and (3) and 6 (1) of Annexes I and II of the Protocol, respectively. To achieve this, under Article 8, Partner States undertook to establish a common standard system of issuing national identification documents to their nationals which shall be the basis for identifying the citizens of the Partner States within the Community. Further, under Article 9, Partner States which have agreed to use machine-readable and electronic national identity cards or any other valid common standard travel documents have been granted the freedom to work out the modalities for implementation. States also agree to ensure the free movement of workers within their territories, including in facilitating employment and remuneration without discrimination; application and issuance of work permits in accordance with Annex II, Regulation 6 of the Protocol; workers’ rights to be accompanied by a Spouse, Children, and Dependents; coordination and harmonization of social security policies, laws, and systems; and Mutual Recognition of Academic and Professional Qualifications. To facilitate the free movement of labour, Articles 10, 11, 12, and 14 lay the foundation for the movement of workers-both formal and self-employed and the attendant rights of establishment and residence. While Article 47 mandates Partner States to approximate their national laws and harmonize their policies and systems for purposes of implementing the Protocol. Being one of the most advanced regions in the realization of free movement, implementation of the Common Market Protocol has registered several achievements to date. These include adoption of the new EAC e-passport and the issuance of machine-readable and electronic IDs as travel documents.

The Treaty Establishing the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) (1983) ECCAS was established in 1983, started operations in 1985, and became a REC in 1999.17 It consists of 11 Member States, namely Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and São Tomé and Príncipe.18 The Protocol on Free Movement and Rights of Establishment of Nationals of Member States is included in Annex 7 of the Treaty Establishing the Economic Community of Central African States (1983). Article 2 of the treaty sets out the eradication of obstacles to free movement of people, services, goods and capital as one of its aims, while Article 40 states that Member States agree to facilitate the free movement and right of establishment of their citizens within the community.19 The protocol stipulates that nationals of Member States can enter another Member State provided that they possess an identity card, passport, laissez-passer or international health record. If nationals present a sojourn card, they can also reside in another Member State. The protocol includes the right of establishment of self-employed nationals as guided by the legislation and regulations of each Member State.20 There has been little progress in the implementation of the ECCAS free movement protocol. An initiative to fast-track free movement of persons was adopted in January 1990, 162

Migration Policy Frameworks in Africa

amended in June 2000, and was meant to be effective by March 2005, but is still pending. Free movement of people is only effective in four Member States of the Central African Economic and Monetary Community (CEMAC)21 that are also members of ECCAS, namely Cameroon, Chad, Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The rest of the Member States require visa for ECCAS citizens. Some Member States have cited security concerns as the main reason for delaying implementation. More recently, however, more Member States are offering fellow ECCAS citizens’ visa on arrival.22

The ECOWAS Protocol Relating to the Free Movement of Persons, Residence and Establishment (1979) The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was established in 1975 and has 15 Member States, namely Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo.23 ECOWAS was the first among the RECs to initiate free movement for its citizens. Its Protocol Relating to the Free Movement of Persons, Residence and Establishment was developed in response to the call by the ECOWAS Treaty for the abolition of obstacles to free movement of persons, services and capital. Other regional blocs on the continent followed suit, and also developed frameworks for promoting free movement of persons. Adopted in May 1979, the ECOWAS Protocol Relating to Free Movement of Persons, Residence and Establishment24 is founded on the ECOWAS Treaty,25 which calls on Member States to abolish obstacles to the free movement of persons, services and capital. The protocol aims to achieve the free movement of persons, as well as the right of residence and establishment, through a three-phased approach, namely, (1) the right of entry and abolition of visas, (2) the right of residence and (3) the right of establishment. According to the protocol, any citizen of ECOWAS who holds a valid travel document and international health certificate can visit another Member State for up to 90 days under the free visa requirement. To facilitate the free movement of people, the protocol also includes the movement of vehicles for the transportation of persons. Accordingly, private vehicles are allowed to enter the territory of another Member State and remain for a maximum of 90 days, provided the following are fulfilled: possession of valid driver’s license, ownership certificate and insurance policy, and an international customs carnet recognized in the community. Commercial vehicles are allowed to enter the territory of another Member State for a maximum of 15 days provided all the documents stated under private vehicles are presented. Commercial vehicles are not allowed to engage in commercial activities while in the territory of a Member State other than their own. The protocol also reserves the right of Member States to refuse entry to community citizens belonging to the category of inadmissible immigrants. To achieve complete freedom of movement in the ECOWAS region, the following four supplementary protocols have been adopted: (i) Supplementary Protocol on the Code of Conduct for the Implementation of the Protocol on Free Movement of Persons, the Right of Residence and Establishment (1985); (ii) Supplementary Protocol on the Second Phase (Right of Residence) (1986); (iii) Supplementary Protocol Amending and Complementing the Provisions of Article 7 of the Protocol on Free Movement, Right of Residence and Establishment (1989); and (iv) Supplementary Protocol on the Implementation of the Third Phase (Right to Establishment) (1990). With regard to facilitating the movement of persons 163

Tsion Tadesse Abebe and Peter Mudungwe

within the region, ECOWAS introduced a harmonized common identity travel card and an ECOWAS passport. The identity travel card was introduced in 1987, is valid for two years and is renewable thereafter. The card is only valid for travel within the region and has been relatively well accepted. The ECOWAS passport is similar to the EU passport and allows citizens to travel internationally. To date, 14 countries26 have issued ECOWAS passports. Other Member States have been unable to issue the passport due mainly to inadequate resources and large inventories of older, national passports27 (IOM 2010).

The IGAD Regional Migration Policy Framework (2012) The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) was established in 1996 and replaced the Intergovernmental Authority on Drought and Development, founded in 1986.41 IGAD consists of eight Member States, namely Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Uganda.28 In 2012, IGAD adopted its Regional Migration Policy Framework (IRMPF)29 which seeks to provide a comprehensive regional approach to managing migration and facilitate the harmonization of migration policies at regional and national levels. It provides a broad range of recommendations on various migration issues, and is a guide to Member States in their quest to formulate their own national migration policies that address specific migration-related challenges and concerns in a comprehensive and holistic manner (IGAD 2012). The framework focuses on addressing regional-specific concerns such as migration and pastoralism, migration and human security, and internal displacement owing to political instability. From a policy dimension, it serves as a coherent strategy to guide IGAD priorities in managing migration, emphasizing the need for harmonized and systematic approaches while providing a space for national realities and variations among Member States. The framework is composed of three major parts. The first part provides the background and rationale for the IRMPF and highlights various migration realities in the region, including types of migration and the major relevant continental policy frameworks (such as the AU Migration Policy Framework for Africa). It discusses pertinent migration issues, including peace in the region, cooperation with other RECs, the state of regional integration in the region and relevant IGAD institutions. A significant section of the first part is also dedicated to regional migration typologies and trends. The second recommends strategies to be adopted and implemented at various levels covering thematic issues such as labour migration, border management, irregular migration, forced displacement, human rights of migration, internal migration, migration data, migration and development, and inter-state cooperation and partnerships. The third part discusses the enabling institutional imperatives for implementing the IRMPF. To this end, the framework underscores the role of IGAD’s institutional structures; the importance of harmonizing migration legislations and policies among IGAD’s Member States; and the need to develop a monitoring and evaluation mechanism for the policy framework.

The Protocol on Free Movement of Persons in the IGAD Region (2020) The Protocol on Free Movement of Persons in the IGAD Region was adopted in 2020, with an accompanying implementation roadmap. The protocol aims “to facilitate the imple164

Migration Policy Frameworks in Africa

mentation of the Agreement by providing for progressing realization of free movement of persons, rights of establishment and residence in IGAD member states” (IGAD 2020). Article 4 (1) of the Protocol stipulates that the IGAD Member States (MSs) shall realize and implement the protocol in four phases: the right to entry and abolition of visa requirements; right of movement of workers; the right to residence; and the rights of establishment. The Protocol’s roadmap for the implementation is also structured accordingly with specific timeframe as follows: (i) phase one – the right to entry and abolition of visa requirements (to be implemented by 2028); (ii) phase two – the right of movement of workers (to be implemented by 2031); (iii) phase three – the right to residence (to be implemented by 2034); and (iv) phase four – rights of establishment (to be implemented by 2037). The protocol shall enter into force 60 days after a deposit of the fourth instrument official ratification or accession with the Executive Secretary of IGAD as stated in article 38 of the protocol. So far, it is signed by two Member States, Sudan and South Sudan. THE SADC PROTOCOL ON THE FACILITATION OF MOVEMENT OF PERSONS (2005)

SADC was established as a development coordinating conference in 1980 and became a development community in 1992. It has 16 Member States, namely Angola, Botswana, the Comoros, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Eswatini, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. SADC developed a Protocol on Free Movement of Persons in 1995. As it was not supported by some Member States, in 2005 it was replaced by the SADC Protocol on the Facilitation of Movement (Abebe 2017). This protocol aims at the progressive elimination of obstacles to the movement of persons in the region generally into and within the territories of state parties. Specifically, it focuses on facilitating the right of Member States’ citizens regarding (1) entry without visa and for a lawful purpose for a maximum period of 90 days; (2) permanent and temporary residence; and (3) establishment of oneself and working in the territory of another state party. The protocol details states parties’ commitment to a set of common actions in its implementation, including harmonizing national laws and statutory rules and regulations. It also highlights a number of substantial and procedural issues relating to the implementation of the protocol, such as the need for national population registers; expedition of travel facilities (such as providing travel documents and machine-readable passports to citizens, ensuring ease of transport, etc.); harmonization of current immigration practices; and cooperation and mutual assistance. The states also agree to remove visa requirements for Member States’ citizens subject to certain conditions, including the restriction of the duration of stay up to 90 days; possession of valid travel permits; proof of sufficient means of support during the visit; and entry through an official port of entry. Residence in the territory of another state party is dependent on obtaining a residence permit from the host state based on an application (for such a residence permit) by the individual. Concerning establishment, Member States agree to grant permission to citizens of states parties who wish to exercise economic activities and professions, to establish and manage a profession, trade, business or calling. The protocol also expands on issues such as the treatment of goods accompanying a person who enters the community from a third state; and the management of asylum seekers and refugees. 165

Tsion Tadesse Abebe and Peter Mudungwe

Seventeen years since its adoption in 2005, the SADC protocol has still not been ratified. This is despite the centrality of the protocol in achieving some of the goals of Article 5 of the SADC Treaty, and the fact that in terms of content, much of the Protocol merely affirms what is already happening in the region based on either the domestic legislation of SADC Member States and/or bilateral and multilateral agreements that have been signed between some Member States. In this regard countries in the region have progressively been removing visa requirements on a bilateral basis, and negotiating bilateral migrant labour agreements. It is therefore argued that the protocol does not represent a radical departure from the current situation, but merely elevates to a regional level what is already happening between Member States (Mudungwe 2016).

The SADC Labour Migration Frameworks Over the years, SADC has developed regional instruments on labour migration, which to some extent have compensated for the absence of a protocol on free movement. To this end, SADC adopted the following regional labour migration action plans: (i) the SADC Regional Labour Migration Action Plan (2013–2015), which advocated for the harmonization of immigration legislation and labour data collection systems; (ii) the SADC Regional Labour Migration Action Plan (2016–2019) which focused on promoting labour migration for regional integration in the development of the SADC regional; and (iii) the SADC Regional Labour Migration Action Plan (2020–2025) which focuses on promoting skills transfer and matching labour supply and demand for regional development and integration (Fioramonti and Nshimbi 2016). The action plan is in line with Article 19 of the SADC Protocol on Employment and Labour. Implementation of the SADC Regional Labour Migration Action Plan (2013–2015) led to the development of the 2014 SADC Labour Migration Policy Framework and the SADC Protocol on Employment and Labour (2014) that promote regional labour mobility and migrant workers’ rights, including social protection respectively. Both the SADC Regional Labour Migration Policy Framework and the SADC Protocol on Employment and Labour are still in draft.

The SADC Regional Migration Policy Framework and Action Plan (2022–2030) Adopted in July 2022, the SADC Regional Migration Policy Framework and Action Plan 2022 to 2030 (SADC 2022) recognizes the development potential of migration and the vital role that it plays in regional integration and socio-economic development. The RMPF outlines key migration patterns in the region, the factors which drive these patterns and strategies for managing migration in ways that support the region’s development objectives. It aims to serve as a practical, non-binding guide for coordination on migration in the region and draws inspiration and guidance from the AU MPFA and Plan of Action (2018–2030), as well as Agenda 2030, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) and the Global Compact on Refugees. The SADC RMPF and its Action Plan are aligned to regional and global development objectives and its Action Plan is to be implemented from 2022 to 2030. The framework elaborates on nine key thematic areas as follows: Internal Migration, Border Governance, Labour Migration, Migration and Development, Diaspora Engagement and Remittances, Irregular Migration, Return, Readmission and Reintegration, Forced Displacement and Stateless Persons. It also identifies six cross-cutting issues as follows: Migration Data, Migration Disasters, Climate Change and Environmental Degradation, Migration and Health, 166

Migration Policy Frameworks in Africa

Migration and Gender, Migration and Children, and Migrants with Special Needs. It provides strategic objectives and the respective key interventions for each thematic area and crosscutting issue and recommends the institution of migration coordination structures at national and regional levels in an effort to achieve a whole-of-society approach to managing migration.

Conclusion Migration policy is a fundamental aspect of migration governance. Further to policies, migration governance constitutes processes, norms, and institutional mechanisms. All are geared towards enabling countries, regions and the continent to put in place a functioning migration system that facilitates policymaking as well as implementation. This chapter showcases the different important migration policies put in place by the African Union and RECs. Most of these policies focus on the free movement of persons. This is related to the Abuja Treaty that provided the basis for the establishment of the RECs and which gives emphasis to the free movement of persons as one core element of achieving regional integration at sub-regional and continental levels. Accordingly, the free movement of persons is one of the key fundamental areas covered in each of the eight RECs establishing treaties. Further, COMESA, ECOWAS, IGAD and SADC have adopted free movement of people protocols, while the EAC covers the issue in its common market protocol. Labour migration is also one fundamental area covered by the RECs as the experiences of COMESA and SADC indicate. EAC is also in the process of developing its labour migration policy (East African Community 2021). Implementation of these policies is the next most important step. both at national and regional levels. In this respect, adopting national migration policies is critical. Strengthening institutional mechanisms at the continent, regional and national levels that seek to translate and realize the policies are equally important. Existing regional and national dialogues such as Regional Consultative Processes (RCPs) by the different RECs can be used to facilitate discussions on policy implementations. RCPs “are state-led, regional information-sharing and policy dialogues on migration that are either officially associated with formal regional institutions or informal and non-binding” (Owiso, et al, forthcoming). National Coordination Mechanisms on Migration (NCMs) can provide good opportunities to discuss migration policymaking and implementation. NCMs are government-led inter-agency platforms responsible for the coordination of national migration management in a whole-of-government and society approach (Owiso, et al, forthcoming). The policy implementation should also be supported by evidence-based research. In this respect, “The Study on the Benefits and Challenges of Free Movement of Persons in Africa” by the African Union and IOM provides a good example. IOM, EAC and IGAD are also working on a flagship Report titled, “The State of Migration in East and Horn of Africa” which focuses on identifying opportunities and bottlenecks to the implementation of free movement of persons in the region, while it provides relevant policy suggestions. All these will contribute to enabling African countries, RECs and continental institutions to turn the existing migration policies into practice to the benefit of all, countries of origin, destinations and migrants.

Notes 1 The Cape Malay, South African History Online – Towards a People’s History https://www​.sahistory​.org​.za​/article​/cape​-malay (Accessed 18 August 2022)

167

Tsion Tadesse Abebe and Peter Mudungwe 2 African Union Commission, OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, https://bit​.ly​/3ele9bl 3 African Union Commission, OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, https://bit​.ly​/3ele9bl 4 African Union, Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community (Abuja Treaty), 1991, https://bit​.ly​/3VeIF7h 5 Objective (b) and (c) of the Abuja Treaty. 6 African Union, Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community (Abuja Treaty), 1991https:// bit​.ly​/3VeIF7h 7 Agenda 2063 refers to refer to key programmes and initiatives which the African Union has identified as key to accelerating Africa’s economic growth and development. 8 The 32 Member States that signed on to the Free Movement Protocol include: Angola, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo Cote D’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Kingdom of Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Sao Tome & Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda and Zimbabwe. 9 The four Member States that have deposited ratifications for the Free Movement Protocol are Mali, Niger, Rwanda and Sao Tome & Principe. 10 Treaty Instituting the Arab Maghreb Union (with declaration), Concluded at Marrakesh on 17 February 1989, https://www​.wipo​.int​/edocs​/lexdocs​/treaties​/en​/amu​/trt​_amu​.pdf 11 UNECA: AMU - Free Movement of Persons. https://archive​.uneca​.org​/pages​/amu​-free​-movement​-persons 12 AU, CEN-SAD, https://au​.int​/en​/recs​/censad 13 UNECA: CEN-SAD - Free Movement of Persons. https://archive​.uneca​.org​/pages​/cen​-sad​-free​ -movement​-persons 14 COMESA, https://www​.comesa​.int/ 15 Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), Protocol on the Free Movement of Persons, Labour, Services, Rights of Establishment and Resident, https://bit​.ly​/3MhwmTz 16 East African Community, Common Market Protocol, 2010, https://www​.eac​.int​/common​-market 17 African Union Commission, Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), https:// au​.int​/en​/recs​/eccas 18 Ibid 19 International Dialogue on Migration, Intersessional workshop on free movement of persons in regional integration processes, 2007, Supplemental materials. 20 Ibid. 21 The Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa is made up of six countries in Central Africa (Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo Republic and Gabon and Equatorial Guinea). It was set up to promote sub-regional integration through the forming of a monetary union, with the Central African CFA franc as a common currency. 22 UNECA, ECCAS - Free Movement of Persons, https://bit​.ly​/3STzd7N 23 ECOWAS, https://ecowas​.int/​?page​_id​=381 24 ECOWAS Protocol Relating to the Free Movement of Persons, Residence and Establishment, https://bit​.ly​/3SMgnQ7 25 ECOWAS, https://bit​.ly​/3T358SS 26 These countries are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, GuineaBissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. 27 IOM, 2010, Free Movement of Persons in Regional Integration Processes, International Dialogue on Migration No 13, https://bit​.ly​/3MjGmMf 28 IGAD, https://igad​.int​/about/ 29 IGAD, Regional Migration Policy Framework, 2012, https://bit​.ly​/3fUgHxB

References Abebe, T, 2017, Migration Policy Frameworks in Africa, Institute for Security Studies, https://bit​.ly​ /3VbRTkJ

168

Migration Policy Frameworks in Africa Abebe, T, 2018, Global Compact for Migration: Enhancing African Migration Governance, Institute for Security Studies, https://bit​.ly​/3STq9jh Abebe, Abebe and Sharpe, 2019, The 1969 OAU Refugee Convention at 50, Institute for Security Studies, https://bit​.ly​/3rJnZqG African Union, 2006, The African Common Position on Migration and Development, https://bit​.ly​ /3ehCFdj African Union, 2018, The Migration Policy Framework for Africa (MPFA), https://bit​.ly​/2HbyTxy African Union Commission, 2006, The Ouagadougou Action Plan to Combat Trafficking in Human Beings Especially Women and Children (Ouagadougou Action Plan), https://bit​.ly​/3CIBwor African Union Commission, 2009, African Union Convention for the Protection and Assistance of Internally Displaced Persons in Africa (Kampala Convention), https://bit​.ly​/2Lc69VZ African Union Commission, 2018a, Draft Common African Position on Safe Orderly and Regular Migration, https://bit​.ly​/3fHIctZ African Union Commission, 2018b, The Protocol to the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community Relating to Free Movement of Persons, Right of Residence and Right of Establishment, https://bit​.ly​/3ei09Pz African Union Commission, 2019, The Evaluation of the Implementation Status of the African Union’s Ouagadougou Action Plan to Combat Trafficking in Human Beings, Especially Women and Children (2006) in Africa, https://bit​.ly​/3fNvCtf African Union Commission and International Organization for Migration, 2018, The Study on Benefits and Challenges of Free Movement of Persons in Africa, https://bit​.ly​/3yrk0Ts Gugliotta, G, 2008, The Great Human Migration, The Smithsonian Magazine, https://www​.smithsonianmag​.com​/history​/the​-great​-human​-migration​-13561/. Amin, S, 1995, Migrations in Contemporary Africa: A Retrospective View, in Jonathan Baker and Tade Akin Aida (Eds.), Migrations in Contemporary Africa (pp. 29–40), Nordiska Afrikainstitutet. East African Community, 2021, Harness Labour Migration to Spur Economic Growth, EAC Partner States Urged, https://bit​.ly​/3Ck37uW Fioramonti, L and Nshimbi, CC, 2016, Regional Migration Governance in the African Continent. The Current State of Affairs and the Way Forward. Sef, Development and Peace Foundation. IGAD, Regional Migration Policy Framework, 2012, https://bit​.ly​/3fUgHxB IGAD, 2020, Protocol on Free Movement of Persons in the IGAD Region, IGAD Secretariat, Djibouti. International Organization for Migration, 2018, The Global Compact for Safe Orderly and Regular Migration, https://www​.iom​.int​/global​-compact​-migration International Organization for Migration, 2019, Glossary on Migration, International Migration Law (34), https://bit​.ly​/2RFilTq IOM, 2010, Free Movement of Persons in Regional Integration Processes, International Dialogue on Migration No 13, https://publications​.iom​.int​/books​/international​-dialogue​-migration​-ndeg13​ -free​-movement​-persons​-regional​-integration​-processes McAuliffe, M and Triandafyllidou, A, 2022, World Migration Report 2022, IOM, https://bit​.ly​ /3RNWdDN Mensah, TE, 2016. The Mfecane and Its Effects: The Single Event That Made the Most Profound Effect on Central and Southern Africa in the Nineteenth Century? GRIN Verlag. Mudungwe, P, 2016, Promoting Free Movement of People in Southern Africa - A Case for Ratification of the Protocol on the Facilitation of Movement of Persons in the SADC Region, African Diaspora Policy Centre, Research Report No. 2016/03. Obi, C, 2010, African Migration as the Search for a Wonderful World: An Emerging Trans-global Security Threat? African and Asian Studies, 9(1–2), 128–148. Owiso, M, Azrah Karim, R, Abdi, H, et al, (2023, forthcoming). In the ‘The State of Migration in East and Horn of Africa Report’ IOM, EAC and IGAD. Sharpe, M, 2012, The 1969 African Refugee Convention: Innovations, Misconceptions, and Omissions, McGill Law Journal, 58(1), 97–147. SADC, 2022. SADC Regional Migration Policy Framework and Action Plan 2022–2030, SADC Secretariat, Gaborone. Shoko, T, 2007. Karanga Indigenous Religion in Zimbabwe: Health and Well-Being, Routledge.

169

10 REFUGEE POLITICS IN AFRICA Alexander Betts

Introduction Forced displacement has been a significant feature of African political history. Even prior to colonialism, processes of state formation and conflict led to large-scale population movement. The Mfecane (‘crushing’ in Zulu) described the relationship between political disruption and forced migration in Southern Africa during the 1820s and 1830s, for example (Eldredge 1992). Following European Empire, anti-colonial liberation movements and Cold War proxy conflicts contributed to growing refugee movements between the 1960s and 1980s, with 400,000 refugees in 1964 and 2.5 million in 1986. Following the end of the Cold War, the proliferation in internal armed conflicts and fragile states – from Somalia to the DRC and South Sudan – contributed to refugee numbers growing to seven million by the end of 2021. Beyond the numbers, refugee movements in Africa have been deeply political. The drivers of displacement have been enmeshed in the politics of violence – shaped by legacies of colonialism, Sub-Saharan Africa’s position in the global economy, and competition for natural resources. Meanwhile, responses to refugees, including receiving countries’ admissions policies and the levels of rights accorded to refugees, have exhibited considerable variation. At times, receiving countries have welcomed refugees, affording them the right to work and freedom of movement; at other times, they have curtailed their rights, whether through forced repatriation or the use of strict encampment policies. This variation can be seen across countries; Uganda, for example, has been celebrated for giving refugees the right to work; Kenya has been criticised for compelling refugees to reside in camps. It can also be seen over time: Tanzania under Julius Nyerere was celebrated for its integration of spontaneously settled rural refugees in the 1970s and 1980s, but adopted strict encampment policies from the mid-1990s (Rutinwa 2002). Explaining refugee politics in Africa requires nuance and context-specific historical understanding. No two countries are the same, and we should be cautious of generalising the experiences of ‘the African states’. Nevertheless, there are some common themes in refugee movements in Africa – encampment (relatively larger numbers of refugees are in camps and fewer in cities than on other continents), porous borders (states lack the capacity to control 170

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-13

Refugee Politics in Africa

movement), and mass influx (conflict is the main cause of displacement). There are also common themes within the politics of refugee rights in Sub-Saharan Africa that stem in part from features of Africa’s structural position in world politics, the legacies of colonialism for identity and borders, and the important role of natural resources in shaping conflict and contestation. In this broader context, the existing literature has offered a series of competing explanations for the comparative politics of refugee rights in Africa. These include identity-based accounts (that elites privilege refugees from common ethnic backgrounds or from countries with which they have rivalrous bilateral relationships), interest-based accounts (that elites seek resources, patronage, and legitimacy through their refugee policies), values-based accounts (that states support refugee rights out of a desire to advance pan-African values of hospitality), and norm-based accounts (respect international and regional legal obligations, including the OAU Convention on the Rights of Refugees). In addition to this, African states are in different structural positions. Domestically, regime type may make a difference: procedural democracies have greater degrees of accountability to their own citizens, and hence there may be greater electoral barriers to affording rights to non-citizens. Internationally, some states have greater bilateral and multilateral leverage than others – whether because of geography, natural resources, or historical relationships. Despite pockets of literature that speak to these themes, there has been relatively little systematic integration of the African Studies and Refugee Studies literatures. This chapter focuses on refugee politics in Sub-Saharan Africa. It does so by examining, first, International Relations; second, comparative politics; third, the role of refugees themselves within African politics.

International Relations Refugee politics takes place within the context of international institutions. The global refugee regime represents the set of norms, rules, principles, and decision-making procedures that regulate states’ responses to refugees. The aim of the regime – based on the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) – is to facilitate cooperation on refugee protection. However, not all states come to that regime with equal influence. The refugee system was created by the victors of the Second World War for a European context, at a time when most of Sub-Saharan Africa remained part of European Empire. Its norms were then applied to Africa, with only minimal adaptation through regional adaptations such as the 1969 OAU Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa. While the refugee regime provides strong norms of ‘asylum’ (the obligation states have towards refugees on their territory), it offers weak norms of ‘responsibility-sharing’ (the obligation that states have to support refugees on the territory of other states). Consequently, while rich countries far from conflict and crisis have retained significant discretion in how much support they offer refugees through resettlement places or aid, countries that neighbour conflict and crisis have had a strong obligation to admit refugees onto their territory. This framework has created a strong power asymmetry in the global refugee regime, assigning significant responsibility to African states, while making rich donor state support for refugees within Africa largely discretionary. This power asymmetry has sometimes been characterised using game theoretical situations such as the ‘Rambo game’ or ‘suasion game’ in which there is a stronger actor with little obligation or incentive to cooperate and a 171

Alexander Betts

weaker actor with an obligation to cooperate but little influence to change the behaviour of the stronger actor (Betts 2011). Historically, this situation has meant that European and North American support for African host states has generally been understood as discretionary, and something that only happens when rich donor states have a specific interest in contributing. Donor and states’ bilateral or multilateral contributions to humanitarian and development aid, or to resettlement places, have therefore usually been driven by interests in ‘linked’ areas – so-called issue-linkages – such as interests in migration control or trade relationships – rather than solidarity with refugees per se. This is evident in patterns of donor state contributions to UNHCR to support refugees in Africa, in which there is heavy earmarking of funding by European states to host countries with which they have colonial ties, receive significant onward migration, or have broader trade relationships. It is also evident in the historical failure of attempts to create more sustainable international support for refugees in Africa. To take an example, one of the most ambitious attempts to North-South cooperation to support refugees in Africa was through the International Conferences on Assistance to Refugees in Africa (ICARA) I and II of 1981 and 1984. The ICARA conferences followed the 1979 Arusha Conference and a 1980 International Conference on Refugees in Sudan, at which newly independent African states agreed that they needed to collectively bargain for better international support to host refugees, and approaches UNHCR to co-organised an initial global conference with the OAU in 1981 (Adepoju 1982). ICARA I, held 9–10 April 1981, had three stated objectives: 1) to ‘focus attention on the plight of refugees in Africa’; 2) to ‘mobilize additional resources to assist both refugees and returnees’; 3) to ‘aid countries of asylum in bearing the burden imposed upon them by the large number of refugees”. It was primarily a pledging conference, with UNHCR working before the conference to enable African states to submit ‘development projects’ that would support both refugees and hosting regions (Gorman 1986). The UN Secretary-General proclaimed at the conference that it had been a comparative success with $560m in conference pledges. It was only later that the extent to which these pledges had been earmarked by states became increasingly apparent. By September 1981, the Steering Committee noted that restrictions by donors left only $144m un-earmarked, leaving UNHCR with an estimated $40m available for African states’ priority projects. Consequently, a ceiling of $2m per country was fixed and this was focused on humanitarian assistance needs such as food, water, shelter, and the delivery of medical services. Equally, the legacy of ICARA I failed to satisfy northern donor states who felt that financial commitments had not translated into durable solutions for refugees but had either been squandered on short-term assistance or had been used by African states simply to fund outdated development projects that offered little benefit to refugees. Consequently, a second conference was organised with a stronger conceptual focus on refugee self-reliance, as a means to bring development aid to African states and to reduce long-term humanitarian aid budgets. Siaka Stevens, as Chair of the OAU, claimed The assistance of the world community…should aim at helping them [refugees] to help themselves, particularly in cases where repatriation could no longer be envisaged. Refugees should not be assisted in ways which would create overdependence. Rather, they should be guided and enabled to become self-supporting as quickly as possible. ICARA II was therefore seen as more of a ‘think tank’ than a ‘pledging conference’. 172

Refugee Politics in Africa

UNHCR and UNDP worked with African states to support them to present ‘selfreliance’ projects that could be mutually beneficial for donor and host states alike. (Betts 2011) When the conference met in July 1984, it aimed to raise $392m to meet 128 aid schemes in the 14 African states over a period of three years. However, the ultimate consensus is that ICARA II was a failure. The cause of failure was a misalignment in expectations between donor states and African host states. While the African states wished to focus on responsibility-sharing, the donor states wished to focus on eliciting an African commitment to the local integration of refugees in order to reduce their long-term aid spending. Furthermore, as the 1984 famine and drought in the Horn of Africa emerged, donor state interests shifted the cover other humanitarian priorities. The ICARA conferences are interesting because they exemplify the historical challenge that UNHCR has faced in attempting to facilitate donor support for African host states, and the unwillingness of donor states to support assistance beyond their immediate interests. These dynamics have generally been replicated whenever UNHCR has attempted to facilitate international pledging conferences in support of refugees in Africa. For example, in 2017, UNHCR convened a ‘solidarity summit’ for refugees in Uganda, with the aim of raising $2 billion, and although $358m was pledged, only around $1m was ultimately given – all of which came from India and China. In 2019, UNHCR also created the IGAD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development) Support Platform to support refugees in the Horn of Africa, with a particular focus on engaging donors to support South Sudanese refugees, with relatively little impact on donor funding. African refugees have often been of low priority for donors when compared with refugee movements with closer geographical proximity (and higher levels of onward migration) to Europe and North America. For example, donor and resettlement support for refugees in Africa was adversely affected by the channelling of assistance to the Syrian, Venezuelan, and Ukrainian refugee crises. The limitations of multilateral cooperation between African and the international donor community have meant that host-donor relations have more generally taken place at a bilateral level, further diminishing the bargaining power of African states. European donor states have been increasingly eager to ensure that humanitarian and development aid serve their national priorities. As a result, European donors have often privileged particular bilateral relationships linked to onward migration patterns, trade links, or colonial ties. For example, Italy-Libya, Spain-Morocco, the UK-Ethiopia, France-Senegal, France-Mali, DenmarkUganda, UK-Kenya, Belgium-DRC, UK-Rwanda have been among the most high-profile bilateral relationships between European and African states in which ‘deals’ relating to refugees have been situated within the broader context of other policy areas such as migration, trade, and development. To take an example, in 2022, the UK and Rwanda agreed a bilateral partnership to allow the UK to remove asylum seekers arriving in the UK to Rwanda in exchange for around $160m.

Comparative Politics The asymmetrical power relations faced by African states in the international refugee regime is a common challenge for the region. But in order to explain the considerable variation in refugee policies adopted across the region, we need to also look at domestic refugee politics. 173

Alexander Betts

The existing literature that seeks to explain this variation looks at both internal and external sources of policy divergence. At an internal level, Lamis Abdelaaty (2021) identifies two identity-based factors as underpinning variation in refugee policies: the identity of elite leaders (common identity with refugees leads to more generous policies) and the bilateral relationship with neighbours (enmity leads to greater generosity as a means to discredit the country of origin). Indeed, we can see many historical examples that illustrate these mechanisms. For example, on bilateral enmity/friendship, Uganda under Museveni was supportive of Rwandan refugees during Habyarimana’s Presidency in Rwanda (1986–1994); recently independent Mozambique and Zimbabwe hosted South African refugees during the Anti-Apartheid struggle (1980s). In contrast, South Africa under Mbeki was restrictive towards Zimbabwean refugees because of the historical friendship with Mugabe (2000–2008), while Obote was hostile towards Rwandan and South Sudanese refugees because of alliances with Habyarimana and Nimiery (1981–1986). At an external level, James Milner (2009) highlights the important role of donor aid in shaping variation in host state policies, suggesting that ‘responsibility-sharing’ matters materially and symbolically to host countries. He shows this by looking at the politics of asylum in Tanzania, Kenya, and Guinea. Relatedly, Gerasimos Tsourapas (2019) uses the concept of ‘refugee rentier states’ (‘rentier’ meaning to monopolise access to a scarce resource as a means to elicit resources) to show how host states have extracted development and trade concessions from particularly European donors by appealing to the EU’s desire to manage onward migration. Within the broader African Studies literature, Jean-Francois Bayart and Stephen Ellis (2000) describe many Sub-Saharan African states’ external relations being characterised by what they describe as ‘extraversion’: using external recognition of sovereignty as a means to extract resources through aid and trade from international actors, and then redistributing them through patronage networks in order to sustain internal support. One interesting aspect of this variation relates to refugees’ socio-economic rights, with host countries showing considerable variation in how their national legislation, policies, and practices provide refugees with the right to work, freedom of movement, and other related rights. In my own work, I have tried to explain variation in states willingness to provide these rights in East Africa, distinguishing between the de jure (in-law) right to work and the de facto (in-practice) right to work. In this context, I suggest that the interaction of international, national, and local levels matters for explaining variation. Even when the de jure right to work is entirely determined at a central government level, sub-national authorities may exercise significant influence in shaping the de facto right to work and other related socio-economic entitlements. We can look at the example of three countries: Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia. They have all gone some way towards providing the right to work to refugees, but with some significant variation. Uganda has a long-standing commitment to the right to work, which moved from a de facto (in practice) to a de jure (in law) right in 2006. Ethiopia changed its legislation from denying refugees the right to work to offering the right to work in 2019, but does not yet implement that right in practice. Kenya denies refugees the right to work in law, but is gradually moving towards increasing refugees’ socio-economic rights in practice in one part of the country, Turkana County. All of these cases deviate from the general practice of almost entirely denying refugees the right to work across most other host countries in East Africa, such as Tanzania (Betts 2021a). 174

Refugee Politics in Africa

Two conditions seem to explain this variation: 1) a pay-off for the central government; 2) a pay-off for the local government in refugee-hosting regions. Where both conditions are present (Uganda), the de jure and de facto right to work exists. Where there is a national payoff but no local pay-off (Ethiopia), there is the de jure but not de facto right to work. Where there is a local but not a national pay-off (Kenya), the de facto right to work exists but there is no de jure right. By pay-off, I mean a direct and earmarked material benefit for either the central or local government. Do they receive a financial transfer which is explicitly dependent upon implementation of the right to work for refugees, which is at a level that is perceived as sufficient for them to provide the right to work to refugees? In Ethiopia, for example, the central government received around $500m to support its Jobs Compact, part of which required legislative change at the national level. In Kenya, donors committed to support a budget of around $500m to support the development of the sub-county of Turkana West between 2018 and 2023, in exchange for a commitment to socio-economically integrate refugees. In Uganda, both the national and local governments in West Nile and the South-West have consistently received pay-offs in terms of additional development assistance virtually since independence. These pay-offs matter to policy-makers for three broad purposes: offering greater opportunities to host country citizens, enabling government ministers to claim ‘success stories’ that advance their careers, and for patronage and corruption. Clearly, other factors also matter – several of which are listed above. The implication is that the right to work for refugees depends upon ensuring an adequate material pay-off to both the central government and the local government within refugee-hosting regions. One without the other will only lead to the partial and lop-sided development of refugees’ socioeconomic rights. Meanwhile, the absence of material incentives will likely lead to ongoing encampment and the denial of the right to work. To elaborate, I will turn to the case studies. Uganda has provided the de facto right to work to refugees since before independence in 1962. It committed in principle to develop legislation including this right from the 1970s and finally consolidated the right to work in law in 2008. One reason for Uganda’s longstanding support for the socio-economic inclusion of refugees is that it has been relatively low-cost. Its main refugee-hosting regions have had significant amounts of surplus and fairly arable land and shared a common identity with people crossing from neighbouring countries. Uganda has therefore been able to seek international recognition and reward for something relatively straightforward. There has nevertheless been a political logic underpinning how Uganda has used refugee policy as a source of legitimacy and resource extraction. And a striking feature of Uganda’s ‘progressive’ self-reliance model has been that it has often emerged from paradoxically illiberal sources and for illiberal motives (Betts 2021b). International donors have been willing to fund and reward Uganda for its tolerant approach to refugees since the 1960s, when the country was already by far the largest recipient of humanitarian and development aid for refugees in Africa. Initially, this international support was linked to Uganda’s wider geo-strategic importance during the Cold War. However, by the 1990s, two other motives took centre stage: managing the onward movement of migration and seeking more cost-effective approaches to humanitarian protection. These new motives meant even more resources and attention were available to Uganda in exchange for institutionalising its long-standing approach to refugee self-reliance. Through successive regimes, the central government has used refugees as an opportunity to extract resources from international donors. International attention has been useful as a source of external legitimacy for consecutive regimes with questionable democratic 175

Alexander Betts

credentials. While Idi Amin’s refugee policies are perhaps best known for his expulsion of the Ugandan Asians, for example, he courted international praise for his creation of new, integrated refugee settlements. Donor funding has also been important as a means to ensure internal authority through the redistribution of resources to peripheral, refugee-hosting regions of the country. This redistribution has been especially important because of the South-West and West Nile regions’ strategic importance to successive central governments. Idi Amin and Yoweri Museveni, for example, both lacked support in central Buganda, and so relied heavily upon support from the mainly Rwandan-hosting South-West and the South Sudanese-hosting West Nile region. During the period when Milton Obote was first prime minister and then president (1962– 1971), Uganda used the presence of refugees as a means to gain greater development assistance. By the mid-1960s, Uganda hosted nearly a quarter of Africa’s refugees but received half of UNHCR’s Africa programme budget. As early as 1964, the foreign minister was already being invited to Geneva to speak to UNHCR Executive Committee about the country’s ‘self-supporting’ approach to refugees, and being used by UNHCR to demonstrate the potential of a development-based approach to refugee assistance. Idi Amin’s (1971–1979) regime depended upon the presence of refugees. Lacking support within Buganda and mistrustful of Ugandan elites, he relied upon Rwandans and southern Sudanese as the basis for his military and senior civil service recruitment. It was in fact Amin who was the architect of many of Uganda’s now celebrated refugee settlements, and he did so both because they offered opportunities to nurture loyalty and recruitment and also because he received high international praise – and money – from UNHCR and others for doing so. Under Obote’s second regime (1980–1985), he attempted to reassert control within both the South-West and West Nile regions, purging them of Amin loyalists. This desire for control shaped his contribution to the humanitarian infrastructure in those regions. He suspended Amin’s tolerance of urban refugees in Kampala and across Uganda’s secondary cities like Mbarara and Port Portal, and redesigned the settlements as spaces of control and surveillance. When Museveni came to power (1986–), much of his support base mirrored that of Amin. While Amin was a Kakwa with strong links to West Nile, Museveni had a Banyankole background with strong links to the South West. Amin had worked hard to build his support base in the South West, and Museveni worked hard to build his support base in West Nile. Both depended upon sustaining the backing of the South West and West Nile because of their lack of authority in Buganda (the historically richest and most powerful sub-kingdom of contemporary Uganda). If he could not sustain support in West Nile, Museveni’s ability to rule would be compromised. For Museveni, the presence of refugees in those regions has offered a means to extract donor funding and redistribute resources to those regions, in a way that has buttressed his authority, and underpinned the patronage networks of key members of his cabinet and military, such as the influential Moses Ali. As international interest in the ‘Ugandan model’ has grown, Museveni has skilfully packaged and repackaged the country’s pre-existing refugee policies for new audiences. From the Self-Reliance Strategy (SRS) of 1996–2003 to ReHOPE of 2016–2018 to the Comprehensive Refugee Response Framework (CRRF) of 2018 onwards, the international community has been consistently waiting with a new acronym and new sources of funding to support an old model. A key strategic challenge for the central government has been to ensure that it remains the intermediary between the donors and local-level government, through its central ‘refugee offices’ 176

Refugee Politics in Africa

(usually housed within the Office of the Prime Minister) and that ‘direct budget support’ is not bypassed by direct international funding for local government. In Ethiopia, the government had a long-standing encampment policy, with clear restrictions on refugees’ right to work and freedom of movement. In 2016, it announced plans to transition to the right to work, and in 2019, its parliament passed a new Refugee Proclamation, ostensibly giving refugees the right to work and other socio-economic rights. Why did this change happen? Ethiopia’s volte-face on refugee policy can be explained almost entirely by international conditionality. As part of a deal known as ‘the Jobs Compact’, the government of Hailemariam Desalegn was offered around $600m by the UK, DFID, and the World Bank in the context of the European refugee crisis in order to create 30,000 jobs for refugees within its industrial parks. As part of the deal, Ethiopia committed to change its legislation to let refugees work. However, it is clear that despite the de jure right to work, there is no immediate prospect of its large-scale implementation in Ethiopia. The Proclamation was widely understood by the government as offering the right to work, incrementally and proportionately to the level of international support for Ethiopia’s own national development and industrialisation strategy. If the international donor community is willing to support job creation for Ethiopians, the reasoning went, then the government would also allow jobs to be created for refugees. However, even this deal has faced push-back at the local level. For example, in Gambella, with the largest number of South Sudanese refugees, there were strong local protests immediately after the passage of the Proclamation, with local people and the regional government feeling that they were not consulted on a deal brokered in Addis. Even in the Somali Region, which generally welcomes Somali refugees, legislative change in Addis was greeted with indifference, amid tension between the central and regional governments. When Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018, he was elected on a platform of greater national inclusion, than his predecessor’s close alignment with the elite in Addis, Oromia, and Tigray. This influenced his approach to the Jobs Compact. For example, reflecting the need to be more ‘even handed’, he changed the sites for the three new industrial parks to be financed by the deal. His alternative selection of the industrial park sites was intended to ‘buy-off’ priority regions in which Abiy needed greater support and credibility. But with that change in approach to ethnic federalism, the government also lost momentum on implementing the right to work for refugees at a sub-national level. Put simply, while Ethiopia’s central government sold the de jure right to work to the international community, the lack of buy-in at the local level meant there was little prospect of its wider implementation. Interestingly, by 2020, neither the donor countries’ money nor the 30,000 jobs had been delivered, but the new legislation nevertheless sat on the statute books. In Kenya, the central government has adopted a strict encampment policy for refugees since the early 1990s, denying them the right to work and freedom of movement. It institutionalised this practice within its 2006 Refugee Act. However, since 2014, one particular refugee-hosting region, Turkana County, has adopted a different approach. Despite the legal restriction on the right to work, the practice has started to change at the local level. In that sense, the story is virtually the opposite of Ethiopia; it is one of local change despite the impasse at the national level. Devolution in 2012 gave Kenya’s Counties greater authority over socio-economic aspects of refugee integration. When Josphat Nanok was elected as Governor of Turkana County in 2013, he recognised the opportunity to use those powers. He had spent much of his career as a humanitarian, including working for the World Food Programme. He recognised the 177

Alexander Betts

devastating effect on the County’s economy when, following peace in South Sudan in 2005, refugees and humanitarian organisations started to leave. In a county in which local Turkana relied on humanitarian agencies for employment and cash flow, he witnessed first-hand how hard-hit Lokichoggio was when WFP finally closed its doors in 2011. He decided instead to make the most of the presence of refugees and agencies in the Kakuma refugee camps as an opportunity for the Country’s development and as a vehicle for his own political ambitions. In November 2014, the Governor, UNHCR, and the World Bank convened a roundtable in the County capital, Lodwar. UNHCR needed more land to expand Kakuma but was also keen to avoid creating another camp. Meanwhile, the Governor was keen to maximise the return to the County and its citizens in terms of development assistance. After a series of discussions, they committed in 2015 to build the country’s first integrated settlement for both refugees and the host community, the Kalobeyei Settlement, within which refugees and hosts would share access to services and markets, and refugees could have opportunities for self-reliance. Amid the onset of the European refugee crisis, the EU committed to being the lead funder for the Kalobeyei project through the EUTF, established primarily to manage irregular migration from Africa. A 15-year strategy was created for Kalobeyei called the Kalobeyei Integrated Settlement Socio-Economic Development Plan (KISEDP). The Kalobeyei settlement was opened in 2016. However, by 2018, it was clear that few host community members were relocating to the new settlement. Reflecting this, the KISEDP was broadened in scope and purpose. Instead of just focusing on the settlement, it was repurposed as a development plan for the entire sub-county of Turkana West, with the aim of directly benefiting refugees and the host community, while supporting their gradual social integration. The KISEDP’s first five-year period outlines a proposed budget of $500m. Gradually, as the European concern with onward migration has subsided, donor interest has shifted towards building a new model of more cost-effective humanitarian protection. Meanwhile, as trust has been built, it has been clear that the County has gradually allowed greater socio-economic rights to refugees, such as informally granting refugee entrepreneurs multi-year movement passes to engage in business activities across the County. Nevertheless, the Turkana County experience has so far had only limited influence at the central government level. Refugee politics in Nairobi are dominated by security concerns and the primary focus is on Kenya’s other refugee-hosting region Garissa County, home of the infamous Dadaab camps. In 2019, the government put a new Refugee Bill to parliament, and its focus was primarily on security, with no sign of a change towards providing the right to work or other socio-economic rights at the national level.

Refugee Politics Refugee politics is not just about what states do but also have the role of refugees themselves as political actors. There is a growing recognition that refugees play a range of roles in African politics – as diasporas, as political opposition movements in exile, as armed actors in conflict, as providers of mutual aid and humanitarian assistance, as voters, and as actors in peace-building and post-conflict reconstruction (Pincock et al. 2021; Lischer 2005; Jose and Medie 2015). From Paul Kagame to George Weah and Joao Lourenco, many contemporary and historical head of African states have spent time in exile. In my research, for example, I have explored the ways in which refugee diasporas engage in political mobilisation to influence the politics in their homeland, sometimes challenging authoritarian governments from abroad (Betts and Jones 2016). 178

Refugee Politics in Africa

In the case of Zimbabwe, for example, the refugee diaspora mobilised transnationally to challenge Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF between 2000 and 2010. In that period, it is estimated that around two million Zimbabweans are likely to have fled across the border into South Africa even though most were not formally recognised as ‘refugees’. A range of ‘new’ diaspora organisations formed and proliferated in South Africa, with links to groups in the UK and the US. Many of these organisations had important links to the Zimbabwean opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). They received considerable support from external governments and organisations with an interest in either challenging ZANU-PF or influencing South Africa’s foreign policy towards Zimbabwe. For example, an organisation called the Southern African Liaison Office (SALO), which sought to influence the ANC’s relationship with ZANU-PF, offered capacity-building support to Zimbabwean diaspora organisations and connected them to donor organisations interested in funding the Zimbabwean opposition diaspora, including the UK and US governments. This mobilisation brought considerable additional funding. This political support led to the creation of a range of new organisations – covering areas from legal documentation of human rights abuses perpetrated by the Mugabe regime to food aid and psycho-social support in churches across Johannesburg. Meanwhile, the different branches of the MDC managed to politically organise within South Africa, succeeding in getting the right to vote for the diaspora within the Zimbabwean elections. As funding came in, there were notable successes. For example, the diaspora succeeded in blockading an arms shipment of Chinese weapons destined for Zimbabwe in Durban in 2008, and had notable success in lobbying South Africa’s courts to litigate crimes against humanity perpetrated in Zimbabwe within its jurisdiction. However, particularly striking was the way in which Zimbabwean opposition diaspora mobilisation dried up from 2009. The 2008 Zimbabwean elections, though, were the apogee of the diaspora. The Global Peace Agreement (GPA) of September 2008 led to the Government of National Unity being formed in Zimbabwe in February 2009. This led to a relocation of the most relevant politics for Zimbabwe shifting back to Harare. Activities in the diaspora became considerably quieter thereafter. And although many Zimbabweans remained in exile, and diasporic organisations continued to exist, the scale of funding and activity declined. In many ways, the example highlights not only the potential impact of refugee diasporas for challenging authoritarian regimes but also the extent to which diasporic relevance is shaped by the wider politics of external donor interests. A slightly different, but no less striking example, is the case of the Rwandan diaspora. Rwanda has a long history of migration and diaspora political movements. For example, Rwanda’s current ruling party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), was founded in the refugee settlements of southern Uganda in 1986, and recruited heavily from Rwandan diaspora communities there. However, the genocide of 1994 ushered in a new phase of movement that has given rise to the contemporary diaspora. Since then, there has been ever-diminishing space for political opposition within Rwanda. Political contestation has not been extinguished but has instead been geographically relocated. Both opposition and pro-government diaspora networks co-exist and compete transnationally across Uganda, the DRC, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, the UK, and South Africa. From the late 1990s, the government began to actively dismantle the opposition abroad using a combination of threats, violence, and espionage. In its stead, it supported a pro-government diaspora creating community associations, development funds (e.g. the Agaciro Development Fund), and structured return visits to build national consciousness 179

Alexander Betts

(Itorero Ry’Igihugu). These organisations are supported by the Rwandan Diaspora General Directorate (inaugurated in 2007). Yet despite being effectively smashed, the dismantled opposition diaspora, the main opposition political parties – notably UDF-Inkingi – have continued to mobilise in order to try to influence the bilateral foreign policies of countries such as the UK and the US. The Rwandan government has used the alleged deployment of intelligence agents to conduct extra-judicial attacks abroad in order to intimidate opposition in exile (those most commonly alleged would include Seth Sendashonga in Nairobi in 1999, Charles Ingabire in Kampala in 2011, Patrick Karegeya in Johannesburg in 2014, and a failed attempt against Jonathan Musonera and Rene Mugenzi in London in 2010). It has also used legal activism to get any such organisations banned, entered onto terror lists, or officially classified as hate groups (as when the US government agreed to classify the FDLR as a terrorist organisation in 2005). Similar examples of transnational political mobilisation can be found across African refugee diasporas. They are a notable feature of how African politics is contested, not only within states but also across states. They exemplify the many ways in which refugee movements are an important factor in shaping a whole range of political outcomes – elections, conflicts, and peace processes, for example.

Conclusion Refugee politics in Africa can be understood at different levels of analysis – international, national, local, and also transnational. The interests, ideas, and power relations that shape outcomes from displaced people vary from country to country and need to be understood in historical and cultural context. Nevertheless, a series of features distinguish refugee politics in Africa from other regions of the world. In terms of patterns of displacement: high levels of conflict-induced displacement, mass influx, and encampment characterise the history of forced displacement in Africa. Meanwhile, the politics of response has been shaped by the legacies of colonialism for identity and borders, and weak bargaining power vis-à-vis the international donor community. Refugees have also played a notable role as actors in African politics; today’s exiles have sometimes been tomorrow’s political leaders. Yet, there has also been considerable variation in response. Some states open their borders unconditionally; others expel refugees. Some insist on encampment; others allow refugees freedom of movement. While this chapter has only very selectively illustrated that variation, mainly through a focus on East Africa, factors such as regime type, levels of decentralisation, the relationship between political elites and neighbouring country elites, the ethnic identity of elites in relation to that of arriving refugees, and the historical relationship to key donor states have often influenced the relative generosity of receiving countries towards refugees. There is significant scope for further scholarship work that brings together the literatures from African Studies and Refugee Studies in order to better understand refugee politics in Africa. In that context, there is also a need to reflect on who writes that scholarship. Most influential research on refugee politics continues to be authored in the global North, and there is a need for more scholarship in this area that is written by both African scholars, and especially those with lived experience of displacement (Alio et al. 2020). 180

Refugee Politics in Africa

Bibliography Abdelaaty, L. E. (2021). Discrimination and delegation: Explaining state responses to refugees. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Alio, M., Alrihawi, S., Milner, J., Noor, A., Wazefadost, N., & Zigashane, P. (2020). By refugees, for refugees: Refugee leadership during COVID-19, and beyond. International Journal of Refugee Law, 32(2), 370–373. Adepoju, A. (1982). The dimension of the refugee problem in Africa. African Affairs, 81(322), 21–35. Bayart, J. F., & Ellis, S. (2000). Africa in the world: A history of extraversion. African Affairs, 99(395), 217–267. Betts, A. (2011). Protection by persuasion: International cooperation in the refugee regime. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Betts, A. (2021a). The wealth of refugees: How displaced people can build economies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Betts, A. (2021b). Refugees and patronage: A political history of Uganda’s ‘progressive’ refugee policies. African Affairs, 120(479), 243–276. Betts, A., & Jones, W. (2016). Mobilising the diaspora: How refugees challenge authoritarianism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eldredge, E. A. (1992). Sources of conflict in southern Africa, c. 1800–30: The ‘Mfecane’reconsidered. The Journal of African History, 33(1), 1–35. Gorman, R. F. (1986). Beyond ICARA II: Implementing refugee-related development assistance. International Migration Review, 20(2), 283–298. Jose, B., & Medie, P. A. (2015). Understanding why and how civilians resort to self-protection in armed conflict. International Studies Review, 17(4), 515–535. Lischer, S. K. (2005). Dangerous sanctuaries: Refugee camps, civil war, and the dilemmas of humanitarian aid. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Milner, J. (2009). Refugees, the state and the politics of asylum in Africa. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Pincock, K., Betts, A., & Easton-Calabria, E. (2021). The rhetoric and reality of localisation: Refugeeled organisations in humanitarian governance. The Journal of Development Studies, 57(5), 719–734. Rutinwa, B. (2002). The end of asylum? The changing nature of refugee policies in Africa. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 21(1/2), 12–41. Tsourapas, G. (2019). The Syrian refugee crisis and foreign policy decision-making in Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. Journal of Global Security Studies, 4(4), 464–481.

181

11 CONTEMPORARY FORCED MIGRATION IN AFRICA David Gakere Ndegwa

Introduction According to the 2022 World Migration Report (McAuliffe & Triandafyllidou, 2021), although global mobility was restricted due to COVID-19, internal displacement events increased in 2020. The number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) increased from 51 million in 2019 to 55 million in 2020 of which 48 million were displaced due to conflict and violence and seven million due to disasters. During that time, the number of refugees globally increased to 26.4 million in 2020 up from 26 million in 2019 (McAuliffe & Triandafyllidou, 2021: 4). These global trends are reflected in Africa. The leading causes of forced migration in Africa are conflicts, disasters (natural and non-natural), environment, and climate change. They lead to complex humanitarian crises with high levels of internal displacement, large numbers of refugee populations and asylum seekers, hunger, and disease outbreaks. This all adds to high levels of vulnerability and protection needs among affected populations and exerts severe pressure on host communities’ land and environmental resources. Most of the affected countries’ existing education, health, and other public services such as community safety that are already weak are further strained by the resulting increased demand from the displaced and refugee populations. The increase in the number of persons affected by forced migration and displacement exceeds available financial resources to meet the resulting humanitarian needs. This shortfall in global resources and political will to respond to forced migration has led to the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations describing it as a “political crisis requiring political solutions to confront the drivers of forced migration, as well as address the large numbers living in displacement” (United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 2020: iv). The crisis is felt severely in many African countries where drought and floods recur periodically. Some of the crises are related to the election cycles that lead to violence and displacement. Other scholars have identified a lack of democracy and poverty as major causes of large-scale displacement (Bayar & Aral, 2019). Ongoing conflicts in Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nigeria, Chad, and Guinea Bissau have led to large-scale refugee flows and internal displace-

182

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-14

Contemporary Forced Migration in Africa

ments. A recent volcano eruption in the DRC has also led to large-scale population displacement. The large numbers of refugees, IDPs, asylum seekers, and other persons of concern place a duty on states, UN agencies, and other humanitarian agencies to provide protection and other services in the host countries and communities. African countries have an obligation to adhere to international human rights conventions and laws that call for the just treatment of forced migrants by providing protection measures, shelter, and other emergency and longerterm assistance in line with the convention governing the specific aspects of refugee problems in Africa (OAU, 1969). Forcibly displaced populations experience systematic violation of their fundamental human rights which is especially severe on the most vulnerable, especially women, children, and persons with disabilities. African governments and the international community have an important duty to prevent forced migration. Preventing forced migration is a much more challenging task than responding with humanitarian assistance after migrants are forced to flee or are displaced. This is because it is difficult to accurately predict the outbreak of conflict and the resulting levels of population displacement. As discussed below, the root causes are often complex and intractable making displacement and refuge flows a recurrent feature of life in many African countries. There are several continental instruments and initiatives that are discussed below that seek to deal with forced migration and its causes in Africa. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in all its 30 articles and the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights also known as the Banjul Charter (AU, 1981) are the anchors on which appropriate responses to forced migration should rest. The African Union has created a regional/continent-level human rights system with the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) being the main body that is responsible for the protection of human rights for all in those member states that have ratified the Banjul Charter. Article 12 of the Banjul Charter establishes the right to free movement of persons within the laws of member states, the right to leave and return within the confines of the law, the right to seek asylum, and prohibits arbitrary expulsion of non-nationals without due process and mass expulsion of non-nationals in member states based on their nationality, racial, ethnic, or religious groups. Article 23 reinforces the provisions of Article 12 but prohibits those enjoying asylum from engaging in activities deemed to be subversive to the host and origin countries. Africa’s reputation regarding migration has over the past few centuries been viewed through the forced migration lens engendered by images of thousands fleeing conflict, hunger, and more recently in desperate attempts to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. This narrative has now been shown to mispresent the true reality of migration in and from Africa. As was documented in a recent African Union (AU) and International Organization for Migration (IOM) study (AU/IOM, 2020), most African migrants move within Africa (UNECA, 2019) and an estimated 86 percent of migration in Africa is unrelated to conflict (Flahaux & De Haas, 2016). However, the numbers of forced migrants in Africa have increased steeply for the years 2007 to 2020 according to UNHCR data that is discussed in further detail below. The UNHCR defines forced migrants as “populations of concern” which include refugees, asylum seekers, IDPs, and others of concern.

Situational Analysis According to the UNHCR’s data, the number of forced migrants from Africa quadrupled from 9.01 million in 2007 to 40.12 million in 2020 increasing by 31.1 million over the 183

David Gakere Ndegwa

period (see Figure 11.1 and Table 11.1). The data in Figure 11.1 and Table shows the stock of UNHCR’s populations of concern for the years 2007 to 2020 by the categories of refugees, asylum seekers, IDPs, and others of concern. The data is collected through its regional bureaus for Central Africa and Great Lakes Region, Eastern and Horn of Africa, Southern Africa, and Western Africa.1 Notably, by 2020, 69.1 percent or two-thirds of all populations of concern to UNHCR were IDPs while the percentage of refugees relative to other populations of concern was 25 percent which was a drop from 32 percent in 2007. Although IDPs accounted for more than 60 percent of all populations of concern from 2007 to 2020, the increase to 69.1 percent in the proportion of IDPs relative to other categories of population of concern in 2020 may point to increasing severity in the underlying causes of forced migration that deserves further investigation. According to the UNHCR data shown in Table 11.1, all categories of forced migrant populations increased steeply between 2007 and 2020 with the largest increase being that of IDPs from 5.9 million in 2007 to 27.8 million in 2020. The number of refugees under UNHCR mandate quadrupled from 2.9 million in 2007 to 8.4 million in 2020. During the same period, the number of asylum seekers from Africa increased five-fold from over 233 thousand in 2007 to 1.07 million in 2020. The increase in the “others of concern” category of forced migrants was from a mere 1,110 in 2008 to a high of 2.9 million in 2020. This category includes returnees and stateless persons according to the UNHCR’s mandate as reflected in its Statute and its Emergency Handbook.2 The increase in the total population of concern from none million in 2007 to over 40 million in 2020 highlights rising demand for protection among forced migrants and displaced populations resulting from multiple causes in African countries. The figures confirm the continuing burden in Africa as the continent with over a third of all forcibly displaced populations in the world (Bayar & Aral, 2019: 1). It also confirms an increase in the severity and frequency of the underlying causes of forced migration. Part of it, albeit to a small degree, may be an indication that the collection of forced migration data and reporting has improved over the period 2007 to 2020. Analysis of forced migration trends at the African subregions3 level shows that there are peaks and troughs in the numbers which are not apparent when the total population of concern is plotted. The peak and troughs shown in Figure 11.2 indicate that despite the expo45.00

40.12

Population of Concern (Millions)

40.00 35.00

29.84

30.00 23.50

25.00 20.00

15.73

15.00 10.00

9.01

9.35

9.64

9.56

Total 2007

Total 2008

Total 2009

Total 2010

10.95

11.34

12.32

Total 2011

Total 2012

Total 2013

17.75

18.64

Total 2015

Total 2016

26.49

5.00 0.00

Total 2014

Total 2017

Total 2018

Totals Totals 2019 2020

Year

Figure 11.1  Stock of UNHCR’s Populations of Concern for the Years 2007 to 2020 in Africa

184

185

2,890,924 2,768,715 2,804,784 2,947,396 3,511,210 3,677,341 3,842,031 4,624,035 5,381,836 6,162,208 7,374,780 7,409,317 7,464,804 8,433,745

Number

32.07 29.61 29.10 30.82 32.08 32.42 31.19 29.41 30.32 33.05 31.38 27.97 25.01 21.02

%

Refugees under UNHCR’s mandate

233,691 236,410 192,063 222,224 299,757 355,492 436,508 533,389 653,387 713,087 965,137 936,567 971,047 1,071,268

Number

Asylum seekers

2.59 2.53 1.99 2.32 2.74 3.13 3.54 3.39 3.68 3.82 4.11 3.54 3.25 2.67

% 5,888,837 6,343,016 6,468,795 6,230,071 6,961,093 7,043,910 7,686,896 9,920,194 11,197,751 11,333,466 14,692,631 17,829,584 18,867,264 27,725,402

Number

IDPs of concern to UNHCR

65.33 67.85 67.10 65.14 63.59 62.10 62.39 63.08 63.08 60.79 62.52 67.30 63.22 69.11

% – 1,110 174,202 164,113 174,370 266,184 354,537 647,515 518,841 435,254 468,732 318,472 2,540,335 2,889,540

Number

% 0.00 0.01 1.81 1.72 1.59 2.35 2.88 4.12 2.92 2.33 1.99 1.20 8.51 7.20

Others of concern

9,013,452 9,349,251 9,639,827 9,563,804 10,946,430 11,342,927 12,319,972 15,725,133 17,751,815 18,644,015 23,501,280 26,493,940 29,843,450 40,119,955

Number

Total of concern

Source, UNHCR, 2021.End year stock population totalshttps://www​.unhcr​.org​/refugee​-statistics​/download/​?url​=3Qpg0g

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Year

Table 11.1 Numbers and Percentages of Forced Migrant Population of Concern to UNHCR in Africa, 2007–2020

9.01 9.35 9.64 9.56 10.95 11.34 12.32 15.73 17.75 18.64 23.50 26.49 29.84 40.12

%

Total of concern (millions)

Contemporary Forced Migration in Africa

40,000,000 35,000,000 30,000,000 25,000,000 20,000,000 15,000,000 10,000,000

18,000,000 16,000,000 14,000,000 12,000,000 10,000,000 8,000,000 6,000,000 4,000,000 2,000,000 -

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

Years NORTHERN AFRICA 700,000 600,000 500,000 400,000 300,000 200,000

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2020

2019

2018

2017

-

2016

1,000,000 2015

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

-

2008

100,000

2,000,000

2014

200,000

2012

300,000

3,000,000

2011

400,000

4,000,000

2010

500,000

2009

600,000

5,000,000

2008

700,000

WESTERN AFRICA 6,000,000

2007

800,000

Forced Migrants Population of Concern

Years

SOUTHERN AFRICA

2007

Forced Migrants Population of Concern

Years

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

-

2008

100,000 2007

Forced Migrants Population of Concern

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

CENTRAL AFRICA 18,000,000 16,000,000 14,000,000 12,000,000 10,000,000 8,000,000 6,000,000 4,000,000 2,000,000 -

2007

Forced Migrants Population of Concern

Years

2013

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

-

2008

5,000,000

EASTERN AFRICA 20,000,000

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Forced Migrants Population of Concern

AFRICA TOTAL OF CONCERN

45,000,000

2007

Forced Migrants Population of Concern

David Gakere Ndegwa

Years

Years

Figure 11.2  Forced Migration Numbers from 2007 to 2020 in African Sub-Regions

nential increase in the number of forced migrants, there are sub-regional variations in the peaks and troughs. The plots of the sub-regional figures of forced migrants shown in Figure 11.2 show that the Eastern Africa subregion had less pronounced peaks and troughs in comparison with all the other sub-regions that showed more pronounced peaks and troughs over the years 2007 to 2020. The peaks appear when “new arrivals” of forced migrants add to the existing stock and the troughs indicate when the stock of forced migrants is reduced mostly from resettlement and return and reintegration. Therefore, the additional arrivals data that appear as peaks and the resettlement and return and reintegration data are good sources of “flow” data. These trends demonstrate the importance of strengthening the collection and analysis of both stock and flow data on forced migration which when combined with contex186

Contemporary Forced Migration in Africa

tual analysis of events preceding large-scale displacement may provide predictive value and suggest potential preventive or mitigative measures. The trends observed in Figure 11.1 and Table 11.1 highlight the enormous challenge posed by contemporary forced migration in Africa and the dominant significance of internal displacement as the main form of forced migration on the continent. These trends point to the nature of underlying drivers of forced migration on the continent and in the affected countries which are discussed in further detail below. The variability observed at sub-regional level becomes more pronounced at country level where the causes of forced migration are operative. The peaks in numbers of forced migrants are linked to events related to leading causes of forced migration and displacement such as upsurge in violence and conflict, and disasters. The upsurge in violence in countries in Africa is related to inter-ethnic conflict over land and scarce resources such as water and pasture, political transitions involving violent government takeover or contested elections, claims to territorial self-determination rights, and extremist jihadist insurgency. There are longer-term conflicts and shorter-term cyclical violence often related to political transitions during government changes or electoral processes. Some of the longer-term conflicts are in countries such as Somalia, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic, and Eritrea. The UNHCR data that reflects these surges is reported under “spontaneous refugee arrivals” that show countries of origin and of destination. The spontaneous arrivals data correspond to the “new displacement” data reported in Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC) data sets that show “flow” rather than stock of IDPs. The IDMC data is discussed in further detail below. As illustrated in Figure 11.3 with Cote d'Ivoire’s forced migration and displacement data from the UNHCR, the post-election violence of 2011 led to largescale spontaneous refugees’ arrivals from the country to Egypt, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Israel, Liberia, Mali, and Togo. The election dates4 are plotted along the horizontal axis of Figure 11.3. The elections data is from the Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA, n.d.) voter turnout database which shows elections in Cote d'Ivoire held in 2010, 2011, 2014, 2015, and 2020. The increase in IDPs in 2015 shown in Figure 11.3 appear to be a UNHCR stock data reflection of cumulative IDPs from previous displacement rather than a surge of new displacement although a few thousand persons were displaced in the west

800000

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16 250000

700000

200000

600000 500000

150000

400000 100000

300000 200000

50000

100000 0

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

Refugees under UNHCR's mandate

Asylum-seekers

Cote d'Ivoire elecon years

Spontaneous refugee arrivals

2017

2018

2019

2020

0

IDPs of concern to UNHCR

Figure 11.3  Refugees’ Flow Trends from UNHCR and Elections Years Data from IDEA, 2007 to 2020: Cote d’Ivoire

187

David Gakere Ndegwa

and south-west of the country in the runup to the 2015 elections (UNHCR, 2015: 2). The Cote d'Ivoire example is used here to illustrate the peaks in stock and flow data observed following “events” that lead to displacement and refugee outflows at national levels. The underlying causes of such peaks may be related to conflict as in the case of Cote d'Ivoire or disaster in the case of other countries as discussed below. In turn, the underlying cause of conflict itself may be related to national political contests and change or other violence while the causes of disasters may include floods, droughts, volcanic activity, and others. A discussion of these causes is provided in further detail below. The COVID-19 pandemic has added a layer of complexity to the forced migration crisis in Africa. The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic imperiled adherence to numerous international instruments that are designed to protect migrants and their families. The observance of key global human rights principles in migration governance suffered a setback. Almost all countries in Africa imposed travel restrictions and lockdowns to stem the spread of the pandemic. The restrictions led to reduced access to relief food, health care, and other services for forced migrants both in and outside camps. The biggest impact on forced migrants however is on increased protection needs and rights violation through reduced access to water, food, shelter, health care, sources of income, and through being subjected to arbitrary detention, denial of passage, violence, and xenophobia.

Causes of Forced Migration The causes of forced migration trends shown in Figure 11.1 and Table 11.1 can be grouped under three main categories of (1) conflict and violence, (2) disasters both natural and manmade, and (3) climate change. The types of conflicts and violence in Africa range from internecine ethnic conflicts often based on land and resources, political conflicts based on contests for positions of power sometimes involving violent government takeover and quest for self-determination, and violent terrorist attacks perpetrated by jihadist groups. Forced migration leads to hundreds of thousands and even millions of refugees, asylum seekers, and IDPs. Some of the circumstances underlying all the causes of forced migration include ineffective governance because of disunity among multiple ethnic groups that characterize most countries’ population composition, precarious livelihoods characterized by poverty and underdevelopment, high levels of corruption, and persistent food insecurity linked to environmental factors. The challenge of governance is particularly acute as most governments in African countries could be characterized as “ethnic democracies” where clearly demarcated ethnic voting fault lines occasionally erupt leading to internal displacement of populations and forced migration across international borders. Environmental factors that drive large population across borders in search of pastures and water in arid and semi-arid regions of the continent which are affected by drought are also a leading cause of forced migration especially in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa countries. The IDMC’s definition of causes of migration splits them into drivers which are “the less visible factors that pre-date and contribute to the immediate and more visible trigger” and triggers which “are the more visible events in the wider environment that threaten people’s security.” The drivers are therefore “underlying structural factors that combine to enable a crisis to occur” which may be environmental, social, political, and economic drivers. Triggers on the other hand are “proximate precipitating events that leave people with little choice but to flee their homes” which may include armed attacks, earthquakes, floods, and forced eviction (IDMC & Norwegian Refugee Council, 2015: 2). 188

Contemporary Forced Migration in Africa

The IDMC’s flow data showing displacement caused by conflict is shown in Figure 11.4 for the five African sub-regions. The subregional grouping was done by taking the country data and placing it into the AU sub-regional grouping. The data displayed in Figure 11.4 shows conflict displacement flow from 2009 which is categorized as “New” displacement from conflict for the respective years. This is distinguished from “stock” displacement data which shows cumulative totals of those displaced by conflict. The peaks and troughs seen in Figure 11.4 provide a view that allows for diagnostic and retrospective analysis of the events or causes of the displacement by zooming in to the country-level data to identify which country(ies) had experienced surges in displacement from conflict. For example, the peak in conflict-related new displacement in Eastern Africa in 2014 shown in Figure 11.4 is largely due to displacement of over 1.3 million people in South Sudan and 557,000 people in Sudan both in the Eastern Africa region. The previous year, 2013’s peak in conflict-related new displacement was due to the displacement of one million and 935,000 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR), respectively, both in the Central Africa region. In 2018, although new conflict-related displacements continued in both Sudan and South Sudan, the peak observed in Figure 11.4 was due to displacement in Ethiopia where 2.89 million people were displaced by conflict and in Somalia where 578,000 people were displaced. The previous year’s peak (2017) was due to displacement of 2.17 million people in the DRC and 539,000 people in the CAR in the Central Africa region. The peak in the Western Africa curve in 2011 is due to the conflict-related new displacement of one million people in Côte d'Ivoire because of election-related violence and displacement of 65,000 people in Nigeria. The peak in the Northern Africa curve in 2011 is due to the conflict-linked new displacements of 498,000 people in Libya while the peak in the Southern Africa curve in 2020 is due to the conflict-linked new displacement of 592,037 people in Mozambique due to Jihadist insurgency in the Northeast of the country and the displacement of 5,000 people in South Africa. The new conflict-related displacements analysis above shows the peaks and main countries where most of the displacements occurred within the sub-regions from 2009 to 2020. The subregions that have larger numbers of conflict-related displacements are Eastern Africa and 4,500,000 4,000,000 3,500,000 3,000,000 2,500,000 2,000,000 1,500,000 1,000,000 500,000 -

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

Northern Africa

Southern Africa

Eastern Africa

Central Africa

2017

2018

2019

Western Africa

Figure 11.4  Conflict-Related New Displacements in African Sub-Regions, 2009–2020

189

2020

David Gakere Ndegwa

Central Africa while the subregions with the least number of conflict-related displacements are Southern Africa and Northern Africa. However, in 2020 the conflict in Mozambique led to large-scale displacement and an increase in displacements in Southern Africa. There is a general increasing trend in the number of people displaced by conflict with increasing groups in violent confrontation mostly against states in Africa which are further discussed below. Data from Uppsala University’s Department of Peace and Conflict Research (UCDP) shows armed conflicts involving non-state5 actors and those involving dyad6 states and nonstate actors. The UCDP definition of conflict distinguishes between conflict involving states, where state-based armed conflict is “a contested incompatibility that concerns government and/or territory where the use of armed force between two parties, of which at least one is the government of a state, results in at least 25 battle-related deaths in one calendar year” and non-state conflict is “the use of armed force between two organized armed groups, neither of which is the government of a state, which results in at least 25 battle-related deaths in a year,”7 Africa continues to register the most state-based conflict even during the COVID19 pandemic with 56 such conflicts recorded in 2020 (Pettersson et al., 2021). Africa has also the highest fatalities rates from non-state conflicts (Sundberg, Eck, & Kreutz, 2012). The UCDP data for the period 2007 to 2019 in Table 11.2 shows that fatalities from nonstate conflict in Africa increased from 959 in 2007 to peak at 5,010 in 2017 and remained at a high of 2,678 fatalities in 2019. The figures shown in Table 11.2 show the sum of fatalities in countries where they occurred without showing the multiple conflicts involved in some countries that are in the detailed UCDP data. During the same period from 2007 to 2020, the number of dyad conflicts where at least one of the sides involved was the government increased from 13 in 2007 to 37 in 2020. The increasing number of conflicts correspond with increasing conflict-related displacements discussed above. However, the data showing the number of fatalities in conflicts in Africa has some gaps. For example, in 2014, most of the conflict-related displacements as discussed above were in South Sudan. The number of fatalities data does not reflect any fatalities in 2014 in South Sudan pointing to a gap in fatalities data. This example highlights one of the key findings in this paper which is improvement in data collection such as through the IDMC initiative. It is also crucial to improve data accuracy and completeness for better evidence-based responses. The increase in the number of conflicts corresponds with an increase in fatalities as shown in Table 11.2. It is attributable mainly to the growing spread of Islamic jihadist insurgency violence in various countries on the continent with the latest outbreak being in Mozambique. The use of asymmetrical violence employed by the jihadist groups such as those operating in Nigeria has led to large-scale displacement of communities, kidnappings, and suicide bombing attacks. In 2007, the recorded number of conflicts in Africa were 13 in the DRC, Chad, Sudan, Uganda, Ethiopia, Somalia, Mali, Algeria, Angola, and Niger with some of the countries having multiple conflicts and none of them by Islamic jihadist groups. Most of the recorded conflicts in 2007 were mainly by separatist movements based on ideological and ethnic differences. By 2020, the number of conflicts on the continent had increased to 37, many of which were caused by Islamic jihadist groups led by the Islamic State (IS). The jihadist groups’ conflicts were in the DRC (IS), Kenya (IS and Al-Shabab), Cameroon (Jama'atuAhlis Sunna Lidda'awatiwal-Jihad), Chad (IS), Nigeria (IS and Jama'atuAhlis Sunna Lidda'awatiwal-Jihad), Egypt (IS), Burkina Faso (IS and Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM)), Somalia (IS and Al-Shabab), Mali (IS and JNIM), Mozambique (IS), and Tanzania (IS). The affected countries are spread across Africa almost engulfing the whole continent. 190

Contemporary Forced Migration in Africa Table 11.2 Number of Fatalities from Conflict in Africa, 2007 to 2019 Year

Number of fatalities (high estimate)

2007

959

2008

1,068

2009 2010 2011

1,511 764 955

2012

2,103

2013

3,990

2014

4,057

2015

2,705

2016

3,034

2017

5,010

2018

2,886

2019

2,678

Countries of occurrence Sudan (742), DRC (25), Burundi (52), Ethiopia, (40), and Nigeria, (100) Somalia (183), Nigeria (33), DRC (196), Ethiopia (224), Sudan (237), and Kenya (195) Somalia (798), Sudan (523), Nigeria (71), and Madagascar (119) Somalia (619), Sudan (110), and Nigeria (35) Nigeria (260), South Sudan (44), Somalia (82), Ivory Coast (40), DRC (28), Guinea (36), Central African Republic (53), Kenya (29), Sudan (288), and Sudan and South Sudan (95) Somalia (259), Mali (116), Nigeria (101), Libya (405), South Sudan (335), DRC (641), Egypt (74), and Kenya (172) Egypt (123), Central African Republic (283), South Sudan (25), Nigeria (545), DRC (589), Sudan (1998), Mali (28), Kenya (174), Algeria (27), and Guinea (98) Central African Republic (1222), Nigeria (1025), Sudan (272), DRC (139), Egypt (28), Libya (1247), and Mali (124) Nigeria (542), Central African Republic (298), Sudan (419), Mali (42), Libya (1149), South Sudan (172), and Libya and Nigeria (83) Nigeria (506), Libya (717), DRC (997), Central African Republic (180), Sudan (153), Mali (104), Uganda (30), South Sudan (234), Ivory Coast (33), and Somalia (80) Nigeria (636), Central African Republic (1238), Sudan (164), Libya (812), DRC (1259), Chad (34), Mali (279), South Sudan (434), Somalia (39), Cameroon (63), and Sudan and South Sudan (52) Central African Republic (307), South Sudan (452), Libya (740), Somalia (172), Niger (26), Nigeria (539), Niger & Mali (174), Mali (118), DRC (155), Ethiopia (102), and Sudan (101) Nigeria (452), Central African Republic (353), Libya (161), Burkina Faso (28), DRC (642), Mali (161), South Sudan (274), Somalia (159), Ethiopia (259), Chad (65), and Sudan (124)

Source: UCDP. Department of Peace and Conflict Research. UCDP - Uppsala Conflict Data Program (uu​.​se)

There are also as many countries in Africa facing separatist types of conflicts such as in the Central African Republic (CAR), the DRC (DRC, IRC, & NRC, 2021), Rwanda, Libya, Burundi, South Sudan, Chad, Cameroon, Angola, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Algeria. The increase in the number of conflicts is therefore attributable to the rise of militant Islamic jihadist groups on top of the existing problem of separatist movements. The response to jihadist groups who employ asymmetrical and terrorist tactics has meant that conventional responses to separatist movements in affected countries have not been appropriate to end the violence and reduce the numbers of those affected through displacement 191

David Gakere Ndegwa

and fatalities. There are also continuing forced displacements caused by conflict from nonstate actors mostly inter-ethnic conflict in the DRC, CAR, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, Ethiopia, Chad, Libya, Mali, Somalia, Kenya, and Burkina Faso (ACAPS, 2021). There are complex underlying causes of the non-state conflicts including militant jihadist groups turning against each other such as in Somalia (IS versus Al-Shabaab), to complex ethnic and religious rivalry such as between the Fulani herdsmen and local farmers in Northern Nigeria. Other inter-ethnic conflicts are based on scarce resources especially in arid and semi-arid areas of the Horn of Africa countries of Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Over the same period (2007–2020), disasters (natural, technological, and complex) affected millions of people in Africa. The Eastern Africa region had the highest number of people affected by disasters (see Figure 11.6) followed by the Western Africa region, while the Northern Africa region had the least number of people affected from 2007 to 2020. The Southern African region had also large numbers of people affected by disasters. Although the figures include technological and complex disasters, natural disasters affected larger numbers of people when they occurred. Table 11.3 shows the natural disasters that affected millions of people between 2008 and 2020 with floods having the highest toll with over 23 million people affected. Storms and drought had the second and third highest numbers of people affected over the same period respectively.​ Figure 11.6 shows trends in disaster-linked new displacements in African sub-regions from 2008 to 2020 using IDMC’s flow data. The familiar peaks and troughs are observed 113,596,522

120,000,000 100,000,000 80,000,000

61,848,979

57,151,233

60,000,000 40,000,000 20,000,000 -

11,935,113

9,431,568 Northern Africa

Southern Africa

Western Africa

Eastern Africa

Central Africa

Figure 11.5  Number of People Affected by Disasters in African Sub-Regions from 2007 to 2020 5,000,000 4,000,000 3,000,000 2,000,000 1,000,000 -

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

Northern Africa

Southern Africa

Eastern Africa

Central Africa

2016

2017

2018

Western Africa

Figure 11.6  Disaster New Displacements in African Sub-Regions, 2008–2020

192

2019

2020

Contemporary Forced Migration in Africa Table 11.3 Leading Causes of Disaster-Related Displacement in Africa, 2008–2020 Drought Dry mass movement Wet mass movement Earthquake Extreme temperature (Algeria) Flood Storm Volcanic activity (Cabo Verde and Ethiopia) Wildfire

2017–2020 2008–2019 2008–2020 2008–2020 2019 2008-2020 2008-2020 2014-2015 2008-2020

1,878,609 30,241 50,661 54,983 1,425 23,080,686 2,395,345 6,400 54,712

Source: IDMC Global Internal Displacement Database | IDMC (internal​-displacement​.​org)

with peaks in 2010, 2012, and 2018 for Western Africa all largely due to floods in Nigeria where an exceptionally high number of flood displacements estimated at 3.89 million people were displaced in 2012. In Eastern Africa, the peaks occurred in 2013, 2017, and 2020. In 2013, the displacement in Eastern Africa was highest in Sudan (284,000), Kenya (180,000), and South Sudan (116,000). In 2017, the displacement in the sub-region was highest in Somalia (899,000), Ethiopia (424,000), and Madagascar (248,000). In 2020, disaster-linked new displacements in Eastern Africa were highest in Somalia (1,037,000), Ethiopia (664,000), Sudan (545,000), South Sudan (443,000), and Kenya (335,000). In Central Africa, displacements linked to disasters peaked in 2012, 2019, and 2020. The displacements in 2012 were mainly in Chad (500,000), and in 2019, the disaster-linked displacements in Central Africa sub-region were mostly in DRC (233,000), the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville) (166,000), and CAR (102,000). In 2020, the peak in the Central Africa sub-region was mainly due to disaster displacements in the DRC (279,000) and Cameroon (116,000). The leading causes of most of the disaster-linked displacements in Africa discussed above were floods, storms, and drought. The three causes accounted for 23,080,686 displaced by floods from 2008 to 2020, 2,395,345 displaced by storms from 2008 to 2020, and 1,878,609 displaced by drought from 2017 to 2020 as shown in Table 11.3. Other disasters are earthquakes, wildfires, wet mass movements, and dry mass movements while volcanic activity and eruptions in Cabo Verde and Ethiopia and extreme temperature in Algeria caused some displacements between 2014 and 2015 as shown in Table 11.3. The Index for Risk Management (INFORM, 2021) ranking of African countries according to their risk of hazards or disasters related to human activities and natural forces indicates that many African countries have very high risks (highest risk is 10 and lowest is 0). The countries with highest hazard exposure with scores above 5 in 2021 include Algeria (combined human and natural hazard score of 5.1, natural disaster score of 4.9, and human caused disaster score of 5.3), Burkina Faso (combine hazard score of 5.5, natural 3.5, and human 7.0), Cameroon (combined hazard score of 5.6, natural 3.7, and human 7.0), CAR (combined hazard score of 6.2, natural 3.2, and human 8.0), Chad (combined hazard score of 7.3, natural 4.1, and human 9.0), DRC (combined hazard score of 7.4, natural 4.6, and human 9.0), Egypt (combined hazard score of 6.6, natural 4.9, and human 7.0) Eritrea (combined hazard score of 5.3, natural 3.5, and human 6.7), Ethiopia (combined hazard score of 7.3, natural 4.4, and human 9.0), Kenya (combined hazard score of 5.3, natural 5.1, and human 5.4), Libya 193

David Gakere Ndegwa

Popula on (millions)

(combined hazard score of 8.2, natural 3.7, and human 10.0), Mali (combined hazard score of 7.3, natural 4.2, and human 9.0), Mozambique (combined hazard score of 7.8, natural 5.9, and human 9.0), Niger (combined hazard score of 7.3, natural 5.9, and human 9.0), Nigeria (combined hazard score of 7.3, natural 4.1, and human 9.0), Somalia (combined hazard score of 8.9, natural 6.9, and human 10.0), South Sudan (combined hazard score of 7.2, natural 4.0, and human 9.0), and Sudan (combined hazard score of 5.7, natural 4.1, and human 7.0). For the country with the highest combined hazard score, Somalia, it is a case of the “perfect storm” of a combination of high risks from natural disasters mainly drought and the prolonged conflict that has claimed thousands of lives. Other countries that rank high on both scores include Algeria, DRC, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Mozambique with frequent devastating floods and a jihadist insurgency. Mass displacement and refugee population movements caused by conflict and disasters leads to acute food insecurity among affected populations in Africa. The food insecurity occurs when food stocks and farmlands are abandoned, and critical supply chains are disrupted. Data from the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) show exponential growth in the number of people in moderate or severe food insecurity in Africa from 54.5 million in 2014 to 80.8 million in 2020 (See Figure 11.7). A large proportion of the population in moderate or severe food insecurity is drawn from IDPs and refugees who are often dependent on food aid distribution from the UN and other humanitarian agencies. In arid and semi-arid areas on the continent, pastoral communities face frequent droughts that lead to hunger. When they are forced to move in search of pasture and water with their flock, there is inevitable conflict with host communities where available pasture and farmland cannot accommodate the influx of new population arrivals and herds. The link between climate change and forced migration is mediated through “the greater frequency and severity of extreme weather events, water scarcity, decreased crop yield, and rising sea levels, as well as health and sanitation challenges” (AU, UN, & The World Bank, Nd, 1). These factors act as a threat multiplier which according to a 2021 World Bank Report will in the worst-case scenario result in an estimated 71.1 million climate-induced migrants in Sub-Saharan Africa by the year 2050 (Clement et al., 2021: 81). To forestall this impending threat, the African Union, in partnership with the United Nations and the World Bank, launched the Africa Climate Change Mobility Initiative (ACMI) to address climate-forced migration and displacement.

90.0 80.0 70.0 60.0 50.0 40.0 30.0 20.0 10.0 -

54.5

56.7

2014

2015

61.8

2016

65.3

68.2

2017 Year

2018

71.8

2019

Figure 11.7  Population in Moderate or Severe Food Insecurity in Africa, 2014–2020

194

80.8

2020

Contemporary Forced Migration in Africa

Conclusion Contemporary forced migration in Africa has increased at an unprecedent level from 2007 to 2020. The main causes are conflict and disasters with state involved or dyad conflicts being the main form of conflict leading to forced migration and floods, storms, and drought leading to displacement of millions of people. The increasing numbers of forced migrants and displaced populations suggest that preventive and mitigating responses are inadequate and ineffective. Increasing numbers of fatalities from both conflict and disasters even with incomplete and inadequate data further point to the inadequacy and ineffectiveness of existing responses by all actors although there are millions of persons being reached with assistance through the UN, other international humanitarian agencies, and national governments. As shown in the INFORM risk ranking, and in the data showing numbers affected by disasters in Africa, the severity of the impact of both natural and human-caused disasters is increasing which leads to large-scale human displacement. This is linked to environmental degradation and climate extremities. The implementation of the Sendai Framework in Africa is pivotal in strengthening African countries to put in place preventive, mitigating, and postdisaster recovery measures including capacity to rescue stranded migrants and find missing migrants (Van Niekerk et al, 2020:179). There is notable improvement in forced migration data discussed above. There is much more room to further strengthen the collection, analysis, and dissemination of data and information on forced migration in Africa to inform policy and interventions to respond to the root causes. For example, there is increasing threat from jihadist militant groups which are now present in all sub-regions. Fatalities data does not fully reflect the number of those killed by this growing cause of forced displacement. Furthermore, the response to this threat appears to be reactive rather than proactive and is not designed to counter the asymmetrical tactics used by the jihadist militias. There is clearly much more work to be done to understand forced migration in Africa and implement appropriate response measures.

Notes 1 UNHCR Regional bureaus grouping: 1. Central Africa and the Great Lakes countries are: Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo (Republic of the), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Rwanda, and United Republic of Tanzania. 2. Western African countries are: Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, Gambia (the), Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo. 3. Southern Africa countries are: Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. 4. East and Horn of Africa countries are: Chad, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, and Uganda. 2 UNHCR Nd. Emergency Handbook. UNHCR|Emergency Handbook accessed on November 10, 2021. 3 According to the African Union’s grouping of countries into sub-regions: Northern Africa includes Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Western Sahara, and Tunisia. Southern Africa includes Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Eswatini, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Western Africa includes Benin, Burkina Faso, Cabo Verde, Gambia, Ghana, GuineaBissau, Guinea, Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo. Eastern Africa includes Comoros, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, United Republic of Tanzania, and Uganda. Central Africa includes Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Cameroon, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and Sao Tome and Principe. 4 Elections dates for Cote d'Ivoire: 2010 (presidential), 2011 (parliamentary), 2015 (presidential), 2016 (parliamentary), and 2020 (presidential).

195

David Gakere Ndegwa 5 Defined as “The use of armed force between two organized armed groups, neither of which is the government of a state, which results in at least 25 battle-related deaths in a year.” 6 Defined as “A dyad is made up of two armed and opposing actors. In state-based conflicts a dyad is defined as two actors, with one or more being the government, that have a stated incompatibility. In a non-state conflict a dyad is constructed by at least two organized actors, of which none is the government of a state, that oppose each other with arms. In non-state conflicts it is possible for an alliance of non-state actors to enter a dyad with either an opposing group, or an alliance of opposing groups.” 7 Definitions – Department of Peace and Conflict Research – Uppsala University, Sweden (uu​.​se). Accessed on November 5, 2021.

References ACAPS, 2021. Burkina Faso Conflict | ACAPS. Retrieved 18 November, 2021. AU, 1981. African (Banjul) Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. (Adopted 27 June 1981, OAU Doc. CAB/LEG/67/3 rev. 5, 21 I.L.M. 58 (1982), entered into force 21 October 1986. AU/IOM, 2020. Africa Migration Report: Challenging the Narrative. Addis Ababa: IOM. AU, UN, & The World Bank, n.d. The Africa Climate Mobility Initiative: Shaping the Future of Mobility in Africa Addressing Climate-Forced Displacement & Migration. Bayar & Aral, 2019. An Analysis of Large-Scale Forced Migration in Africa. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 16(21), 4210. Retrieved 20 September, 2021, from https://doi​.org​/10​.3390​/ijerph16214210. Clement, Viviane, Kanta Kumari Rigaud, Alex de Sherbinin, Bryan Jones, Susana Adamo, Jacob Schewe, Nian Sadiq & Elham Shabahat, 2021. Groundswell Part 2: Acting on Internal Climate Migration. Washington, DC: The World Bank. DRC, IRC, and NRC, 2021. The Global Compact on Refugees Three Years On: Navigating Barriers and Maximizing Incentives in Support of Refugees and Host Countries. Flahaux, M. L. & H. De Haas. 2016. African Migration: Trends, Patterns, Drivers. Comparative Migration Studies 4: 1–25. IDEA, n.d. Voter Turnout Database | International IDEA. IDMC & Norwegian Refugee Council, 2015. Understanding the Root Causes of Displacement: Towards a Comprehensive Approach to Prevention and Solutions. IDMC and Norwegian Refugee Council Briefing Paper. Index for Risk Management, 2021. INFORM. Nd. https://drmkc​.jrc​.ec​.europa​.eu​/inform​-index. McAuliffe, M. & A. Triandafyllidou (Eds.), 2021. World Migration Report 2022. Geneva: International Organization for Migration (IOM). OAU, 1969. Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa. Pettersson, Therese, Shawn Davis, Amber Deniz, Nanar Hawach GarounEngström, Margareta Sollenberg StinaHögbladh & Magnus Öberg 2021. Organized Violence 1989–2020, with a Special Emphasis on Syria. Journal of Peace Research 58(4), 809–825. Sundberg, Ralph, Kristine Eck & Joakim Kreutz. 2012. Introducing the UCDP Non-state Conflict Dataset. Journal of Peace Research 49(2), 351–362. UNECA, 2019. African Migration. Normalizing the African Migration Narrative. Technical Report of the High-Level Panel on Migration. Addis Ababa. UNHCR, 2015. Côte d’Ivoire Factsheet April–May 2015. 524d81cc9​.p​df (unhcr​.o​rg). Retrieved 12 November, 2021. United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 2020. Global Forced Migration the Political Crisis of Our Time. Van Niekerk Dewald, Christo Coetzee & Livhuwani Nemakonde. 2020. Implementing the Sendai Framework in Africa: Progress against the Targets (2015–2018). International Journal of Disaster Risk Science 11, 179–189.

196

12 MIGRATING OUT OF MIGRATION Diminishing Seasonal Migration Options and Conflicts among the Pokot of Kenya Dulo Nyaoro

The Pokot are responding through a combination of techniques to delay and resist these imminent changes. Firstly, they invoke age-old cultural practices based on seasonal migration to justify their lifestyles; secondly, they have acquired and adopted modern firearms to protect themselves against neighbouring communities; and finally, the Pokot political leadership has adopted expansionist ideology to violently protest these changes. However, the government of Kenya’s response anchored on disarmament is slowly forcing the Pokot to rethink seasonal migration as a form of livelihood. The Pokot are forced to “migrate out of seasonal migration”.

Introduction Communities neighbouring Pokot people of East Africa have painted them as violent and hostile neighbours, quick to the sword. As a consequence, violent conflicts between the Pokot and the neighbouring communities have escalated and taken a deadly turn in the last three decades. While observers attribute this violence to Pokot cultural practices and the commercialization of livestock raiding, this piece proposes to analyse it from both climate and environmental change perspectives, particularly because nomadic pastoralism is entirely dependent on seasonal migration. Suffice to say that migration remains an integral part of human society. It does seem superficial to question why people migrate (MacDowell and De Haan, 1997). In the last two centuries, migration has occupied a central place among epistemic groups. This is also among government functionaries and policy makers because, the nation-state as reified form of political organization presumes a sedentary and homogenous population (Priya and Star, 2003). In its varied forms, migration remains the most significant obstacle to this assumption. Seasonal migration has many benefits to the communities that practise it, yet it is facing daunting challenges (Wang et al., 2013). No migration is so dependent on climate and weather variations like seasonal migration, yet literature on migration and climate change tend to highlight how communities are increasingly being forced to relocate due to climate DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-15

197

Dulo Nyaoro

and environmental changes, with little attention being paid to those who are being trapped by climate and environmental changes as well as human activities. The Pokot people of Rift Valley, Kenya, who are nomadic pastoralists are not only being trapped by erections of political and administrative boundaries, but are also being hemmed by climate and environmental changes. Having experienced marginalization by both the British colonial government and successive post-independence regimes, the Pokot are facing grim choices; a bleak future without their livestock or the options to fight and protect the only livelihood known to them. The Pokot are employing a combination of techniques to delay and resist these imminent changes. Firstly, they invoke age-old cultural practices based on pastoralism as a complete set of culture which is structured around seasonal migration to justify their lifestyles; secondly, they have acquired and adopted modern firearms to protect themselves against neighbouring communities; and finally, the Pokot political leadership have adopted expansionist ideology to violently protest these changes. However, the government of Kenya’s response anchored on disarmament is slowly forcing the Pokot to rethink seasonal migration as a form of livelihood. The Pokot are forced to migrate out of seasonal migration (Mkutu, 2005). This piece is presented in the following format. After the introduction, I briefly discuss the context of the research highlighting environmental change. The second part is a discussion on seasonal migration among nomadic pastoral communities as an economic activity and as a lifestyle. The third section presents the Pokot Community to the reader. A brief discussion on research methods in fieldwork follows. The following parts discuss climate change, conflict, disarmament and how they have resulted in displacement and instability among the Pokot. The thrust of the argument is that acts of commission and omission by previous governments both in Kenya and neighbouring countries have partly created a feeling of historical injustice to displaced community not only in the physical sense but also in the symbolic meaning where people are forced to change to a lifestyle they are poorly prepared for. The last part is the conclusion.

Context (Environmental and Climate Change) Climate change is defined as: “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods” (UNFCCC art.1, para.2). Outwardly, there has been an increase in weather anomalies in the world. The increasing intensity of these anomalies is regarded as the most obvious manifestation of global climate change in Kenya (UNEP, 2009; Mutai and Ochola, 2011). According to EM-DAT, Kenya suffered a total of 101 natural disasters (droughts, floods and related epidemics) with a total of 58.66 million people being affected and 6,509 deaths (Nyaoro et al., 2016; CRED, 2016). The great majority of these events occurred over the past two and a half decades. Kenya’s recent peculiar climate conditions show greater variability than before. Approximately, 83 per cent of the Kenyan landmass is classified as arid or semi-arid land (ASAL). Thus, a huge part of the country is vulnerable to climate and environmental change. For example, large areas of the country are exposed to the threat of water scarcity in relation to changing precipitation and temperature patterns (NEMA, 2005; NCPD, 2013). More frequent and more extreme droughts and related losses of soil fertility are the most important consequences. Increased variability is due to the regional impacts of global warming. The surface temperature averages over East Africa show a clear warming tendency as of the end of the 1970s. 198

Migrating Out of Migration

According to the Government of Kenya, the minimum temperature in Kenya has since the 1960s generally risen by 0.7–2.0°C and the maximum temperature by 0.2–1.3°C, depending on the region and the season (Government of Kenya, 2010: 9). Kenya’s average annual temperature is estimated to have increased by 1°C between 1960 and 2003 (McSweeney et al., 2010). In Kenya, an increase in temperature has generally resulted in reduced precipitation, shorter rainy seasons and longer dry seasons. This contributes to slow-onset degradation and desertification of the natural environment. The diversity of livelihoods in Kenya requires a diverse set of approaches to enhance the resilience of people towards climate- and environment-related stressors and support migration as a successful adaptation strategy. Seasonal pastoralist migration has been for centuries an adaptation strategy to climate and environmental change. However, this form of mobility is coming under serious threat. Pastoralists in Africa developed well-organized seasonal migration patterns over the years. Such mobility acted as a method of managing natural resources and also adapting to seasonal climate variations. The livelihood systems of pastoralists require periodic mobility in order to access water and grazing lands, as pastoralism highly depends on natural forage (Nyaoro et al., 2016; IDMC, 2014). This arrangement was promoted by intercommunity cooperation across different territories (Nuur et al., 2012). The areas covered through livestock mobility vary depending on the environment, the type of livestock and the pastoralist tribe, factors that are partly interrelated. For example, the Pokot people keep cows, goats and donkeys while their neighbours to the north, the Turkana and Rendile, keep mainly camels and longdistance livestock mobility is prevailing. Livestock mobility is a common strategy of resource management in arid areas and is regarded as being part of the identity and lifestyle of (semi-) nomadic pastoralists. Livestock mobility is, however, neither the only nor necessarily the first strategy to cope with challenging environments, because the animals cannot graze while walking and lose weight (Blench and Marriage, 1999). Other pastoralist strategies to cope with dry spells and droughts, often combined with migration, may include grazing in the early morning, establishment of feed reserves, separating livestock to areas of different ecological zones, feeding livestock with tree twigs and branches, hiring pasture and digging shallow wells on riverbeds and forming alliances with neighbours in carrying out these activities (Huho et al., 2011: 783). Due to changing climate and human-triggered environmental change, violent conflicts are becoming frequent with increased fatalities. While cattle raiding among pastoralists is common, among the Pokots it has taken a dangerous and fatal trajectory. This is so because of climate change, politicization and the proliferation of small arms, human rights violations, border politics and the activities of militaries and militant groups (Ginnetti and Franck, 2014: 15; Sheekh, Atta-Asamoah and Sharamo, 2012). The Kenya government has reacted to insecurity among the pastoralist communities in different ways, but the most common is the disarmament programmes. The disarmaments have achieved mixed results, but owing to the fact that it has failed to wipe out the conflicts in the last 30 years is a call for further evaluation of the strategy. Insecurity is also one of the reasons for the high poverty rates in the pastoralist-dominated ASALs, as well as its economic marginalization and isolation since the colonial period. However, it should be noted that not all pastoralists are poor. The degree of income diversification and food aid dependency can vary greatly between pastoralist areas. Although Pastoralist migration takes place despite the political and administrative boundaries including international borders, environmental and climate change is undermining it (Markakis, 2004). Pastoralists tend to be transnational communities. This is as true in East, 199

Dulo Nyaoro

South and West Africa. For example, the Maasai live in Kenya and the United Republic of Tanzania; the Pokot also live in Uganda and Kenya (Mkutu, 2003). The cross-border and internal migratory routes of the pastoralists were well known and respected. However, changing land ownership and use, fencing, conflicts and the breakdown of customary land management are increasingly impeding access to grazing areas and water points (Greiner, Alvarez and Becker, 2013: 1478). Restriction of grazing rights and diminishing grazing land are causes of resource-based conflicts, and the ethnicization of territory can be observed as a result of increasing resource pressure in Kenya (UNEP, 2009).

Reading Pastoral Migration Seasonal migration can be viewed from two perspectives. First there is seasonal labour migration depending on varying seasons between the sending and receiving regions and there is considerable literature on this (Priya and Start, 2003; Gorlich et al., 2006; Gibson, 2013). This literature is primarily about how seasonal agricultural productivity determines labour movements between regions or neighbouring countries. There is also seasonal migration which is structured around livestock or what we will refer to here as pastoral seasonal migration (Priya and Start, 2003). Literature on pastoralist migration tend to make fuzzy distinction between nomadic pastoralism and transhumance. While transhumance is conceptualized as seasonal migration between two different points as dictated by seasons of the year. Nomadic pastoralism is seen as less structured and wholly characterized by livestock keeping. A broader definition of pastoralism is helpful here: A member of social groups with a strong traditional association with livestock keeping, where a substantially proportion of the group derive over 50% of the household consumption from livestock products or their sales, and where over 90% of animal consumption is from natural pasture, and where members of the households are responsible for the full cycle of the livestock breeding. IOM defines pastoralism as Economic system based on extensive livestock production, integrating various degrees of mobility of animals and/or people, encompasses nomadism, transhumance, and semi-transhumance. Transhumance communities not only keep livestock, but also practice subsistence farming when the season allows. The other distinction is that nomadic pastoralism thrives on arid and semi-arid regions while transhumance is common between temperate highlands and lowlands. Transhumance is understood as the regular movement of herds among fixed points to utilize seasonal availability of pasture. Those who practice transhumance tend to have permanent homes in the two different locations. Seasonal migration is a sustainable way of managing open rangelands for livestock. Firstly, it allows for the regeneration of pastures for livestock, the association of most of migration to “greener pastures” can be attributed to this age-old practice. Secondly, it is a way of managing possible outbreak and spread of livestockrelated diseases. The ascendancy of the nation-states and the desire for sedentary lifestyle has tainted pastoralism with negative reputation as being poor and marginalized mode of production and lifestyle. 200

Migrating Out of Migration

Seasonal migration has been practised by our ancestors for thousands of years, whether as hunters and gatherers, livestock keepers, farmers or even fishermen. There are sound biological and climatic imperatives that framed seasonal immigration. For livestock keepers, the different seasons of the year structured their movement with their livestock, following pastures and water as rain recedes towards certain direction and allowing for regeneration and growth of new pastures. For pastoral communicates, seasonal migration is not only a copying strategy to climatic changes, it is the basis of cultural and social structures of the society. Disruption of this seasonal mobility is therefore a harbinger of fundamental re-organization of the society. As is often the case, such disruptions occasion loss in both material and cultural terms to certain segments of the society while uplifting others, which in turn generates conflicts and further re-organization. The Pokot of Rift Valley Kenya found themselves in this variable position. But who are the Pokot? Despite their critical role in human history and civilization, current pastoralist communities face daunting challenges in a modern world which romanticizes sedenterization as the ideal form of human lifestyle while frowning upon pastoralism as an archaic institution. This then sets spaces for contestations.

Pokot Community/Nation The Pokot nation occupies part of the North Rift Valley on the Western side of Kenya and Eastern part of Uganda. The Pokot belongs to what is referred to the Karamojong cluster associated with the cattle corridor of East Africa. This cluster is constituted of different but similar groups of pastoralist communities living along border areas of Kenya, Uganda, Somalia, Ethiopia and Southern Sudan. These pastoralists cover large areas within semi-desert regions of Northern Kenya, Eastern Uganda and Southern Sudan and Southern Ethiopia. Typically, these communities have cross-border presence. Given that large parts of territories occupied by these groups are either arid or semi-arid, the Karamojong cluster practice seminomadic livestock rearing which is the most suitable form of land use. Depending on rainfall variability is an age old age coping mechanism. For the Pokot, the Karamojong and even the Turkana, this mobility entails crossing what is presently considered international boundaries between Kenya and Uganda. While much of the literature have documented seasonal migration among the Pokot and livestock as their mainstay, the cultural and social ordering based on seasonal migration has not been extensively discussed. Using seasonal migration as a discursive concept allows us untangle the multiple processes that shape and are shaped by this mobility. For example, while livestock serves as the main source of nutrition through dairy products and meat, they also constitute important parts of social relations, political alliances, agreements and cultural activities. Religious ceremonies, marriages, political alliances and conflict resolution are incomplete without the exchange of livestock and some farm feasting characterized by “spilling blood”. Livestock keeping is interwoven in the Pokot lifestyle in many ways. Owning livestock is not only a matter of economic imperative, it also symbolizes enhanced social status, wealth, masculinity and a demonstration of leadership qualities. Replenishing livestock after drought or diseases outbreak calls for different strategies, among which cattle raiding is not a preserve to Pokot. It is common among pastoralist communities all over the world and is not only for restocking but also paying bride price and space where war-like activities are enacted. However, a number of factors are steadily eroding this lifestyle, and the Pokot are mounting variables resistance to countenance this unwelcome development. 201

Dulo Nyaoro

Pastoralists on the other hand have often maintained an independent and nonchalant image of themselves and their unrestricted lifestyles. These two world views then create a contagion for conflicts and tension.

Militarization of the Pokot Although the Pokot are currently known as belligerent and the fiercest cattle raiders in North Western Kenya and Eastern Uganda, this has not always been the case. Cattle raids have always been common among the pastoral communities (Bollig, 1987). Such raids were regulated by seasonal rhythms and cultural norms. Characteristically, they were conducted using traditional weapons of arrows and spears. However, the Pokot Northern Neighbours, the Turkana, started acquiring firearms. The first source of these arms is attributed to the British colonial government who developed a policy of arming border communities to create a buffer zone with hostile neighbouring countries. The Italian excursion in Ethiopia during WWII drove the British and therefore the Turkana while not arming the Pokot (Bollig, 1987). Wapundi et al. (2011) however argue that gun running began long before the British and the main source was the Arab traders in East Africa. The second source was the fighting between Mussolini’s forces and Ethiopia soldiers that left thousands of firearms especially the steyr rifles in the hands of civilians. These arms found their way in the underground arms market. In exchange for Camels, the Turkana could acquire these weapons. The Pokots who did not keep Camels hardly benefited from this trade. This means, in any conflict and cattle raiding, the Pokot could not match the fire power of the Turkana. However, three distinct events related to the cold war rivalry abruptly changed the access and flow of firearms including light weapons in the region and changed the nature of pastoral conflicts. Firstly, the Soviet Union’s foray in the East African region entailed arming different regimes through foreign aid. Through military assistance from Amin’s regime in Uganda, Mengistu’s in Ethiopia and Barre’s and in Somalia, all benefitted from automatic and modern weapons manufactured in the Soviet and allies (Bollig, 1987 Wapundi et al., 2011). Secondly, the danger of these weapons became apparent during the outbreak of war between Ethiopia and Somalia over the Ogaden region. At the end of the war, thousands of arms exchanged hands from soldiers to civilians making. These arms were traded as far as Pokot, Karamajong and Turkana in the south of Ethiopia. Thirdly, upon the ouster of Amin in 1979, hundreds of soldiers from Moroto Barracks in Eastern Uganda defected to Kenya with their arms which they sold to the Pokots. In addition, the Karamajong community who lived near Moroto barracks discovered a cache of automatic weapons in the thousands which they sold to Pokot. Suddenly the Pokots were no longer the underdogs in this arms race. While Jomo Kenyatta had continued with the British policy of arming the Turkana’s, he was careful not to give them automatic weapons. Furthermore, through the Police reservist scheme, Kenyatta ensured he could monitor the arms in the hands of Turkana, but this was not so with the Pokot.

Research Methods We adopted a case study research design. This is a qualitative inquiry which is focused on an in-depth description of a process, a program, an event or an activity (Miller et al., 2009). A case study seeks to engage with and report the complexity of social activity in order to represent the meanings that individual social actors bring to those settings. It assumes that “social reality” is created through social interaction, albeit situated in particular contexts and 202

Migrating Out of Migration

histories, and seeks to identify and describe before trying to analyse and theorize. It also assumes that things may not be as they seem and privileges an in-depth inquiry over coverage; understanding the “case” rather than the generalizing to a population at large. The field work was conducted from 2015 to 2016 followed by later field visits. The area of study as has been mentioned is West Pokot County in the Rift Valley of Kenya covering a vast area of 9,169 km square with a population of 512,690 by 2009 (KNBS, 2010). The current estimate puts the population at 631,231 in 2013 (GOK). The county borders Uganda to the west while on the Kenya side it neighbours Turkana County to the North, Baringo to the East, Trans-Nzoia and Elgeyo-Marakwet to the South. The county is divided into six sub-counties including Kapenguria, Chapareria, Sigor, Kacheliba, Alale and Lelan. The actual fieldwork was conducted in Kongolai and Kacheliba which were the most affected areas and according to government officials the most problematic. We relied mostly on ethnographic data collection strategies including oral interviews with key informants, sometimes conversations with contacts, observations of day-to-day activities such as livestock herding and seeing displaced people in urban areas. A total of 26 respondents were interviewed and recorded. Field notes and sketches were used to record what was observed or heard. The respondents were purposively selected and comprised of community members (12), Morans (3), (Elders (4), NGO representatives (3) and Kenya government officials (4). Given the nature of the research confidentiality demanded, we don’t record respondents verbatim.

How the Pokot Perceive the Violent Conflict and Insecurity in the Region In much of the discourse on insecurity and conflicts between the Pokot and their neighbours, Pokots’ views are hardly ever sought. When this study ventured to get their views, the Pokot were almost united on the view that they have hostile neighbours all round both in Kenya and Uganda. In Uganda, they identified the Karamajong and the Sabiny as the main culprits, while in Kenya, Turkana were seen as the main aggressors. While this perception is justified on the basis of historical accounts, it is pervasive and passed down from elders to the young people. Cattle raiding is an obvious cause of this animosity; however, the “arms race” between the Pokot and the neighbouring communities has worsened the situation. The hostility towards the Turkana is compounded by “ancestral land” claims. The two communities have both put a claim on the south of Eastern Turkana County. These areas include Lomelo, Napoiton, Kapedo and Nopedo. Interestingly, Kapedo is located in the border between Turkana and Baringo county. This claim is a little unusual among pastoral communities because, traditionally, pastoral communities did not own land per se, rather land was for use. The use could be rotational between clans or even communities. Increasing population and sedenterization is now making it difficult for both groups to access these grazing pastures during the seasons they need them most. Cattle raiding has morphed into territorial wars in 2014 (21 people including police officers were murdered by Pokot Morans at Kapedo). The creation of political and administrative boundaries has helped solidify the concept of landownership among pastoral communities and is significant because the two groups have legal reasons to keep each other from their territories thereby unwittingly falling into the sedenterization project of the state. 203

Dulo Nyaoro

Firearms as Source of In/Security and In/Stability While outside actors including government officials hold that firearms are the biggest source of insecurity among the pastoral community, the Pokot think that firearms are the only source of security. For the Pokot, they simply need firearms to protect themselves and their livestock and not for conflicts with their neighbours. A community member had this to say: for a Pokot, a gun is very important because it is used to the family and livestock from raiders…It is very risky to have one gun because it can be stolen or become faulty thereby exposing the family and livestock.1 For a Kenyan government official working in the area, he saw the situation differently. He had this to say about what has become known as the gun culture among the pastoralist: the Pokot just like other pastoralist communities will never agree that guns are a source of insecurity. Although we know weapons can be used for positive things but in Pokot it is mostly negative.2 As mentioned earlier, the Pokot engagement with both colonial government and postcolonial administration has been problematic. The British never paid much attention to them likewise to the Kenyatta government. Their security and their livelihoods largely remained outside the state. They are suspicious of state organs.

Militarization and Commercialization of Cattle Rustling Respondents confirmed to this study what other authors have noted about cattle rustling (Mkutu, 2003). From the traditional and seasonal activities, cattle raids have been heavily militarized and commercialized. There has been a noticeable shift from seasonal mass and larger cattle raids organized by Pokot Morans to smaller, more organized and precise cattle raids. Respondents assert that commercialization entails external funding of cattle or purchasing the stolen livestock by wealthy business people from as far away as Nairobi. Unlike the traditional cattle rustling which was meant to restock or as a rite of passage, commercial raids extract livestock from the normal circulation by exporting them to urban areas for meat consumption (Eaton, 2010). While commercialization may bring in quick cash, it poses grave danger to the livestockdependent communities. Restocking becomes harder and takes much longer. For example, it is estimated that the pastoralist communities including the Pokot, Turkana and Karamojong lost over 90,000 herds of livestock in just 36 months from 2006 to 2009 (CERWAN, 2010). This means dwindling livestock, inability to restock, poverty and the imperative to search for alternative means of livestock. The obvious option of widening the scope of cattle raids is receding due to increasing government presence and the sedenterization of their neighbours. Only the Turkana still keep sizable herds of cattle among their neighbours. Commercialization and militarization of cattle raids are working against the traditional seasonal pastoralism. Symbolically, the barrel of the gun is pointing the Pokot towards a different direction of lifestyle, a lifestyle that they are ill prepared for! In due course, they must migrate out of seasonal migration. 204

Migrating Out of Migration

Disarmament, Displacement and Uncertain Seasonal Migration The problem of firearms and light weapons has occupied the minds of different administration responsible for the communities occupying the livestock corridor. The standard practice has been to arm for political reasons and then disarm when violence escalates. Both Colonial and post-colonial governments have practiced this at different times in Kenya and Uganda (Mkutu, 2003). Civilian disarmament among the Pokot and neighbouring communities began way back in 1926 during what the British called “operation Tennis”. This is when Rudolph province of Eastern Uganda occupied the Turkana, the Pokot and some Karamajong was transferred to Kenya Colony and the need to confine the pastoralist communities to these territories in Kenya and Uganda (Wapundi et al., 2011). The second occasion was the Cordon and search in Kolowa district in the current Eastern Baringo in April 1950. This event was triggered by an encounter between Pokot Morans and a colonial administrator, Mr. Allan Stevens. The reasons for confrontation are unclear, but the result has become known as the Pokot Massacre where over 100 Pokots were massacred in cold blood while the British lost only four men. This unequal outcome was attributed to superior firepower (Wapundi et al., 2011). In recent times, other disarmaments have been conducted although only partially successful. The most memorable according to many of the community members is the Operation Nyundo of 1984. It was meant to disarm the Pokot and their Ugandan neighbours, the Karamajongn (Wapundi et al., 2011: 7). Although the Kenya government deployed some of the most coercive tactics, the community’s resolve was absolute. First instead of deploying the Police, the government deployed the Army against her own citizens. A respondent who experienced the operation said: The army used heavy artillery and helicopter gunships just like they were fighting another army. The army rounded thousands of livestock into concentration camps Keringet, Mtember and Kongelai and denied them pasture and water so that the owners could surrender illegal guns to the security forces.3 The brutality of the operations did not go unnoticed to the international community. Reuters talked to a survivor of this operation in May 2006, and he remembered as much: The soldiers were wild beyond humanity, many shot Pokots on sight or forced men to lie on the ground in lines as they ran across their backs. Other men had their testicles tied together and were then made to run away from each other. Women were raped in front of their husbands, sometimes they inserted empty beer bottles in women.4 Operation Nyundo became a conspiracy between climatic and government forces. Beginning in 1983, the East and Horn of Africa were experiencing one of the worst droughts. In neighbouring Ethiopia, people were already starving, and in Kenya, in 1984, an emergency was declared, yet this is the time the operation was instituted with ransom being Pokots’ only source of livelihood. Starvation and death that was visited on the Pokots became a source of collective shame in later years. Another disarmament attempt started in 2005 and was christened Operation Dumisha Amani (Keep Peace). This is a multi-pronged and multi-stage approach. It attempts to link disarmament with development goals. The first stage was voluntary surrender of arms in 205

Dulo Nyaoro

exchange for amnesty from prosecution. The second stage is operation Okota 1 (collect) which was the forceful confiscation of firearms from those who did not voluntarily surrender. The third phase was the development phase designed to improve economic conditions in exchange of any remaining arms or information that may lead to stopping of the circulation of arms (Leff and Moestue, 2009). This operation like others before was not very successful as many armed Pokots sneaked into neighbouring Uganda. In Turkana around 1,710 firearms and 5,700 rounds of ammunition were collected. The dangers of partial disarmament became apparent because it is claimed that Pokots on the way back from Uganda attacked Turkana who has surrendered the guns at will.

Diminishing Seasonal Migration Vicious circles of violence associated with armed conflicts and subsequent disarmament operations increase the overall insecurity in the Northern Cattle Corridor among the Karamajong cluster (Odhiambo, 2006). This means that people cannot move as frequently as they would want, pastures are overused and animals are becoming fewer. After the “Cordon and Search” disarmament operations in Karamajong, the Uganda military has scaled up border patrols and commonly restricts Pokot herders and their cattle from crossing the border Karamajong territory. This limitation on cross-border mobility leads to increased tensions or escalation of conflicts with those in neighbouring areas. A respondent had this to say on seasonal migration: we are unable to seasonally migrate to Karamajong as we used to after disarmament. It is unsafe to cross the border, the Karamajong will raid our cattle. Unlike here (W. Pokot) Karamajong land is fertile with rich pasture.5 In this case, the respondent is claiming that disarmament has left them exposed, but also their traditional allies, the Karamajong, are no longer hospitable. The options of seasonal migration are clearly diminishing. Disarmament operations are often accompanied by restrictions on movements, curfews and declarations of no-go zones which would definitely cut off routes and access to certain areas. Pastures that are not used for a few years may greatly deteriorate and become unfit while unused watering points could be lost forever. The landscape inhabited by the Pokot can hardly support livestock rearing that needs grazing fields all year round. Without seasonal migration, Pokot may not sustain livestock keeping as a livelihood. They have to migrate out of livestock keeping as a way of life. As discussed below, some form of displacement is already happening due to restriction on seasonal mobility and disarmament.

Displacement and Odd Jobs During the field work, it became apparent that there is significant displacement in West Pokot. Disarmament induced displacement is slowly contributing to diminishing seasonal migration. Due to loss of livestock attributed to drought, frequent disarmament and deaths, some Pokots are already abandoning pastoral livelihoods and out migrating. Some are moving to urban areas, not so much to look for jobs but to escape insecurity caused by frequent attacks and the subsequent disarmament. There is uncomfortable rural-to-urban migration, although it lacks the common characteristics of such forms of migration such as young educated people migrating to look for jobs, rather it is destitute women and children. These 206

Migrating Out of Migration

people although in their own homeland are living destitute lives because they are internally displaced persons not the classical labour migrants. They are frequently to be found in Kapenguria, Kitale, and Makutano towns as street beggars or doing odd jobs. While it is difficult to estimate the numbers of those displaced by disarmament, they are clearly visible in urban centres. Since they are not prepared for the urban lifestyle and majority of them are women and children, they become victims of new economic forces. Women take odd jobs while children become street beggars living from hand to mouth. Some women get jobs as house helps or wash clothes for pay while others work as barmaids. The young men on the other hand work as loaders or watchmen in the urban centres. This has not gone down well with older Pokot men, and one respondent lamented: young men are migrating to urban centres, abandoning their roles as herders and escaping cultural duties. Some when they come back the engage themselves in criminal activities like commercialized cattle raiding and banditry. The young men are frequently the target of disarmament and security operations, and this is why men of them have to move out of the villages into hiding or urban areas, yet tradition has put heavy demands on them. Without, the traditional knowledge about the routes of migration, alliances and cultural norms would be lost.

Displacing Seasonal Migration The government of Kenya has concluded that the only way to clear arms from the Pokot is to provide alternative livelihood strategies to pastoral ways of life. This way it will also achieve the long-term desire of having a sedentary population that can regularly pay tax and get integrated into the “development strategies”. These alternative livelihoods which are supposed to replace seasonal migration include bee keeping, subsistence agriculture, mining, trade and keeping of fewer livestock. The Pokot themselves have also included activities such as burning charcoal and selling firewood. However, these strategies fail to appreciate the nature of the land and the possible effects of climate and environmental changes. These activities tend to aggravate environmental damage since most of the land is not suitable for agriculture. Cultivation and charcoal burning around the hills have resulted the reduction of vegetative cover. In the last three consecutive years since 2017, West Pokot has experienced land and mudslides killing over 200 people, which was initially common phenomenon in the Pokot area.

Conclusion This chapter has discussed how a constellation of factors has created conflicts in the cattle corridor of East Africa. These include the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, disarmament programmes which changed the nature and texture of traditional cattle rustling from restocking mechanism to a commercial venture. The chapter has argued that both the colonial and post-colonial governments played an important role in the widespread of firearms in the cattle corridor. The partial disarmament has on the other hand created myriad of problems. Besides being atrocious in their conduct, the disarmament has further poisoned relationship between communities, diminishing the prospects for continued seasonal migration. 207

Dulo Nyaoro

With diminished seasonal migration options, climate and environmental changes are being acutely felt by the Pokot community of Kenya. From the reality on the ground coupled with the insecurity, it is just a matter of time before the Pokot are completely forced from their pastoral lifestyle.

Notes 1 Interview respondent 8/8/2015 2 Interview respondent 9/8/2015 3 Interview 7/8/2015 4 Reuters, 11/5/2006 5 Interview 11/8/2015

References Blench, R. and Z. Marriage. (1999). Drought and Livestock in Semi-arid Africa and South-West Asia. Overseas Development Institute, Portland House, London. Bollig, M. (1987). The imposition of colonial rule in North West Kenya: Interethnic conflicts and anticolonial resistance. Afrikanistische Arbeitspapiere, 11: 4–40. Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED). (2016). EM-DAT database. Available from www​.emdat​.be​/database. CEWARN. (2010). Country Updates. Conflict Early Warning and Response Mechanism, Addis Ababa. Deshingkar, P. and D. Start. (2003). Seasonal migration for livelihoods in India: Coping, accumulation and exclusion: Working paper 220. Overseas Development Institute, 111 Westminster Bridge Road London UK. Eaton, D. (2010). The rise of the ‘trader’: The commercialization of raiding in Karamajong. Nomadic Peoples, 14(2): 106–122. Gibson, J., D. McKenzie and H. Rohorua. (2013). Development impacts of seasonal and temporary migration: A review of evidence from the pacific and Southeast Asia. Asia and the Pacific Policy Studies. Online publication file:​///C:​/User​s/pc/​Downl​oads/​SSRN-​​id237​​1163.​​​pdf Ginnetti, J. and T. Franck. (2014). Assessing Drought Displacement Risk for Kenyan, Ethiopian and Somali Pastoralists. Technical Paper, 26 April. Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) and Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). Government of Kenya. (2010). The National Climate Change Response Strategy. Government of Kenya, Nairobi. Available from uploa​ds/20​12/04​/Nati​onal-​Clima​te-Ch​ange-​Respo​nse-S​trate​gy_ April​ -2010​.p​df. Görlich, D. and C. Trebesch. (2006). Mass Migration and Seasonality: Evidence on Moldova's Labour Exodus, Kiel Advanced Studies Working Papers, No. 435. Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), Kiel. Greiner, C. and P. Sakdapolrak. (2013). Rural–urban migration, agrarian change, and the environment in Kenya: A critical review of the literature. Population and Environment, 34(4): 524–553. Huho, J.M. et al. (2011). Living with drought: The case of the Maasai pastoralists of northern Kenya. Educational Research, 2(1): 779–789. Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). (2014). Kenya: Too early to turn the page on IDPs, more work is needed. IDMC, Geneva. Available from www​.internal​-displacement​.org​/assets/ Uploads/201406​-af​-kenya​-overview​-en​​.pdf. Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS). (2010). The 2009 Kenya population and housing census: Counting our people for the implementation of vision 2030. Volume IC. Population Distribution by Age, Sex and Administrative Units. KNBS, Nairobi. Leff, J. and H. Moestue. (2009). Large and small: Impacts of armed violence on children and youth. In Small Arms Survey 2009: Shadows of War. https://www​.smallarmssurvey​.org​/sites​/default​/files​ /resources​/Small​-Arms​-Survey​-2009​-About​-2​-Cover​-sheet​-EN​.pdf Markakis, J. (2004). Pastoralism on the margin. Minority Rights Group International, London. Available from http://minorityrights​.org​/wp​-content​/uploads​/old​-site​-downloads​/download​ -149​-Pastoralism​-on​-the​-Margin​.pdf.

208

Migrating Out of Migration McDowell, C. and A. De Haan. (1997). Migration and sustainable livelihoods: A critical review of the literature. IDS Working Paper 65, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton. McSweeney, C. et al. (2010). The UNDP climate change country profiles: Improving the accessibility of observed and projected climate information for studies of climate change in developing countries. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 91(2): 157–166. Available from http://ora​.ox​.ac​.uk​ /objects​/uuid​:73f9204b​-37db​-4cf1​-b204​-e264a8d60f0c. Miller, D.J., S. Lee and I. Le Breton. (2009). Filling the institutional void, the social behavior of family versus non-family technology firms in emerging markets. Journal of International Business Studies, 1: 1–16. Mkutu, K.A. (2005). Pastoralist conflict, governance and small arms in North Rift, North East Africa: The cases of Karamoja, Uganda; West Pokot; Dol Dot, Laikipia; and Baragoi, Samburu, Kenya. PhD thesis, Political Science. University of Bradford. Mkutu, K. (2003). Pastoral conflict and small arms: The Kenya-Uganda border region. Report, Small Arms and Security in the Great Lakes Region and the Horn of Africa. Saferworld, London. Available from www​.saferworld​.org​.uk​/downloads​/pubdocs​/Pastoral​%20conflict​.pdf. Mutai, C.C. and S.O. Ochola. (2011). Climate change and variability. In Kenya State of the Environment and Outlook 2010. NEMA, Progress Press, Malta, pp. 46–60. National Council for Population and Development (NCPD). (2013). Kenya Population Situation Analysis. Government of Kenya and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Nairobi. National Environmental Management Authority of Kenya (NEMA). (2005). Report on Kenya’s Capacity Needs to Implement Article 6 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. NEMA, Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, Nairobi. Nuur, M.S., A.A. Andrews and D.S. Roba. (2012). Kenya’s neglected IDPs: Internal displacement and vulnerability of pastoralist communities in Northern Kenya. Situation Report. Institute of Security Studies, Nairobi. Available from https://issafrica​.org/ uploads/SitRep2012​_8Oct​.p​df. Nyaoro, D., J. Schade and K. Schmidt. (2016). Migration, Environment and Climate Change: Understanding the Nexus in Kenya. International Organization for Migration (IOM), Geneva. Odhiambo, M. (2006). Review of the literature on pastoral economics and marketing. Report Prepared for the World Initiative for sustainable Pastoralism. IUCN. Sheekh, N.M., A. Atta-Asamoah and R.D. Sharamo. (2012). Kenya’s Neglected IDPs: Internal Displacement and Vulnerability of Pastoralist Communities in Northern Kenya. ISS, Nairobi. Available from www​.issafrica​.org​/uploads​/8Oct12​.pdf. United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP). (2009). Kenya: Atlas of Our Changing Environment. UNEP, Division of Early Warning and Assessment, Nairobi. Available from www​ .unep​.org​/pdf​/Kenya​_Atlas​_Full​_EN​_72dpi​.pdf. Wang, J., D. Brown and A. Agrawal. (2013). Climate adaptation, local institutions, and rural livelihoods: A comparative study of herder communities in Mongolia and Inner Mongolia, China. Global Environmental Change, 23: 1673–1683. Wepundi, M., J. Ndung’u and S. Rynn. (2011). Lessons from the Frontiers Civilian Disarmament in Kenya and Uganda. Saferworld.

209

13 THE IMPACT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON AFRICAN MIGRATION Margaret Rutendo Magwedere and Daniel Makina

Introduction COVID-19 caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) was first identified in Wuhan, in the Hubei province of China in December 2019 (WHO, 2020). The virus rapidly spread globally. On 11 March 2020, the WHO announced that the world was facing a global pandemic. By April of the same year, most countries had imposed mobility restrictions on arrivals from other countries who are neither citizens nor residents (Connor, 2020).1 The virus culminated into a global health crisis causing a socio-economic crisis of unprecedented proportion. A pandemic is a widespread outbreak of a contagious disease, with cumulative probability of morbidity and mortality over a wide range of geographical area. Globalisation has intensified the intra- and intercontinental movement of people, goods, and services creating preconditions for the transmission of infectious diseases. Freedom of movement quickly resulted in the spread of the virus to other countries outside China. The first COVID-19 cases reported outside China were in Thailand, Japan, and South Korea, all of which were cases exported from Wuhan City, China (WHO, 2020). In Africa, the first COVID-19 case was reported in Egypt on 14 February 2020. Despite the spread of COVID-19 to almost all countries in Africa within three months, country-reported cases suggested that the pandemic spread in Africa was much slower on the continent than in the rest of the world (Massinga-Loembé, et al., 2020). Based on the volume of travel, 13 countries in Africa were initially identified by the WHO as priority countries for the containment of the virus namely: Algeria, Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. All the countries affected responded by instituting various measures to mitigate the spread of the pandemic which included lockdowns, quarantines, travel restrictions, gathering restrictions, mandating wearing of masks, social distancing, and suspension of sporting activities, among others. These measures affected the movement of people, goods, and services across Africa. Pandemics and restrictions on movement of people date back to the ancient times and early modern states of the 20th century. Movement restrictions remain one of the most 210

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-16

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on African Migration

common measures for disease control, mainly based on the medical know-how of the time and the interests of political-administrative systems. What can the past pandemics teach us on the association between pandemics and human mobility? Will COVID-19 be different, or not, from previous pandemics in terms of its impact on migration? So far in migration terms, the COVID-19 pandemic contrasts with the other preceding epidemics simply on scale and magnitude. Otherwise, the measures introduced that affect migration are not considerably dissimilar from the previous pandemics. However, there are observable lessons of an action-reaction phenomenon involving pandemics and migration in the past and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Generally, it is believed that human mobility aids epidemics, which warrants a call for restrictions on the freedom of movement. The Antonine Plague of AD 165 to 180, also known as the Plague of Galen experienced in Europe, is believed to have been brought up by the nomadic warriors (Littman & Littman, 1973). During those times, the Roman Empire responded to the deaths of so many soldiers by recruiting slaves and inviting migrants from outside the empire to settle within its boundaries.2 The dreadful Black Death of the 14th century probably originated in Central Asia, which affected Europe and Asia, and was spread through the Silk Road (China to Northern Italy)3 (Huremović, 2019). The Black Death is thought to have been spread by migration of the populace. Historically, the spread of the Black Death was controlled by isolating the arriving sailors, a form of restriction that is still being used during the COVID-19 pandemic. The slave trade and colonisation are believed to have brought varying diseases into the Americas and the Pacific islands, with a devastating death toll. During the early 19th century, cholera spread from northeast India to the rest of Asia, Russia, and Turkey, then Europe. In 1831, it reached the United Kingdom and, from there, North America. The Spanish Flu was disseminated by the movement of troops during the First World War. Before modern times, restraining free movement, people were always the primary means of disease control. The 14th-century plague introduced the preventive separation of potentially infected people and goods. The quarantine (a 40-day isolation of incoming passengers) was first started in Dubrovnik – a major European port – in 1377 (Mackowiak & Sehdev, 2002). All arrivals were isolated from entering the city fearing that they may spread the virus. In the 18th century, a highly developed cordon sanitaire was instituted in the middle of the Balkans, from the Adriatic Sea to the Carpathian Mountains. This reduced interaction with the Ottoman Empire (Mackowiak & Sehdev, 2002). Thus, the current lockdowns implemented under the COVID-19 pandemic were also practised in ancient times. Temporary walls were constructed to isolate cities. During the 17th-century plague, a stay-at-home order was imposed in London; however, this worsened the situation because, at the time, it was not known that the disease was transmitted by rats and fleas instead of human mobility.4 During the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, South Africa responded to the pandemic by erecting a border fence between her and Zimbabwe in a bid to curb irregular migration flows.5 The 14th-century bubonic plague set a precedent of quarantines. During those times, mobility was granted to people with ‘sanitary certificates’ from the authorities. In Venice, immigrants and travellers coming on ships were required to show a ‘certificate’, to prove that they are coming from contagion-free places. During the cholera outbreak, those cities’ entrants were obliged to present a ‘health certificate’. Most previous pandemics affected a few countries and a small share of the world population due to the non-sophistication of mode of transport to facilitate human mobility then. The historical pandemic that was global in nature, which could be compared to the COVID-19 pandemic, is the Spanish Flu caused by the H1N1 virus that struck between 211

Margaret Rutendo Magwedere and Daniel Makina

1918 and 1920. According to the US CDC website, the Spanish Flu infected about 500 million people, one-third of the world population then, and killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide.6 In comparison, COVID-19 had infected over 475 million people and of which 6.1 million people succumbed to the pandemic by March 2022.7 With no vaccines to protect against infection and no antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections, efforts worldwide to control the spread of the Spanish flu were limited to non-pharmaceutical interventions such as isolation, quarantine, good personal hygiene, use of disinfectants, and limitations of public gatherings, which were applied unevenly. These were similar interventions that were initiated at the onset of the SARS-CoV2 which caused COVID-19 although vaccines were available later. In comparison with previous pandemics, countries during COVID19 were better equipped to manage border controls and human mobility. The COVID-19 period had the highest number of migrant workers abroad which was different from the other previous disease outbreaks. The IOM estimated that there were three million stranded migrant workers internationally by July 2020 mainly in the Middle East and North Africa.8 The international collaboration on assisting return and readmission of migrants between countries of destination and origin countries during the pandemic was more active during the COVID-19 period compared to previous pandemics. In some countries, for example, in South Africa, temporary measures for visa validity periods (extension of visas) for foreign nationals were instituted as travel restrictions hindered mobility.9 The impact of the Spanish Flu on migration is not well documented. Since it broke out towards the end of the First World War, it can be argued that migration then was driven by colonial ties, that is, populations moving intra-Anglophone sphere and intra-Francophone sphere.10 A remarkable historical observation is that the Spanish influenza hit the world during the midst of the largest wave of immigration that took place between 1880 and the 1920s when about 23.5 million immigrants arrived in the USA from Southern and Eastern Europe, China, Japan, Canada, and Mexico (Kraut, 1994). However, Kraut (2010) perceived that when the pandemic hit the USA during the fall of 1918, immigration had already slowed because of World War I, and reported the total number of immigrants arriving in the USA had dropped from 1,218,480 annually in 1914 to 110,618 in 1918. Smallpox was another infectious disease with high mortality rate and it was last recorded as a pandemic in Yugoslavia in the 1970s (Huremović, 2019). The first case of smallpox in Yugoslavia had started from a pilgrim returning from the Middle East. To contain the virus, entire communities were placed under cordon sanitaire (a measure of placing the whole geographic areas in quarantine). About 10,000 individuals who may have come into contact with the infected were placed in quarantine. Borders were closed, and all non-essential travel was suspended. These measures were also applied during the COVID-19 pandemic where human mobility was controlled through border closures. Within countries, mobility was only limited to essential travel; otherwise, leisure travel was prohibited. In the Americas, smallpox was believed to have been transmitted by European settlers (Dobyns, 1983). Besides vaccination, quarantining and mobility restriction of the population were the main measures to prevent the spread of the infection.11 Table 13.1 provides a timeline of pandemics in the 20th and 21st centuries. A common feature of all pandemics is the scapegoating and discrimination against foreign migrants. The United States provides a good example of migration and pandemics because of its diverse immigration history. During the 1800s, the outbreak of cholera was blamed on the Irish immigrants whilst the Italian immigrants were blamed for bringing polio, and Jews for bringing tuberculosis.12 During the plague of the 1890s, the migrant workforce 212

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on African Migration Table 13.1 Timeline of Pandemics in the 20th and 21st centuries 1918 1957 1968 2002 2009 2012 2019

Spanish Flu Epidemic – 50 million deaths Asian Flu Pandemic – 1 million deaths Hong Kong Pandemic – 1 million deaths SARS Epidemic – 774 deaths H1N1 Pandemic – 284,000 deaths MERS Epidemic – 858 deaths Covid 19 Pandemic – over 6 million by 2022

was the subject of intensive scrutiny in the United States. Chinese migrants were restricted to their Chinatown enclave, partly due to the fears of infectious diseases such as smallpox and bubonic plague by the local population. A pneumonia outbreak in 1924 resulted in the quarantining of Mexican immigrants. During the Asian influenza of 1957–1958, migrant workers were the subject of intensive scrutiny, and their movements posed challenges to health authorities. In the 1980s, Haitians were considered a high-risk group for HIV transmission, and as a result, Haitian refugees were subjected to more stringent immigration controls. The Latin Americans were blamed for Zika and Africans for Ebola. Pandemics have almost always been used as opportunities for anti-immigration policies and to impose restrictions on arrival of migrants. Thus, over the centuries up to COVID-19, every pandemic led to a restraint of rights and freedoms of movement, although to varying degrees. COVID-19 restrictions on migration are not peculiar as movement restrictions existed during previous pandemics. The COVID-19 pandemic has the same connotation against migrants. The disruptions caused by the pandemic may have largely decreased the number of international migrants (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), 2020). At the peak of the pandemic in 2020, over 160 countries had closed their borders, with 99 states making no exception for people seeking protection.13 The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (2020) recognised a noticeable decrease on the arrivals of new refugees and asylum-seekers in most regions. According to the Agency, there were about 1.5 million fewer people than would have been anticipated in non-COVID circumstances, reflecting how many of those seeking international protection in 2020 became stranded. This decrease was despite an increase in the number of forced displacements which did not appear to have slowed down due to the pandemic. The UNHCR (2020) stated that the number of people fleeing wars, violence, persecution, and human rights violations rose in 2020 by approximately four percent to nearly 82.4 million people, compared to 79.5 million recorded at the end of 2019. Whilst the global financial crisis 2007–2009 was not a pandemic, its impact on international migration was largely muted. However, there was inter-sectoral movement regarding employment in that some migrant workers moved from construction to agricultural and retail industries which movement that could have been difficult with COVID-19 because the skills that became in-demand – health and information technology – required prior training (KNOMAD, 2020). Another defining difference between COVID-19 and the global financial crisis was that the small decline in both overall migration and remittances was followed by substantial growth of migration and remittances that reached new heights by 2018 (Cohen, 2020). Notwithstanding the inherent contrasts, the impact of the global financial crisis may not be directly compared with the impact of the COVID-19 health crisis because 213

Margaret Rutendo Magwedere and Daniel Makina

of the differences in the underlying causes. Their direct impacts on migration are therefore bound to be different. Literature suggests that a pandemic is likely to impact more on international migration because of the manner it spreads. This is borne from one of the models of migration, namely, cultures of migration, which was argued by Cohen & Sirkeci (2011) that over time as migration experiences accumulate in a destination and through a route between the origin and destination, migration will continue irrespective of changes in the drivers of migration that were present at the beginning. Analysing immigrant stock data and/or travel data based on human mobility corridors, Sirkeci and Yucesahin (2020) observed that the spread of COVID-19 appeared to largely follow a relocation diffusion pattern beyond the neighbouring countries. That is, the virus is introduced to a location outside its source through migration. Pre-COVID-19, immigration was already a sensitive matter and one of the leading causes of populist policies in various countries. This is despite global migration’s rising trend being moderate than what is actually portrayed. The proportion of people living outside their countries of origin rose from 2.8 percent in 2001 to 3.5 percent in 2019, almost the same level it has been for more than a century ago.14 It should be noted that the global average of international migrants masks migration patterns, processes, and concentration of migration in certain corridors. When COVID-19 struck most countries at the beginning 2020, migration came to a standstill because some of the measures that countries used to mitigate its spread included travel bans and closures of borders. As a result, many migrants got stranded in their host and/or transit countries and are vulnerable to loss of employment and income. Whilst migration flows were predicted to fall, the stock of international migrants would not fall immediately because of travel bans and closures of borders. Stranded migrants are not a phenomenon that is unique with the pandemic although COVID-19-related travel measures and border closures had global far-reaching impacts on migrants and travellers. By mid-July 2020, IOM projected that the virus had left approximately three million individuals stranded, sometimes without access to consular assistance. The Panama jungle had thousands of stranded migrants who were attempting to travel north to the United States. In Lebanon, migrant workers were exposed to very challenging situations after the August 2020 explosion in Beirut and the subsequent surge of COVID-19 cases.15 The pandemic laid bare the contribution of migrants in essential services of their host economies such as health care, supply chains, and agricultural systems.16 The International Labour Organisation (ILO, 2018) opined that 68 percent of international migrants in highincome countries are labour migrants. Being in these sectors where work from home is not always an option meant migrant workers are more vulnerable to COVID-19.

Migration and Health According to the ILO (2021), there are about 169 million migrant workers globally.17 The health problems of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers are comparable to those of the rest of the population, though some groups have a greater prevalence. During the pandemic, most female migrants were in the frontline of COVID-19 response and recovery, representing a high percentage of the health care, home care, elderly care, and domestic care workers, often working in the informal economy with few protections against dismissal and limited access to paid sick leave or social protection. Female migrants frequently face specific challenges, particularly with regard to maternal, newborn and child health, sexual and reproductive health, and violence. Additionally, migrant women were often employed in the sectors 214

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on African Migration

worst hit by business closures, including the service sector and tourism. It is likely that the crisis will roll back fragile gains made on migrant women’s participation in the formal labour market – and with it, knock-on impacts on personal and family income and gender equality (see IOM, 2020d).18 International migrants face more barriers to access health services in host countries (i.e., inadequate health insurance), particularly migrant domestic workers.

How the Pandemic Shaped Migration in Africa: intra-Africa and extra-continental As of 2020, Africa was home to about 25.4 million migrant stock and the current perception is that Africa is a continent of mass migration (Kassegn, 2021). Intra-regional migrants in Sub-Saharan Africa comprise over two-thirds of all international migration from the region (Ratha, Kim, Plaza & Seshan, 2021). The closure of the sovereign states borders did not only show how much today global economy is connected, but also how individual national economies, depend on migration. COVID-19 has stirred a profound impact on human existence and the functioning of migration across states. Before the pandemic, 2020 was considered as the year for the implementation of the continental free trade area and for the process of ratification of the African Union’s Continental Free Movement Protocol. Yet the pandemic has turned the year to be a year of emblematic immobility due to COVID-19 (Bara, 2020). Africa is opined to have 14.5 international migrants, ten million of which are mobile within the Sub-Saharan Africa region (Mushomi et al., 2022). The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) was set to begin on 1 July 2020 for the countries that had ratified the agreement. The pandemic affected the implementation of this agreement which was only commenced on 1 January 2021. The AfCFTA’s purpose is to generate a continental market for goods and services, with free movement of people and investments intended to help deepen the economic integration of the African continent and promote development.19 This goal of free movement of goods and services can only be achieved if there is free movement of people. The free movement of people, and particularly labour mobility, is essential for promoting investments under AfCFTA.20 Africa was one of the least affected regions by the COVID-19 pandemic despite initial fears of international agencies. In March 2022 Africa had at least 11,577,000 reported infections and 251,000 deaths.21 The lower numbers of recorded COVID-19 cases in Africa as compared to other world regions have been attributed to the climate, the low population density, limited travel, youthful population, previous experiences with epidemics, and insufficient testing. There was prompt reaction by African States with measures which included border closures, movement restrictions, and declaration of states of emergency that led to a ‘freeze’ on socio-economic activities and the imposition of curfews, which appeared to have played an important role in preventing the spread of the virus. However, these measures severely affected intra- and extra-continental movement in Africa. During the COVID-19 crisis, South Africa was one of the African countries that had instituted some of the world’s most restrictive lockdowns. Due to the introduction of these restrictive measures, a sizable share of labour migrants from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), i.e. Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, mainly employed in the informal sector, lost their jobs, and returned to their countries. This has had a two-fold effect on these countries’ economies, namely, 1) lower volumes of remittances and an increased competition within the internal labour market, paralleled by an increase in the number of household members subsisting from reduced resources. Lockdown and quar215

Margaret Rutendo Magwedere and Daniel Makina

antine type of restrictions were not effective policies for healthcare, tourism, transportation, construction, agriculture, and food processing sectors most of which rely on migrant labour. During COVID-19, countries focused on facilitating movement of goods and services, while concurrently imposing restrictions on peoples’ mobility (IOM, 2020). Intra-African leisure travel came to a standstill and tourism, which is among the principal economic activities for many African countries, fell by over 70 percent. The onset of the pandemic induced uncertainties for migrant communities with heightened protectionism and nationalist ideologies in migrant-hosting states. Migration data from IOM shows that the mobility restrictions introduced in March 2020 had medium- and longterm effects on the regular overall international and internal flows in most parts of the African continent (Benton et al., 2021). The African Union Labour Migration Advisory Committee (LMAC) raised concerns that labour migrants in Africa who are not covered by the national social security systems are left to face the consequences of COVID-19.22 Marginalized populations such as migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers were unduly affected and suffered the most negative impacts on their health, well-being, and protection. They often have faced specific risks before, during, and after their journey and saw these risks exacerbated during the pandemic through exposure to precarious employment, irregular status, or difficulties accessing health care (IOM, 2020a). State responses to the pandemic added further instability and uncertainty to the lives of countless migrants on the continent. Irregular migrants on the move were severely affected by the pandemic as some have been abandoned by the smugglers, stuck or stranded in their transit or destination countries, for example in Niger and Djibouti (Bara, 2020). Mobility restriction which included border closures made the borders extremely hard to legal crossing, the temporary suspension of assisted voluntary return resulted in migrants being in trapped situation. However, the existing data sources are limited and there are gaps on the migration trends in Africa during 2020–2021 or during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. There was also a trend in internal mobility during past pandemics. The pandemics were associated with migration of the affluent from the populated cities to the country side, thus giving rise to internal mobility where the affluent migrates to less populated areas. Largely, changes in the internal mobility patterns have not been a major focus on analysing the effect of Covid-19. Empirical evidence on the effects of the pandemic on internal migration is fragmented and rather elusive. The pandemic has brought about unspoken inequalities in mobility. Those who had economic means and were in certain careers regarded as essential continued to migrate internally with little restrictions. A study on the effect of the pandemic on internal migration in South Africa suggested a decline of 11 percent in the rural-urban migration in the North-Eastern part of the country. The same study recorded a 5 percent increase in temporary migrants returning to their original households at the peak of the pandemic (Ginsburg et al., 2022). The COVID-19 pandemic did not create unique issues for migrant populations per se in Africa but simply exacerbated the pre-existing conditions. It has not only been a health crisis for the migrant communities. Rather it was also a protection and socio-economic challenge.

• As a health crisis: Migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers experienced very limited

access to health services due to legal, linguistic, cultural, and other barriers. They generally were more exposed to the virus than the general population due to their living conditions and lack of access to other services such as water, sanitation, or nutrition. People seeking to flee conflict countries faced higher risks due to weak health systems, coupled with travel restrictions that impeded the delivery of vital humanitarian assis216

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on African Migration

tance. In some cases, migrants were under detention such that they risked getting the virus under these circumstances. For instance, Ethiopians detained in Saudi Arabia raised fears on contracting the virus in their detained conditions.23 • Socio-economic crisis: which seriously affected the informal economy, allowed refugees or migrants only limited access to social protection measures, and left them highly exposed to violence, sexual abuse, and exploitation. Additionally, migrants in most countries were excluded from the stimulus packages to cope with the economic effects of the pandemic.24,25 • Protection crisis: border closures and travel restrictions to curb the spread of the virus negatively affected the rights of migrants and refugees and intensified xenophobia, discrimination, racism, and stigmatisation. Despite the perception of a link between migration and the importation of communicable diseases (refugees and migrant workers), there is no systematic association.26 The spread of COVID-19 globally was independent of refugees and migrants. The importation of the virus involved mainly regular travellers, holidaymakers, or business travellers rather than refugees or migrants. The border closures increased the risks of persecution and abuse of migrants and weakened the protection of vulnerable groups such as refugees and asylum seekers. By the end of March 2020, Benin, Guinea Bissau, and Nigeria had halted the registration of asylum seekers and refugees. The suspension of non-essential services during the pandemic directly impacted returnees as well as recipients of reintegration assistance under the EU-IOM Joint Initiative for Migrant Protection and Reintegration Generally, both international and internal flows in most parts of the African continent were affected by the pandemic (Devermont and Olander, 2020; Perthes, 2020). Migrants who cross national borders on a daily basis for their job activities were severely affected by the limitations on spatial mobility. The introduction of stricter border controls and (self‐) isolation rules for migrants as well as general restrictions on spatial mobility to prevent the transmission of COVID‐19 restrained these workers from carrying out their daily job activities, which led to financial consequences for their families. There are mixed reports on the effects of the pandemic on the irregular migration with a common consensus that the routes of irregular migration became more remote and hazardous (International Organisation of Migration (IOM), 2020a). There was a noticeable decline in the rates of irregular movements especially from the Sahara Desert to Europe (IOM, 2020b). Migrants in transit could not reach their destination countries and those at destination countries were unable to return to their origin countries. Due to restrictions on movement and remote working settings, services to migrants such as refugees and asylum seekers were put on hold (Schöfberger & Rango, 2020). Closure of consular services in many countries disrupted the legal pathways for intra-Africa and international migration. In West and Central Africa (Chad, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria), the Flow Monitoring Registry of the IOM registered a decline of nine percent in cross-border mobility in 2020 with an increase of 43 percent in internal mobility.27 The UNODC (2020) suggested that COVID-19 restrictions appear to have led to an increase in the use of more risky and costly smuggling services. Migrants have been pushed to use dangerous routes and processes, and often trapping a number of them into unsafe environments. In avoiding strict border regulations due to COVID-19, previously inactive migration routes have been experiencing significant irregular flows such as the route between West Africa and the Spanish Canary Islands (Migration Policy Practice, 2020). This route is 217

Margaret Rutendo Magwedere and Daniel Makina

extremely dangerous due to the length of the sea. The number of migrant flows using this route has increased to approximately 21,400 in 2020 from 2,700 recorded in 2019.28 By mid-September 2020, the number of arrivals in the Canary Islands increased recording more than 2,000 arrivals. Furthermore, since September 2021 monthly arrivals’ using this route has increased to more than 5,000. This signals a shift on the routes used by migrants to using more dangerous routes to reach their intended destination. The UNODC stated that with the onset of the pandemic, there were no significant changes observed in migrant smuggling along the Western Mediterranean route from Morocco to Spain, when compared to the same period during 2019.29 However, due to the pandemic, there was a sharp decrease in the Eastern Mediterranean route from Turkey to Greece. It is not clear if the decrease was due to the pandemic or it was linked to the migration management negotiations between Turkey and the European Union (EU). The Central Mediterranean route from Libya to Italy recorded a significant increase; more of the movements on this route were exacerbated by the conflict situation in Libya.30 Box 1 provides an example of the country with one of the highest rates of irregular migration in Africa.

Box 1: Case study: The Gambia According to Bah et al. (2021), pre-COVID-19 The Gambia was the country with the highest per capita irregular migration rates in Africa. The Gambians use irregular routes to migrate to Europe and neighbouring countries. International migration is perceived as a livelihood strategy and a means of attaining individual goals and social prestige in The Gambia. Faced with extreme poverty, increased social pressure due to lack of opportunities, potential irregular migrants are willing to accept substantial risk of death.31 COVID-19 has altered the intention to migrate for The Gambians intra-Africa and internationally to Europe. The survey for The Gambia shows that COVID-19 reduced the intention to migrate to Europe among the youth as it fell by 31 percent and to neighbouring Senegal by 34 percent. The COVID-19 pandemic has delayed the decision to migrate for poorer individuals in The Gambia as they can no longer afford migration costs at a time when their remittance income has fallen.

Africa hosts 25 million forcibly displaced persons, with an approximate of 85 percent being concentrated in eight countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), South Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria, the Central African Republic (CAR), and Cameroon.32 During the COVID-19 pandemic, Africa countries with the major drivers of forced displacement were crises in Ethiopia, Sudan, Sahel countries, and Mozambique.33 More pressure is being experienced by persons of concern who are in camps with congested living conditions with a varying degree of access to water, sanitation, and health services. In some of these camps, more aid has been mobilised by the UNHCR and other aid agencies to launch preparedness measures in the camps. There were a number of positive responsive actions by some African governments to include refugees and asylum seekers in the containment of the 218

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on African Migration

virus. The government of Cote d’Ivoire provided a budget allocation of $37,000 to include refugees and asylum seekers in the national plan on prevention and response to the pandemic. With the aim of limiting the spread of COVID-19, the Kenyan government banned refugee movements in and out of the country’s two main camps, Dadaab and Kakuma, which together host nearly 500,000 people (Bara, 2020). Despite these concerted efforts, the pandemic has worsened the situation for refugees and asylum seekers, and in the worst cases, they are in desperate situation due to the pandemic (Bara, 2020). The World Food Programme reduced food or cash transfers by up to 30 percent for over 2.7 million refugees in Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, and Djibouti due to the lack of funds. In Uganda, which is Africa’s leading host of refugees (1.4 million), the World Food Programme cut food rations for refugees and asylum seekers by 30 percent (Bara, 2020). This was mainly due to a lockdown which resulted in the disruption of supply chains in the farms and closure of businesses during the COVID-19 lockdown. Those refugees, who were running their own small businesses, faced a halt in their subsistence-generating activities due to the lockdown. Thus, the measures such as border closures, quarantines, and lockdowns limited the options of those living in overcrowded camps. The Humanitarian Air Bridge provided under the support of the European Union (EU) launched in mid-May 2020 was a relief to assist the vulnerable groups in the Central African Republic, Somalia, and Sudan to repatriate persons in need and provided humanitarian essential services. Furthermore, there were negotiated humanitarian corridors with host countries to assist with the voluntary return of migrants despite the closure of borders. The pandemic mutually affected both regular and irregular migration albeit in different scale and scope. The pandemic boosted the demand for certain professions such as healthcare workers and support personnel. COVID-19 and its accompanying restrictive measure exposed migrants to various human rights and physical abuse. Most of these actions are contraventions of many international human rights laws related to their fundamental human rights, health, economic, social spheres of life. Hence, the pandemic affected the refugees’ and migrants’ aspirations and capabilities to move from their countries of origin, stranded migrants and refugees while on the move, and impacted the dynamics of migrant smuggling syndicates.34 However, there were insignificant changes to the actual numbers of migrants on the move even under the restrictive conditions. Figure 13.1 shows migrant arrivals in Europe during the pandemic. Figure 13.1 shows the top ten countries of arrivals in Europe by nationalities in 2020 and 2021. Most of the countries in the top ten had an increase of arrivals in Europe in 2021 than in 2020 except for Morocco which had a slight decline of migrant arrivals. There is no significant change of the total arrivals in Europe as shown in Figure 13.2. There were more arrivals by land and sea in 2021 than what was recorded for 2018 and 2019. The year 2020 recorded a decline in the number of migrant arrivals in Europe by land and sea, a trend that was not repeated in 2021. It is evident that the lockdown and mobility restrictions slowed mobility for the year 2020. Nevertheless, human mobility history shows that mobility always returns to normalcy. Large-scale global movements of persons will slowly return if the economic and cultural drivers of international migration remain in place. For example, in 2020, some European countries made exemptions to their border rules for temporary migrant labour entry – because they have become so reliant on migrant labour in agriculture or healthcare sectors.35 219

Margaret Rutendo Magwedere and Daniel Makina

Arrivals in Europe 2021 Côte d'Ivoire

4.041

Iran

4.158 6.188

Syria

7.959

Bangladesh

8.877

Egypt

11.439

Afghanistan

13.344

Algeria

15.077

UID SSA

15.407

Morocco

15.679

Tunisia

Arival in Europe 2020 Sudan

1.813

Somalia

1.840

Côte d'Ivoire Syria Bangladesh Afghanistan

2.702 3.439 4.510 6.536 10.179

UID SSA Algeria

12.946

Tunisia

13.011 16.460

Morocco

Figure 13.1  Migration Flows to Europe, Arrivals, 2021 and 2020

Impact on Remittances and Remittance Channels Remittances are an important element of development finance in developing countries. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development necessitates a dynamic link between migration and development and to better recognise how migration and migrants can shape development outcomes and vice versa. The United Nations (2015) committed to ‘ensure to ensure 220

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on African Migration 450 400

Total Arrivals 389.976

350 300 250 187.499

200

146.949

150

128.663

100

151.417 99.907

50 0

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

Figure 13.2  Trends of Total Migrant Arrivals in Europe by Land and Sea from 2016 to 2021

safe, orderly and regular migration involving full respect for human rights and the humane treatment of migrants regardless of migration status, of refugees and of displaced persons’. Target 10.7 (Facilitate orderly, safe, regular, and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies) cements the importance of effective migration governance. During a pandemic income generating activities are reduced and lives and livelihoods are severely affected. The effect of the pandemic did not simply disrupt migrants’ earnings but it also had far-reaching consequences on the families and communities who depend on migrants’ support through remittances. The COVID-19 pandemic inevitably affected remittance-dependent African countries. The disruption in employment and paralysed economic activity reduced migrant remittances to their home countries (Djankov and Panizza, 2020). Comparing remittances in Africa with other developing countries such as in Asia, African remittances are relatively smaller. Yet, the contributions of remittances to gross domestic product are enormous. A larger share of foreign exchange earnings in Africa is often accounted for by international remittances (Meyer & Shera, 2017). Some African countries such as Lesotho, Liberia, The Gambia, Comoros, Cabo Verde, and Senegal have share of remittances to gross domestic product exceeding ten percent. Irrespective of the COVID-19 restrictions, Figure 13.1 shows countries in Africa that received remittances that were above 10 percent of the respective country’s GDP in 2020. According to Knomad (2022), some African countries are reliant on remittances as the remittances contribute a larger share to the respective countries’ gross domestic product. Hence, remittances in Africa can be an enabler of the attainment of the sustainable development goals. However, for migration to be beneficial and be an enabler of SDGs migration, governance is key for the economic development of the African countries. The lockdown restrictions resulted in the temporary closure of remittance service providers initially affecting the remittance sending channels. In the year 2020, the World Bank had projected the fall of remittances in Sub-Saharan Africa; however, the data in 2021 did not indicate drastic fall in remittances.36 The remittance flows to Sub-Saharan Africa showed resilience in the face of the pandemic. The decline of 12.5 percent of remittance flows to Sub-Saharan Africa was almost entirely due to a 28 percent decline in remittance flows to Nigeria.37 Excluding flows to Nigeria, remittances to Sub-Saharan Africa increased by 2.3 percent demonstrating resilience despite the economic consequences of COVID221

Margaret Rutendo Magwedere and Daniel Makina 30 25 2018 2019 2020 2021

20 15 10 5

e bw ba

Zim

To go

ia m

al

l So

Se ne ga

er ia Lib

o Le so th

a, Th e Gu in ea -B iss au

m

bi

b Ga

ra

Eg yp t, A

Co m or

os

Re p.

0

Figure 13.3  Top Ten Countries in Africa with a Larger Share of Remittances as a Proportion of GDP

19. Few African countries reported an increase in the flow of remittance growth, namely: Zambia (37 percent), Mozambique (16 percent), Kenya (9 percent), and Ghana (5 percent).38 Fiscal stimulus packages in migrant host countries are argued to have led to favourable economic conditions resulting in the resilient flow of remittances (Ratha, et al., 2021). Anecdotal evidence shows that there was a shift in the flow of remittances from the informal to formal channels and from cash to digital transfer of remittances. Travel restrictions appeared to have affected official remittance flows positively, indicating that such restrictions led to the use of formal channels to send remittances instead of informal channels. However, the remittance sending costs remains the key deterrent to the use of formal channels by migrants to remit money. Sub-Saharan Africa has the most expensive remittance corridors globally averaging at nine percent.39 The World Bank estimated that within Africa, migrant workers send remittances in excess of $14 billion annually, and as of 2018, 20 percent of global remittances were from intraAfrican flows. South Africa led the region in regional remittances flows before the pandemic; the country represented a growing and remittance generating economy, with a record of 0.2 percent growth in 2019 (Bara, 2020). The intra-regional remittance costs are very high in the region due to the low volumes of formal flows, inadequate penetration of innovative technologies, and lack of a competitive market environment (Ratha et al., 2021). Some countries such as Comoros, Somalia etc. have reported an increase in remittances received in the year 2021 (see Figure 13.3) However, the big data collection methods such as the high-frequency phone surveys in some countries reported decreases in remittances for a large percentage of households even when the recorded remittances reported by official sources reported increases in flows.40

Impact on Migration Data Collection – Role of Big Data for Migration (BD4M) Statistics is an essential basis for planning, monitoring, and evaluation. Real-time and quality migration data are crucial for policymaking and for the integration of migration in development and protection strategies at the national, regional, and global level. International processes such as the Agenda 2030 and the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular 222

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on African Migration

Migration (GCM) have highlighted the significance of improving data collection and analysis. However, the COVID-19 pandemic affected the collection of migration data. Under the auspices of the African Union (AU) through the African Union’s Agenda 2063 as well as the Migration Policy Framework for Africa (MPFA) and its Plan of Action (2018- 2030), there is acknowledgement of the importance of real-time migration statistics for economic development of African countries. The African Union (2020) reported that there is heterogeneity in reporting migration statistics in Africa with 76.6 percent annually reporting migration statistics, 27.7 percent reporting quarterly whilst 12.8 percent report migration statistics monthly. The pandemic hindered numerous data-related activities and it increased existing data inequalities in African countries.41 There has been a delay in data collection and migration data availability with the onset of the pandemic. The remote working conditions due to COVID-19 affected the periodicity of statistical reporting by many countries. Migration data statistics in Africa is mainly generated by censuses, surveys, and administrative sources. Although censuses are infrequently conducted, countries that had due census periods during the pandemic had their data collection using the survey method severely affected by the restrictions imposed during the pandemic. In overcoming the challenges of the pandemic in data collection and production using the traditional sources, big data can be an answer to the restrictions in movement. This would entail conducting surveys on cellphones or remote data collection using satellite technology. Big data provides innovative and alternative data collection mechanism to the traditional data sources such as censuses, surveys, and administrative sources. While it can be useful in collecting migration flows, it can also be useful in collecting data on remittance flows to SubSaharan Africa. Some countries in Africa are still using outdated data collection methods such as the outdated Fourth International Monetary Fund (IMF) Balance of Payments Manual Table 13.2 Big Data Types and Pros and Cons Big Data Type

Pros

Cons

Mobile phone call detail record (CDRs)

• Covers large areas of mobile phone

• Anonymisation can result in

Geo-located social media and online media content Internet activity

IP addresses of login details and sent emails Satellites

users • Has potential to reach remote areas • Timely information • Potential to reach hard to reach populations • Information on users’ location is timely • Timely information on peoples’ intentions • Free information Potential to reach remote areas Timely information

• • • •

Timely information High spatial resolution Large coverage Comparability

information loss

• Surveillance and privacy issues • Reliability of self-reported • • • • • • • •

information Selection bias Privacy and ethical issues Selection bias Mismatch between peoples’ intention and actual behaviour Methodological bias Selection bias Privacy and ethical issues Methodological and continuity issues

Source: Adapted from the International Organisation of Migration (IOM).42

223

Margaret Rutendo Magwedere and Daniel Makina

rather than the Sixth, while several other countries do not report data at all. Big data offers the potential to effective and regular data collection methods. Table 13.2 offers the types of big data that can be useful for collecting migration data and the pros and cons of each method.

Conclusion The chapter provides some insights on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on African migration. It commences by tracing previous pandemics in history and evaluating their impact on people mobility and observes that measures instituted to mitigate COVID-19 are no different from those they were employed in the past. The pandemic is examined on how it was shaping migration patterns in Africa as well as its impact on remittances and migration data collection. Going forward, African migration is forecasted to increase postCOVID-19 as a livelihood strategy. It is recommended for further research to be instituted on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the internal migration and patterns in African countries.

Notes 1 https://www​.pewresearch​.org​/fact​-tank​/2020​/04​/01​/more​-than​-nine​-in​-ten​-people​-worldwide​-live​-in​-countries​-with​-travel​-restrictions​-amid​-covid​-19/ 2 https://www​.smithsonianmag​.com​/history​/what​-rome​-learned​-deadly​-antonine​-plague​-165​-d​ -180974758/ 3 https://www​.history​.com​/topics​/middle​-ages​/black​-death 4 https://www​.institutmontaigne​.org​/en​/blog​/past​-virus​-migrations​-mobility​-and​-pandemics​ -return​-normalcy 5 https://businesstech​.co​.za​/news​/government​/383143​/massive​-border​-fence​-between​-south​ -africa​-and​-zimbabwe​-to​-combat​-coronavirus​-spread/ 6 https://www​.cdc​.gov​/flu​/pandemic​-resources​/1918​-pandemic​-h1n1​.html 7 https://www​.worldometers​.info​/coronavirus/ 8 https://www​.iom​.int​/sites​/g​/files​/tmzbdl486​/files​/documents​/issue​_brief​_return​_task​_force​ .pdf 9 https://www​.gov​.za​/speeches​/home​-affairs​-extends​-validity​-visas​-which​-expired​-during​-lockdown​-30​-mar​-2021​-0000 10 https://www​.cdc​.gov​/flu​/pandemic​-resources​/1918​-pandemic​-h1n1​.html 11 Pandemic and migration. Retrieved from https://ec​.europa​.eu​/migrant​-integration​/library​-document​/pandemic​-and​-migration​_en 12 https://www​.institutmontaigne​.org​/en​/blog​/past​-virus​-migrations​-mobility​-and​-pandemics​ -return​-normalcy 13 https://news​.un​.org​/en​/story​/2021​/06​/1094292 14 https://www​.un​.org​/sites​/un2​.un​.org​/files​/wmr​_2020​.pdf 15 https://publications​.iom​.int​/system​/files​/pdf​/covid​-19​-and​-the​-state​-of​-global​.pdf 16 https://publications​.iom​.int​/system​/files​/pdf​/mpp​-44​.pdf 17 https://news​.un​.org​/en​/story​/2021​/06​/1095082 18 https://publications​.iom​.int​/system​/files​/pdf​/wmr​_2020​.pdf 19 https://ecdpm​.org​/talking​-points​/connecting​-people​-markets​-africa​-2021/ 20 https://ecdpm​.org​/talking​-points​/connecting​-people​-markets​-africa​-2021/ 21 https://graphics​.reuters​.com​/world​-coronavirus​-tracker​-and​-maps​/regions​/africa/ 22 https://www​.migrationpolicy​.org​/multimedia​/migrants​-africa​-covid​-19​-emergency​-measures​ -inclusive​-social​-protection​-systems 23 https://www​.hrw​.org​/news​/2021​/03​/01​/saudi​-arabia​-repatriates​-hundreds​-detained​-ethiopians 24 https://publications​.iom​.int​/system​/files​/pdf​/mrs​-60​.pdf

224

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on African Migration 25 https://migrationnetwork​.un​.org​/sites​/g​/files​/tmzbdl416​/files​/resources​_files​/discussion​ _paper​_why​_integration​_matters​.pdf 26 https://www​.euro​.who​.int​/en​/health​-topics​/health​-determinants​/migration​-and​-health​/migration​-and​-health​-in​-the​-european​-region​/migration​-and​-health​-key​-issues​#292117 27 https://dtm​.iom​.int​/reports​/west​-and​-central​-africa-​%E2​%80​%94​-migration​-and​-covid​-19​-west​ -and​-central​-africa​-examining​-impacts 28 COVID-19: A new challenge for migration policy. Migration Policy Practice, Volume X, No. 2, April–June. Available at https://publications​.iom​.int​/system​/files​/pdf​/mpp​-44​.pdf 29 https://www​.unodc​.org​/documents​/data​-and​-analysis​/covid​/Covid​-related​-impact​-on​-SoM​ -TiP​-web3​.pdf 30 https://www​.unodc​.org​/documents​/data​-and​-analysis​/covid​/Covid​-related​-impact​-on​-SoM​ -TiP​-web3​.pdf 31 https://blogs​.worldbank​.org​/peoplemove​/no​-one​-leaves​-home​-unless​-home​-mouth​-shark 32 https://africacenter​.org​/spotlight​/mapping​-risk​-factors​-spread​-covid​-19​-africa/​#density 33 https://news​.un​.org​/en​/story​/2021​/06​/1094292 34 https://www​.iom​.int​/sites​/g​/files​/tmzbdl486​/files​/covid​-19​_impact​_briefing​_paper​_en​.pdf 35 https://ec​.europa​.eu​/info​/live​-work​-travel​-eu​/coronavirus​-response​/travel​-during​-coronavirus​ -pandemic​/exemptions​-coronavirus​-travel​-restrictions​-eu​_en 36 https://www​.worldbank​.org​/en​/news​/press​-release​/2020​/04​/22​/world​-bank​-predicts​-sharpest​-decline​-of​-remittances​-in​-recent​-history 37 https://www​.worldbank​.org​/en​/news​/press​-release​/2021​/05​/12​/defying​-predictions​-remittance​-flows​-remain​-strong​-during​-covid​-19​-crisis 38 https://www​.worldbank​.org​/en​/news​/press​-release​/2021​/05​/12​/defying​-predictions​-remittance​-flows​-remain​-strong​-during​-covid​-19​-crisis 39 https://www​.brookings​.edu​/blog​/africa​-in​-focus​/2021​/03​/15​/keep​-remittances​-flowing​-to​ -africa/ 40 https://www​.worldbank​.org​/en​/news​/press​-release​/2021​/05​/12​/defying​-predictions​-remittance​-flows​-remain​-strong​-during​-covid​-19​-crisis 41 https://data4migration​.org​/articles​/immigration​-emigration​-statistics​-are​-migrants​-left​-behind​ -how​-covid​-19​-hinders​-better​-migration​-data​/index​.html 42 https://www​.migrationdataportal​.org​/themes​/big​-data​-migration​-and​-human​-mobility

References African Union. (2020). Report of the impact of Covid-19 on the production of migration statistics in Africa. African Union. Bah, T., Batista, C., Gubert, F., & McKenzie, D. J. (2021). How has COVID-19 affected the intention to migrate via the backway to Europe and to a neighboring African country? Survey evidence and a salience experiment in the Gambia. IZA Discussion Paper No. 14337, Available at SSRN: https:// ssrn​.com​/abstract​=3846681 or http://dx​.doi​.org​/10​.2139​/ssrn​.3846681 Bara, A. (2020). COVID-19 and the future of migration and mobility in Africa. International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) Working Paper. Benton, M., Batalova, J., Davidoff-Gore, S., & Schmidt, T. (2021). COVID-19 and the state of global mobility in 2021. Washington, D.C., and Geneva: Migration Policy Institute and International Organization for Migration. Cohen, J. H. (2020). Modeling migration, insecurity and COVID-19. Migration Letters, 17(3), 405–409. Cohen, J. H., & Sirkeci, I. (2011). Cultures of migration: The global nature of contemporary mobility. University of Texas Press. Connor, P. (2020). More than nine-in ten people worldwide lives in countries with travel restrictions amid COVID-19. Pew Research Institute, 1 April. www​.pewresearch​.org​/fact​-tank​/2020​ /04​/01​/more​-than​-nine​-inten​-people​-worldwide​-live​-in​-countrieswith​-travel​-restrictions​-amid​ -covid​-19 Devermont, J., & Olander E. (2020). COVID-19 is an african political crisis as much as a health and economic emergency. CSIS. March 18, 2020. https://www​.csis​.org​/analysis​/covid​-19​-african​ -political​-crisis​-much​-health​-and​-economic​-emergency.

225

Margaret Rutendo Magwedere and Daniel Makina Djankov, S., & Panizza, U. (2020). Developing economies after COVID-19: An introduction. In S. Djankov & U. Panizza (Eds.), COVID-19 in developing economies. Centre for Economic Policy Research. https://voxeu​.org​/system​/files​/epublication​/Covid​-19​_in​_developing​_economies​ .pdf Dobyns, H. F. (1983). Their number become thinned: Native American population dynamics in Eastern North America. University of Tennessee Press. Ginsburg, C., Collinson, M. A., Gómez-Olivé, F. X., Harawa, S., Pheiffer, C. F., & White, M. J. (2022). The impact of COVID-19 on a cohort of origin residents and internal migrants from South Africa's rural northeast. SSM – Population Health, 17, 101049. Huremović, D. (2019). Brief history of pandemics (pandemics throughout history). In D. Huremović (Ed.), Psychiatry of Pandemics. Cham: Springer. https://doi​.org​/10​.1007​/978​-3​-030​-15346​-5_2 International Labour Organisation. (2018). New ILO figures show 164 million people are migrant workers. https://www​.ilo​.org​/global​/about​-the​-ilo​/newsroom​/news​/WCMS​_652106​/lang-​-en​ /index​.htm International Labour Organisation. (2021). Global labour migration increases by five million. https:// www​.ilo​.org​/global​/about​-the​-ilo​/newsroom​/news​/WCMS​_808884​/lang-​-en​/index​.htm International Organisation for Migration. (2020a). West and Central Africa — COVID-19 — Regional Flow Monitoring Report (December 2020). https://dtm​.iom​.int​/reports​/west​-and​-central​-africa-​ %E2​%80​%94​-covid​-19-​%E2​%80​%94​-regional​-flow​-monitoring​-report​-december​-2020 IOM. (2020a). COVID-19 Impact on Mobility: West & Central Africa – April 2020 (Report #1). IOM. IOM. (2020b). Migration data relevant for the COVID-19 pandemic. Migration Data Portal. https:// migrationdataportal​.org​/de​/themes​/migration​-data​-relevant​-covid​-19​-pandemic Kassegn, A. (2021). COVID-19: The impacts of the global crises on African remittances and countries response to this an extreme crisis. Cogent Economics & Finance, 9(1), 1948665. Knomad. (2020). Covid-19 crisis through a migration lens. April, 2020. https://www​.knomad​.org​/ sites​/default​/files​/2020​-06​/R8​_Migration​%26Remittances​_brief32​.pdf Knomad. (2022). Remittances brave global headwinds. Retrieved from https://www.knomad. org/sites/default/files/publication-doc/migration_and_development_brief_37_nov_2022.pdf [Accessed 13 June 2023]. Kraut, A. (1994). Historical aspects of refugee and immigration movements. In A. J. Marsella, T. Bornemann, S. Ekblad, & J. Orley (Eds.), Amidst peril and pain: The mental health and well-being of the world’s refugees (pp. 33–56). American Psychological Association. https://doi​.org​/10​.1037​ /10147​-020 Kraut, A. M. (2010). Immigration, ethnicity, and the pandemic. Public Health Reports, 125(Suppl 3), 123–133. Littman, R. J., & Littman, M. L. (1973). Galen and the Antonine Plague. The American Journal of Philology, 94(3), 243–255. Mackowiak, P. A., & Sehdev, P. S. (2002). The origin of quarantine. Clinical Infectious Diseases, 35(9), 1071–1072. Massinga Loembé, M., Tshangela, A., Salyer, S. J., Varma, J. K., Ouma, A. E. O., & Nkengasong, J. N. (2020). COVID-19 in Africa: The spread and response. Nature Medicine, 26(7), 999–1003. Meyer, D., & Shera, A. (2017). The impact of remittances on economic growth: An econometric model. Economia, 18(2), 147–155. Mushomi, J. A., Palattiyil, G., Bukuluki, P., Sidhva, D., Myburgh, N. D., Nair, H., & Nyasulu, P. S. (2022). Impact of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) crisis on migrants on the move in Southern Africa: Implications for policy and practice. Health Systems & Reform, 8(1), e2019571. Perthes, V. (2020). The corona crisis and international relations: Open questions, tentative assumptions. SWP Point of View. www​.swp​-berlin​.org​/en​/publication​/the​-corona​-crisis​-and​-international​ -relationsopen​-questions​-tentative​-assumptions/ Ratha, D., Kim, E. J., Plaza, S., & Seshan, G. (2021). Resilience: COVID-19 crisis through a migration lens. Migration & Development Brief, 34, (1–56) Schöfberger, I., & Rango, M. (2020). COVID-19 and migration in West and North Africa and across the Mediterranean. Migration in West and North Africa and across the mediterranean. Trends, risks, development and governance. International Organization for Migration Publication. Retrieved

226

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on African Migration January 1, 2022, from https://publications​.iom​.int​/system​/files​/pdf​/covid19​-and​-migration​-in​ -west​-and​-north​-africa​.pdf Sirkeci, I., & Yucesahin, M. M. (2020). Coronavirus and migration: Analysis of human mobility and the spread of COVID-19. Migration Letters, 17(2), 379–398. United Nations. (2015). Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Retrieved from https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda [Accessed 13 June 2023]. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. (2020). International migration 2020 highlights (ST/ESA/SER.A/452). World Health Organisation. (2020). Situation report – 1. January 21, 2020. Retrieved March 1, 2022, from https://www​.who​.int​/docs​/default​-source​/coronaviruse​/situation​-reports​/20200121​ -sitrep​-1​-2019​-ncov​.pdf​?sfvrsn​=20a99c10_4

227

PART IV

Migration, Diaspora Engagement, and the Politics of Development

14 THE REMITTANCES– DEVELOPMENT DEBATE IN AFRICA Daniel Makina and Margaret Rutendo Magwedere

Introduction Consistent with economic theory, empirical studies have largely confirmed that foreign capital inflows (whether in the form of foreign direct investment (FDI), migrant remittances and official development aid have a positive impact on economic growth) (see for instance, Mowlaei, 2018, for evidence focusing on Africa). Globally, remittances are an important source of development finance second to FDI and have increasingly become a key source of external funding for developing countries. For many developing countries, they have become their economic lifeline. Remittances are increasingly becoming an important developmental tool as they contribute to poverty reduction (Adams, 2004, 2006; Acosta et al., 2008, among others), economic growth (Adams & Page, 2005; Barajas et al., 2018 among others), entrepreneurship (Yang, 2008; Ajefu & Ogebe, 2019), education, the labour market through the supply of labour (Ambrosius & Cuecuecha, 2016) and financial sector development (Aggarwal et al., 2011). The smaller, poorer and fragile African economies rely heavily on remittances, as in these economies, remittances constitute a significant proportion of their gross domestic product (GDP). Remittances are viewed to be a stable source of finance and to be countercyclical during crises – be it during financial crises, natural disasters, or political conflicts in remittancerecipient countries (Ratha, 2003; Ratha & Mohapatra, 2007; Makina, 2014). For instance, in Sub-Saharan Africa, the aggregate fall in remittances due to the global financial crisis of 2007–2009 was smaller than the fall in private or official capital flows. Even beyond Africa, remittances remained more resilient relative to other categories of resource flows for many developing countries. The countercyclicality of remittances assumes that remittance-sending decisions are made by individuals who possess a detailed understanding of the needs of their family members in their home countries, and hence they tend to increase during economic downturns in the migrant country of origin (Ratha, 2003). Using extensive data sets, Frankel (2011) has confirmed the validity of this observation which has profound implications for the importance of remittances in terms of household security through the role they play in smoothing DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-18

231

Daniel Makina and Margaret Rutendo Magwedere

household consumption, expenditure, and investment patterns. In contrast, other private capital flows such as FDI and portfolio flows are procyclical, that is, they tend to flow into an economy during boom years, and either slow down or reverse during economic downturns. Notably, whilst remittances tended to be countercyclical in the previous crises, they became procyclical to a lesser degree like other international financial flows during the COVID-19 pandemic that started in December 2019 in China and then spread to the rest of the world. It is logical that when remittances are intermediated through the banking system, the development impact becomes more pronounced as there would be better matching of savings with investment opportunities. On a balance of probabilities, remittances received in cash informally are less likely to be saved than those received through a bank account. Hence, Garba, Adekunle and Adeniyi (2020: 15) suggest that both migrant workers and their beneficiaries should be encouraged to make use of banks so that remittances could be made available to finance genuine investments. Increasing the value of remittances moving through formal channels increases the aggregate level of loanable funds in the financial system and in turn contributes to overall economic growth (Aggarwal et al., 2006; Demirgüç-Kunt et al., 2009; Giuliano & Ruiz-Arranz, 2009; Karikari et al., 2016). Nonetheless, remittances could still increase the demand for savings instruments considering that the continuous flow of remittances may provide households with excess cash for a certain period (Saydaliyev, Chin & Oskenbayev, 2020). This could potentially increase the demand for deposit accounts since financial institutions offer households a safe place to store their temporary excess cash (Misati, Kamau & Nassir, 2019). More so, the deposit accounts could increase the chances of remittance recipients in obtaining a loan from formal financial institutions or banks. In some African countries where credit markets are inefficient or nonexistent, remittances have helped funding local entrepreneurs as well as assisted to bypass the lack of collateral or high lending costs. In this manner, remittances can substitute for lack of access to credit and enable households and enterprises to increase investment in human and physical capital (see Ambrosius & Cuecuecha, 2016, for review). Gleaning from several types of empirical evidence, the World Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) aptly summarise the impact of remittances on households as follows: For poor households, remittances provide a lifeline essential for poverty reduction. For vulnerable families, remittances can be a risk management tool (safety net) to reduce vulnerability. For resilient households (stable income families), remittances are an investment resource that can be invested in start-ups, existing businesses, education, and health. (Cuadros-Meñaca, 2020) In other words, the impact of remittances on receiving families varies according to income levels. Furthermore, for low- and middle-income countries that include the African region, remittances also contribute to the attainment of several 2030 sustainable development goals (SDGs) which include, among others: SDG 1, No Poverty; SDG 2, Zero Hunger; SDG 3, Good Health and Well-Being; SDG 4, Quality Education; SDG 6, Clean Water and Sanitation; SDG 8, Decent Work and Economic Growth; and SDG 10, Reduced Inequality. In this regard, remittances are recognised as one of the potential sources of funding for the SDGs. 232

The Remittances–Development Debate in Africa

At a macroeconomic level, there are several positive impacts that African countries can derive from remittances. In countries where they exceed 3% of GDP, they provide a foreign exchange buffer that stabilises current accounts (Bugamelli & Parteno, 2009). Furthermore, the IMF now factors remittances in debt sustainability analyses of low-income countries while rating agencies also take them into account in sovereign rating decisions of middle-income countries. The joint World Bank–IMF Low-Income Country Debt Sustainability Framework explicitly factors remittances in evaluating a country’s debt capacity and ability to pay external debts. Over the years, the economic growth literature has become more interested in the macroeconomic impacts of remittances (Garba et al. 2020). In a study by Stojanov and Strielkowski (2013) in which the impact of remittances and official development assistance (ODA) was evaluated, they found remittances to be more efficiently absorbed and more impactful on economic growth. However, in a study by Sobiech (2019), it is demonstrated that remittances only foster economic growth in countries with low levels of financial development; in other words, remittances and financial development act as substitutes in such countries. The interaction of the two factors becomes irrelevant in countries with high levels of financial development. Since most African countries have underdeveloped financial systems, remittances are ordinarily expected to foster economic growth (Nyamongo et al., 2012).

Trends of Remittances in Africa Globally, the volume of remittances is on an upward trend (having risen from $470 billion in 2010 to $707 billion in 2019, for instance). In Sub-Saharan Africa, remittance receipts rose from $32 billion in 2010 to $49 billion in 2019. However, due to the pandemic, remittances to Sub-Sahara Africa dropped by 12.1% to $42 billion in 2020 with a noticeable upward trend in 2021 when remittance receipts to the value of $49 billion were received (Knomad 2022). According to Knomad (2022), in 2021, five countries in Africa, namely, Egypt, Nigeria, Morocco, Ghana and Kenya accounted for over 90% of remittances received, indicating a significant concentration in a few countries. Historically, some countries in Africa are very dependent on remittances, recording high remittances as a proportion of the gross domestic product. In 2021, eleven African countries had remittances constituting more than 5% of annual GDP. Figure 14.1 shows remittance receipts by absolute dollar value and as a proportion of gross domestic product for the top ten Sub-Sahara African (SSA) countries. Despite the COVID-19 interruptions, top remittance-receiving countries in 2019 still emerge at the top in 2021 although there were noticeable fluctuations in most countries except for the Comoros and The Gambia which had an increase in remittances as a proportion of GDP despite the pandemic. However, in absolute dollar value, remittance inflows in most African countries had an increasing trend. It is important to note that Africa receives the least volume of remittances compared with other low- and middle-income regions of the world. However, it is estimated that much as 45–65% of remittance flows to Sub-Saharan Africa are unaccounted for as they are transferred informally and hence not officially recorded (Freund & Spatafora, 2005). Since the late 2000s, remittances in Sub-Saharan Africa have surpassed FDI. As illustrated in Figure 14.2, the flow of personal remittances received has a fairly stable upward trend as compared to that of FDI and ODA. In many African countries, remittances constitute more than 5% of their GDP. Figure 14.3 shows the top ten countries in Africa where remittances constituted a significant share of GDP over the period 2018–2021. 233

Daniel Makina and Margaret Rutendo Magwedere ($ billion, 2021)

25

(% of GDP, 2021)

30 25

20

20

15

15

10

Ghana

Zimbabwe

Togo

Senegal

Liberia

Guinea-Bissau

Cabo Verde

Comoros

Gambia, The

Togo

South Africa

Mali

Uganda

D.R. Congo

Zimbabwe

Senegal

Kenya

0 Ghana

0 Nigeria

5 Lesotho

10

5

Figure 14.1  Top Ten Remittance Recipients in Sub-Saharan Africa Region, 2021 6E+10 Net FDI flows Net ODA and Official Aid received Personal Remittances received Portfolio flows

5E+10 4E+10 3E+10 2E+10 1E+10 0E+00 -1E+10

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

2015

2020

Figure 14.2  Net FDI Flows, Personal Remittances, ODA and Official Aid Received in Sub-Saharan Africa (US$) (1970–2020)

Figure 14.3 illustrates that some countries in Africa are heavily reliant on remittances as they have a remittance-to-GDP ratio above 10%. While Nigeria (the most populous country in Africa) is not among the top ten countries where remittances have a larger share of GDP, it received the second largest monetary value of remittances in Africa of $19.19 billion which is about 4.3% of the country’s GDP in 2021 (Knomad, 2022). Africa is one of the low- and middle-income regions of the world, according to the World Bank classification. Table 14.1 illustrates the trend of remittances in low- and middle-income regions. We observe Sub-Saharan Africa exhibiting an increasing trend of remittances of about 5% annually for the 2020s, which is both above the annual growth rate for low- and middle-income countries and the global annual growth rate of about 4%. Thus, going forward, the African region is forecast to have the fastest growth in remittances. Analysis of the source countries or regions of remittances going to Africa illustrated in Table 14.1 shows that both Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa get their lion’s share of remittances from Western Europe. While the USA is the second largest source of remit234

The Remittances–Development Debate in Africa 30 25 2018 2019 2020 2021

20 15 10 5

e bw

Zim ba

To go

ia m

al

l So

Se ne ga

Lib

er ia

o Le so th

Co

m or Eg os yp t, Ar ab Re p. Ga m bi a, Th e Gu in ea -B iss au

0

Figure 14.3  Top Ten Remittance-Reliant (as a Proportion of GDP) Countries in Africa (2018–2021) Table 14.1 Sources of Remittances to Africa Sources of Remittances

Received by Sub-Saharan African Countries (%)

Received by North Africa (%)

Western Europe United States Gulf Cooperation Council Within Africa Other High-Income Countries

41 28 9 10 8

54 5 27 4 7

3

3

Other Developing Countries Source: Ratha et al. (2011).

tances for Sub-Saharan Africa, the Gulf Cooperation Council countries are the second largest source for North Africa. It should be noted that developed countries have mostly skilled African migrants with higher education attainment, and as a result, the higher-paying jobs allow them to send more money home (Monga & Lin, 2015). Microdata of African migrants in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) indicate that they remit twice as much on average as migrants from other developing countries (Bollard, McKenzie & Morten, 2010). Notably, remittances from within Africa constitute the third largest source of remittances for Sub-Saharan Africa, a clear indication of substantial intraAfrican migration. For instance, the share and value of remittances received from within the African region was $10.9 billion (36% of remittances received) in 2011 and by 2016 it had risen to $14.9 billion (43% of remittances received), a figure greater than all Sub-Saharan Africa’s mineral exports of $11.5 billion to the rest of the world in 2016 (World Integrated Trade Solutions, 2017). Although remittances from outside Africa are more than those received within the continent, the growth rate of intra-Africa remittances is higher. When remittances are computed on per-capita (annual remittances/population) basis, we find that from 2005, there has been a substantial increase in remittances per capita for all low- and middle-income regions including Sub-Saharan Africa (see Table 14.2). Although 235

236

2.69

18.14

6.53

29.54

5.73 3.4

24.11

5.34

35.38

5.88 3.65

1985

1.69

1980

4.92 4.64

41.24

12.97

40.9

4.75

1990

7.92 5.23

42.24

26.67

45.56

7.66

1995

12.36 7.22

36.7

38.1

51.65

9.14

2000

22.54 26.53

67.76

88.17

96.2

17.66

2005

50.02 36.32

99.04

96.48

149.2

31.18

2010

67.2 42.9

125

111

165

53.7

2015

62.5 37.63

121.2

117.8

164.4

50.55

2016

65.4 40.1

134

129

175

49.3

2017

Source: Computed from the World Bank (2021)1 data, based on data update from World Development Indicators.

East Asia and Pacific Europe and Central Asia Latin America and Caribbean Middle East and North Africa South Asia Sub-Saharan Africa

Regions

Table 14.2 Remittances Per Capita

72.26 43.34

132.9

140.2

187.3

49.52

2018

76.17 44.07

124.15

151.78

203.64

48.37

2019

79.24 37.45

125.74

159.59

191.12

47.22

2020

Daniel Makina and Margaret Rutendo Magwedere

The Remittances–Development Debate in Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa registers the lowest increase, the trend became significantly upward since 2005.

The Effects of COVID-19 Pandemic on Remittances The coronavirus – COVID-19 – was first identified in Wuhan, in the Hubei province of China in December 2019, which rapidly spread globally to be declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) by mid-March 2020, and culminated in a health crisis as well as causing an economic crisis. Countries affected responded by instituting various measures to mitigate the spread of the pandemic, which included lockdowns, quarantines, travel restrictions, gathering restrictions, mandating wearing of masks, social distancing, and suspension of sporting activities, among others. Travel restrictions meant temporary suspension of both internal and international migration. However, the remittance market remained resilient despite the pandemic, reflecting the altruistic motives of remittances. Migrants’ capacity to remit was, in turn, supported by strong economic activity and stable labour markets in many migrant-hosting countries that implemented fiscal stimulus programmes and unconventional monetary policies (Knomad, 2022). Despite the pandemic, according to the World Bank (2022),2 remittance inflows to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) were projected to increase by 4.2% in 2022 to reach US $630 billion. It was projected that the remittance trend would remain upward for the remainder of the year as the altruistic nature would be driven by rising food prices in most low- and medium-income countries exacerbated by the Russia–Ukraine conflict. Knomad (2022) observed that the remittances to Sub-Sahara Africa increased by 14.1% in 2021, mainly supported by increased economic activity in Europe and the United States. The COVID-19 crisis did not impact the remittance market in Africa as forecasted. The Ratha (2021) had projected a decline of 8.8%, to $44 billion in 2020, followed by a further decline of 5.8% to $41 billion in 2021 for remittance flows to Sub-Saharan Africa. However, the countercyclical nature of remittances and the altruistic motivations of remitters defied the World Bank’s predictions as remittance flows to Sub-Saharan Africa remained more resilient than initially projected. Despite the build-up of the pandemic pressures during 2021, remittance inflows to Africa rose by approximately 14% to $49 billion in 2021, erasing the decrease of 8% recorded in the year 2020 (World Bank, 2022). Although the pandemic affected the supply of money for people to transfer money, “stay at home” guidelines and lockdown regulations also affected the extent to which people were able to carry out transfers by meeting with intermediaries and money transfer service providers (Kalantaryan & McMahon, 2020: 18). Sub-Saharan Africa registered a decline in remittance flows of 12.5% in 2020 of which the largest decline was entirely because of 27.7% decline in Nigeria’s remittance inflows. Excluding Nigeria, Sub-Saharan Africa registered an increase in remittance inflows of 2.3% (World Bank, 2021).3 Nigeria remains Sub-Saharan Africa’s largest remittance receiver in absolute dollar terms and its remittance receipts constitute almost 50% of the region’s receipts. The decrease in remittance receipts in Nigeria for 2020 was also affected by other factors in addition to the pandemic. There was an upsurge in the use of informal channels by remitters to Nigeria; however, when the Central Bank introduced the Naira-4-dollar policy to encourage formal remittance channels, recorded remittance receipts in 2021 improved by 11.2%. Data from the Afrobarometer indicate that financial and digital resources are unevenly spread across African countries (Kalantaryan & McMahon, 2020:18). According to the 237

Daniel Makina and Margaret Rutendo Magwedere

data, in eight countries (Benin, Lesotho, Tanzania, Madagascar, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, Niger), more than half of their populations that depend on remittances have no access to the internet via a mobile phone. The highest proportion with no internet access is in Niger, where only one-fifth (22%) of the people who receive remittances have access to the internet via their phones. In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020, Sub-Saharan Africa experienced the highest decline in remittance inflow of 12.2% compared with other regions, while the world average decline was just 2%, arguably because the region is among the poorest in terms of network development, digital engagement and integration. Though Africa does not have well-established digital remittance platforms, the few intra-regional ones operated by Mobile Telephone Network (MTN), ORANGE, M-Pesa, etc., are able to digitally transfer remittances across the continent. The poor integration between digital platforms in Africa and the rest of the world affects remittance flows to Africa more significantly than flows within Africa.

Controversies Surrounding Remittances Despite remittances contributing to poverty reduction (via social protection functions), evidence of their direct link to economic growth is rather mixed and inconclusive. For instance, can we confidently say the top-remittance-receiving African countries listed in Figure 14.2 have better growth rates than their peers that do not receive as many remittances? Recent studies argue that high levels of remittances may trigger a vicious cycle of economic stagnation and dependence, a sort of remittance trap (Chami et al., 2018; Lim & Morshed, 2015; Adenutsi, 2011; Chami et al., 2003). Researchers advance several arguments in support of this vicious cycle. Firstly, it is contended that remittances are largely spent on household consumption which raises the demand for both traded and non-traded goods, and the flood of foreign exchange occasioned by increases in remittances raises prices and makes exports uncompetitive and increases imports. Secondly, high levels of remittances may act as a substitute for labour income, resulting in reduced income tax collections. Domestic resource mobilisation through taxes in Africa is already lower as compared to other developing regions; for example, the average tax-to-GDP ratio was 18.2% in 2016 in Africa compared to an average of 22.7% and 34.3% for Latin America and the OECD countries, respectively, in the same year (Revenue Statistics in Africa, 2019). Thirdly, the resultant-reduced tax collections diminish government budget allocations for social protection. Fourthly, remittances can raise the reservation wage, that is, the lowest wage workers are willing to accept for certain job types and further raises domestic prices rendering the traded sector uncompetitive. Fifthly, remittances can cause shifts in the labour market, whereby they would encourage skilled workers to emigrate in search of better-paying jobs, leaving the domestic non-traded sector with low-skilled labour. In the light of the foregoing possible negative effects, one is tempted to pose the question: are remittances causing some African governments to shirk their social welfare responsibilities? It would seem economies that rely heavily on remittances have reduced government effectiveness as studies suggest that remittances substitute for government spending on public services (Ahmed, 2012; Abdih et al., 2012; Easton & Montinola, 2017). In countries with authoritarian governments, high levels of remittances can result in the “free rider” problem as governments relinquish the provision of public services and spend more on patronage (Ahmed, 2013; Easton & Montinola, 2017). An increase in private consumption from remittances reduces the incentives of households to monitor and hold governments 238

The Remittances–Development Debate in Africa

accountable. Thus, remittances can have a negative influence on public social protection expenditures and serve as a private substitute for public social protection (Mina, 2019). Furthermore, remittances can influence corruption, heightening it when leaders of authoritarian regimes leverage them for their political benefit (Tyburski, 2014).

The African Remittances Market The intermediation of remittances between senders and receivers in Africa mirrors the state of financial development on the continent. Africa is the least banked region in the world. The World Bank estimated that on average only 24.8% of adults in Sub-Saharan Africa have bank accounts in a world where at least 69% have an account. It is therefore not surprising that the African remittance market is underdeveloped. Broadly, the remittance market comprises formal channels and informal channels, just as the financial system is characterised by formal and informal systems. The choice of the remittance channel that migrants use is determined by several factors ranging from convenience, access, cost, and cultural factors, among others. The formal remittance market is dominated by a few international money transfer operators (MTOs) who partner with banks in Africa. The dominant MTOs are the Western Union and MoneyGram who control 65%of the market. With the advancement of technology, money transfer has taken a different phase, following the continuous adoption of mobile money operators worldwide. Mobile money was introduced in Africa in 2007 with the launch of the M-PESA (ENACT, 2020:6). Traditional MTOs like Western Union and MoneyGram have also adopted digital platforms. Following the revolution of digitalisation, digital platforms such as WorldRemit, Azimo, TransferWise and Payoneer have captured a significant share of the African remittance market. In Africa, WorldRemit has integrated with major mobile wallets such MTN, Airtel, Tigo, EcoCash and Orange to ensure everyone, everywhere has access to financial services. African migrants outside the continent largely utilise the formal remittance channels to send money home. Since the few banks that partner with MTOs are concentrated in urban areas, formal remittance channels have limited reach to remittance recipients in the rural areas underserved by banks. Despite post offices having a network with reach to rural areas, they do not play a significant role in remittance transfer except in Algeria where they are a major player through partnership with the postal system of France, the main source of the country’s remittances. Figure 14.4 illustrates the approximate distribution of remittance payout channels across Africa. Informal remittance channels include the use of friends or relatives, bus drivers and other informal means to send remittances home. These are mainly used by intra-African migrants. Their appeal is their convenience and reach to rural remittance recipients, and not that they are cost-effective and without risks. Judging from the studies which estimate that remittances transferred through informal channels in Africa could be as much as 30–70% of total remittances, a substantial amount of remittances flowing to Africa goes unrecorded. There are several challenges that face the African remittance market, the foremost being the cost of remittance transfer. The cost of sending money from, to and within Sub-Saharan Africa is the most expensive as compared with other regions. According to the World Bank (2019), as in 2019 it was 9.3% of the value of remittance transactions compared to the global average of 6.9%. The SDG target cost is 3%. The intra-African remittance corridors are costlier than the North–South corridors leading to a greater usage of risky informal remittance 239

Daniel Makina and Margaret Rutendo Magwedere Percentage of Usage Post Office 7.60% Percentage of Usage Bank 2.40

Percentage of Usage Others 0.60%

MTO Bank Post Office Others

Percentage of Usage MTO 89.40%

Figure 14.4  Percentage of Usage of Formal Remittance Channels Table 14.3 Selected Remittance Corridors and Their Cost of Transfer Corridor

South Africa to Botswana South Africa to Angola Tanzania to Rwanda Tanzania to Uganda Tanzania to Kenya South Africa to Zimbabwe Angola to Namibia United States to Nigeria France to Senegal

Average Cost of Transfer (%) 2020Q4

2021Q4

19.68 20.91 20.25 23.73 19.16 13.67 22.83 4.74 4.31

16.28 16.85 24.37 29.68 31.45 11.20 14.50 3.57 4.54

Note: The cost of sending $200 or equivalent. Source: World Bank Remittance Prices Worldwide database (2022).

service providers. Table 14.3 shows the average cost of sending $200 or equivalent in some of the corridors in Africa. The World Bank estimates that if remittance transaction costs across Africa could be brought down to just 5%, the average rate of advanced countries, remittances flowing to African households would increase by $4 billion.4 Progress in reducing remittance transaction costs is being made in intra-regional transfers that are using the mobile money transfer platform. The agreement between banks and mobile money operators such as M-Pesa and the like in East Africa (covering Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania) is one such collaboration whose objective is to reduce the cost of remittances. There are similar arrangements in West Africa involving mobile money cross-border transfers (mainly by Airtel, MTN and Orange mobile networks), which have reduced the costs of remittances to 2.4% on average. 240

The Remittances–Development Debate in Africa

For example, Orange customers in France are able to remit money to Orange’s customers in Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Madagascar and Mali. Thirty-three percent of adults in Sub-Sahara Africa have a mobile money account with an equal share of adults saving in a financial institution and saving using a mobile money account (Global Findex, 2021).5 In 2018, Juniper Research found that by 2021 international digital peer-to-peer (P2P) remittances via mobile and online platforms would exceed $300 billion globally up from an estimated $225 billion in 2018. This would constitute 44% of the formal remittance transfers, and this would increase competition and efficiencies in the remittance market. In developing countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, mobile money is providing price competition in the remittance market (Alhassan et al., 2021). Due to globalisation cross-border payments which include remittances among others are vital for economic development. Fintech has disrupted the remittance market and it is facilitating cost-effective remittance transfer in most developing economies. The digital revolution in the remittance market has the potential of reducing leakages and delays in money transfer services. Originally, the motive of mobile money was to facilitate the ability of money transfers within the country borders, but this has since evolved, adoption and usage of mobile money is now facilitating cross-border remittance transfers (Global Findex, 2021). Digital financial services such as mobile money, cryptocurrency or the innovatively introduced Central Bank digital currency are essential during economic shocks as money can be quickly and affordably transferred across long distances (Jack & Suri, 2014; World Bank, 2021a; Bank of International Settlements, 2021). The use of Fintech companies, particularly in the blockchain technology space, is improving the speed and transparency in the remittances market. For example, in the African context, Bitkesh is using blockchain technology to service the South Africa–Zimbabwe remittance corridor6 whilst there is a partnership between BitMari and Tanjalo of Nigeria for remitting money on the Nigeria–Zimbabwe corridor.7 However, lack of education and trust among migrants on the existence of these cheaper platforms reduces the cost-effectiveness of Fintech services in reducing the cost of remittances in certain corridors. Additionally, central banks in Africa are exploring or in pilot of using central bank digital currency (CBDC) to enhance payment systems. Internationally, Sub-Saharan Africa is the region with the most expensive remittance corridors; with an average cost of just under 8% of the transfer amount far from the SDG target of 3%. The remittance market across the globe has well-known issues of which the CBDCs have the potential of addressing a number of these issues. Reducing remittance cost by embracing cheaper option through the use of Fintech means more money can be channelled to economic development by remittance-recipient countries. Besides cost reduction, Fintech can facilitate a transition from using unregulated and cashbased remittance channels towards regulated, digital channels. Despite the possible opportunities by Fintech in reducing the cost of remittances and improving efficiency in remittance transfer, regulations around money laundering can be a challenge for the effective use of digital remittances.

Policy Recommendations The foregoing discussion informs that in order to leverage remittances for development, policy interventions can be undertaken principally in two broad areas 241

Daniel Makina and Margaret Rutendo Magwedere

Reducing Remittance Transfer Costs Given that most migration in Africa is intra-regional and that one-third of total remittances are intra-regional, mobile money transfer promises to be the immediate answer to lower remittance transfer costs enabling the achievement of SDG target of 3%. Governments can facilitate the interoperability of MTOs through regulations and agreements. Cognisant that mobile money cross-border transfers significantly reduce remittance transfer costs, African countries should expedite regulatory approval for mobile money transfer operators (MTOs) to send and receive remittances. Furthermore, given that cross-border remittance transfers require interoperability between mobile money schemes, MTOs in key migration corridors should be encouraged and/or incentivised to implement bilateral agreements with one another to achieve interoperability. Furthermore, Fintech and ongoing efforts to facilitate cross-border remittances via CBDCs will reduce the costs of remittances substantially in the future. Cryptocurrencies are increasingly being used to transfer remittances, among other uses.

Remittance Data Collection Evidence shows that the developmental impact of remittances becomes more pronounced when they flow through the formal financial system. Given that a very high proportion of remittances flowing into and within Africa are intermediated through informal channels, African countries could institute measures to get remittances channelled through the formal financial system such as opening their financial sectors to more competition and reducing the barriers to entry so that there are many market participants. Furthermore, African countries should standardise the recording of remittances in national statistics in line with IMF guidelines so that remittances are usable in determining a country’s creditworthiness to enable access to international credit markets.

Conclusion Having a relatively younger population compared with advanced economies which have aging populations, Africa will continue to be a source of labour for the developed world for the foreseeable future. Consequently, the role of remittances will remain a critical factor in the development agendas of most African countries. While the extent to which remittances contribute to economic growth and development will continue to be a contentious debate, they will be one of the available vehicles for alleviating poverty and inequality. However, going forward remittances cannot be a panacea for underdevelopment in Africa. There are undoubtedly structural issues at play that keep African countries underdeveloped and which make migration a necessity for their people who are able to undertake it. As dependency theorists have argued, this loss of skills as a result of migration has a cost to migrant-sending countries. However, as the evidence presented in this chapter shows, there are instances where remittances are having very real poverty-reducing effects. It is therefore essential to take a balanced view and see remittances as a tool which, under appropriate conditions and with the right policy support, can improve development outcomes.

Notes 1 https://data​.worldbank​.org/.

242

The Remittances–Development Debate in Africa 2 https://www​.worldbank​.org​/en​/news​/press​-release​/2022​/05​/11​/remittances​-to​-reach​-630​ -billion​-in​-2022​-with​-record​-flows​-into​-ukraine. 3 https://www​.worldbank​.org​/en​/news​/press​-release​/2021​/05​/12​/defying​-predictions​-remittance​-flows​-remain​-strong​-during​-covid​-19​-crisis. 4 The World Bank, “African Migrants could Save US$ 4 billion on Remittance Fees”, 28 January 2013. 5 https://www​.worldbank​.org​/en​/publication​/globalfindex​/Report. 6 https://disrupt​-africa​.com​/2019​/11​/25​/bitkesh​-using​-crypto​-to​-service​-sa​-zim​-remittances​ -corridor/. 7 https://disrupt​-africa​.com​/2018​/04​/09​/zimbabwean​-nigerian​-startups​-test​-bitcoin​-remittances/.

References Abdih, Y., Chami, R., Dagher, J., & Montiel, P. (2012). Remittances and institutions: Are remittances a curse? World Development, 40(4), 657–666. Acosta, P., Calderon, C., Fajnzylber, P., & Lopez, H. (2008). What is the impact of international remittances on poverty and inequality in Latin America? World Development, 36(1), 89–114. Adams Jr, R. H. (2004). Remittances and poverty in Guatemala. Available at SSRN 625295. Adams Jr, R. H. (2006). Remittances and poverty in Ghana (Vol. 3838). World Bank Publications. Adams Jr, R. H., & Page, J. (2005). Do international migration and remittances reduce poverty in developing countries? World Development, 33(10), 1645–1669. Adenutsi, D. E. (2011). Financial development, international migrant remittances and endogenous growth in Ghana. Studies in Economics and Finance, 28(1), 68–89. Aggarwal, R., Demirgüç-Kunt, A., & Martinez Peria, M. (2006). Do workers’ remittances promote financial development? World Bank Policy Research Working Paper, July. Volume 3957. Aggarwal, R., Demirgüç-Kunt, A., & Pería, M. S. M. (2011). Do remittances promote financial development? Journal of Development Economics, 96(2), 255–264. Ahmed, F. Z. (2012). The perils of unearned foreign income: Aid, remittances, and government survival. American Political Science Review, 106(1), 146–165. Ahmed, F. Z. (2013). Remittances deteriorate governance. Review of Economics and Statistics, 95(4), 1166–1182. Ajefu, J. B., &Ogebe, J. O. (2019). Migrant remittances and financial inclusion among households in Nigeria. Oxford Development Studies, 47(3), 319–335. Alhassan, T. F., Guryanov, S. A., & Kouadio, A. J. (2021). The impact of mobile money, remittances, and financial development on innovative growth in sub-Saharan Africa. Экономика региона, 17(1), 276–287. Ambrosius, C., & Cuecuecha, A. (2016). Remittances and the use of formal and informal financial services. World Development, 77, 80–98. Bank of International Settlements. (2021). Central Bank digital currencies for cross-border payments. Retrieved from https://www​.bis​.org​/publ​/othp38​.pdf. Barajas, A., Chami, R., Ebeke, C., & Oeking, A. (2018). What’s different about monetary policy transmission in remittance-dependent countries? Journal of Development Economics, 134, 272–288. Bollard, A., McKenzie, D., & Morten, M. (2010). The remitting patterns of African migrants in the OECD. Journal of African Economies, 19(5), 605–634. Bugamelli, M., & Paternò, F. (2009). Do workers’ remittances reduce the probability of current account reversals? World Development, 37(12), 1821–1838. Chami, M. R., Fullenkamp, C., & Jahjah, M. S. (2003). Are immigrant remittance flows a source of capital for development (No. 3–189). International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC. Chami, R., Ernst, E., Fullenkamp, C., & Oeking, A. (2018). Is there a remittances trap? Finance & Development, International Monetary Fund, September 2018, 45–47. Cuadros-Meñaca, A. (2020). Remittances, health insurance, and pension contributions: Evidence from Colombia. World Development, 127, 104766. Demirgüç-Kunt, A., López Córdova, E., Martinez Pería, M., & Woodruff, C. (2009). Remittances and banking sector breadth and depth: Evidence from Mexico. Journal of Development Economics, 95, 229–241.

243

Daniel Makina and Margaret Rutendo Magwedere Easton, M. R., & Montinola, G. R. (2017). Remittances, regime type, and government spending priorities. Studies in Comparative International Development, 52(3), 349–371. Enact. (2020). Mobile money and organized crime in Africa. Retrived from https://enact​-africa​.s3​ .amazonaws​.com​/site​/uploads​/2020​-06​-23​-interpol​-mobile​-money​-in​-africa​-report​.pdf. Frankel, J. (2011). Are bilateral remittances countercyclical? Open Economies Review, 22(1), 1–16. Freund, C., & Spatafora, N. (2005). Remittances, transaction costs, determinants and informal flows. Policy Research Working Paper 3704. World Bank, Washington, DC. Garba, K. P., Adekunle, W., & Adeniyi, O. (2020). Nexus between foreign remittances and economic growth in Nigeria: Role of the financial sector. Asian Journal of Economics and Empirical Research, 7(1), 15–24. Giuliano, P., & Ruiz-Arranz, M. (2009). Remittances, financial development, and growth. Journal of Development Economics, 90(1), 144–152. Global Findex Databases 2021. Financial inclusion, digital payments, and resilience in the age of COVID-19. http://hdl​.handle​.net​/10986​/37578. Juniper Research. (2018). Migrant workers to transfer $300B via digital channels by 2021. Retrieved from https://www​.juniperresearch​.com​/press​/press​-releases​/migrant​-workers​-to​-transfer​-300bn​ -by​-2021 [Accessed 5 December 2019]. Jack, W., & Suri, T. (2014). Risk sharing and transactions costs: Evidence from Kenya's mobile money revolution. American Economic Review, 104(1), 183–223. Kalantaryan, S., & McMahon, S. (2020). Covid-19 and remittances in Africa. Publications Office of the European Union, Luxemburg. Karikari, N., Mensah, S., & Harvey, S. (2016). Do remittances promote financial development in Africa? SpringerPlus, 5(1), 1–21. Knomad. (2022). Remittances data. Retrieved from https://www​.knomad​.org​/data​/remittances [Accessed 17 August 2022]. Lim, S., & Morshed, A. M. (2015). International migration, migrant stock, and remittances: Re-examining the motivations to remit. The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 57, 101–115. Makina, D. (2014). Mean reversion and predictability of remittances. Internationaljournal of Social Economics, 41(12), 1209–1219. Misati, R. N., Kamau, A., & Nassir, H. (2019). Do migrant remittances matter for financial development in Kenya? Financial Innovation, 5(1), 1–25. Mina, W. (2019). Diaspora and government welfare spending: Do migrant remittances increase public social protection? Economic Notes: Review of Banking, Finance and Monetary Economics, 48(3), e12141. Monga, C., & Lin, J. Y. (Eds.). (2015). The Oxford handbook of Africa and economics (Vol. 2). Oxford University Press. Mowlaei, M. (2018). The impact of foreign capital inflows on economic growth on selected African countries. African Journal of Economic and Management Studies, 9(4), 523–536. Nyamongo, E. M., Misati, R. N., Kipyegon, L., & Ndirangu, L. (2012). Remittances, financial development and economic growth in Africa. Journal of Economics and Business. https://doi​.org​/10​ .1016​/j​.jeconbus​.2012​.01​.001. Ratha, D. (2003). ‘Workers’ remittances: An important and stable source of external development finance. In Global development finance 2003 (pp. 157–175). Washington, DC: World Bank. Ratha, D., & Mohapatra, S. (2007). Increasing the macroeconomic impact of remittances on development. World Bank, 3(1), 178–192. Ratha, D., Mohapatra, S., Ozden, C., Plaza, S., Shaw, W., & Shimeles, A. (2011). Leveraging migration for Africa – Remittances, skills, and investments. World Bank, Washington, DC. Ratha D. (2021). Keep remittances flowing to Africa. Retrived from https://www​.brookings​.edu​/blog​ /africa​-in​-focus​/2021​/03​/15​/keep​-remittances​-flowing​-to​-africa/. Revenue Statistics in Africa. (2019). Retrieved from https://www​.oecd​.org​/tax​/revenue​-statistics​-in​ -africa​-2617653x​.htm [Accessed 20 December 2019]. Saydaliyev, H. B., Chin, L., & Oskenbayev, Y. (2020). The nexus of remittances, institutional quality, and financial inclusion. Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja, 33(1), 3528–3544. Sobiech, I. (2019). Remittances, finance and growth: Does financial development foster the impact of remittances on economic growth? World Development, 113, 44–59.

244

The Remittances–Development Debate in Africa Stojanov, R., & Strielkowski, W. (2013). The role of remittances as a more efficient tool of development aid in developing countries. Prague Economic Papers, 4(4), 487–503. Tyburski, M. D. (2014). Curse or cure? Migrant remittances and corruption. The Journal of Politics, 76(3), 814–824. World Bank. (2019a). Remittances to low- and middle-income countries on track to reach $551 billion in 2019 and $597 billion by 2021. Retrieved from https://blogs​.worldbank​.org​/peoplemove​/data​ -release​-remittances​-low​-and​-middle​-income​-countries​-track​-reach​-551​-billion​-2019 [Accessed 5 December 2019]. World Bank. (2021). Central Bank digital currencies for cross-border payments: A review of current experiments and ideas. World Bank, Washington, DC. https://openknowledge​.worldbank​.org​/ handle​/10986​/36764. World Bank. (2022). Remittance prices worldwide. Retrieved from http://remittanceprices​.worldbank​ .org [Accessed 6 December 2021]. World Bank/KNOMAD. (2021). Recovery: COVID-19 crisis through a migration lens. Migration and Development Brief 35. World Bank, Washington, DC. https://www​.knomad​.org​/publication​/ migration​-and​-development​-brief​-35. World Integrated Trade Solutions. (2017). Sub-Saharan Africa trade indicators 2016. Retrieved from https://wits​.worldbank​.org​/CountryProfile​/en​/Country​/SSF​/Year​/2016. Yang, D. (2008). International migration, remittances and household investment: Evidence from Philippine migrants’ exchange rate shocks. The Economic Journal, 118(528), 591–630.

245

15 RETURN MIGRATION TO AFRICA AND ITS DEVELOPMENT POTENTIAL Sabastiano Rwengabo

Introduction Return Migration to Africa (RM-2-A) has recently provoked euphoria among analysts, policy and development practitioners, and scholars, who view it as a potential catalyst for the continent’s socio-economic transformation. A component of migration, which especially diaspora studies have associated with development (Plaza and Ratha 2011; Fayissa and Nsiah 2010), RM-2-A, is part of return migration (RM) whose potential as a development catalyst requires critical analysis. From a western/northern perspective, RM-2-A can contribute to technology transfer, from more developed North to technoscientifically underdeveloped Africa. It can also facilitate “brain gain” or regain (Gaillard, Gaillard and Krishna 2015), specifically enabling the return of educated and skilled Africans who emigrated to foreign lands for better opportunities. African governments are thus “advised” to develop policy strategies and tools to turn a hitherto brain drain phenomenon (then driven by poor conditions back home) into beneficial outcomes for the continent. The first potential benefit arises through diaspora-engagement processes. “The African diaspora can provide much needed human, social and financial capital to help with the economic development of their respective countries” (Chand 2019: 16). Second, through access to professional, business, and other networks abroad, the market for African products can be widened – assuming diasporas and return migrants invest in production for export. Finally, attracting relatively skilled and experienced diasporas back home or linking them with homebased professionals and investors, as Rwanda, Ghana, Nigeria, and Ethiopia are doing, can be deliberate and serve to connect with and benefiting from a relatively more knowledgeable diaspora and facilitating capital mobility from the Global North (Chand 2019: 13–15). A key element of this process – circulation of knowledge and skills (Datta 2009) – transforms brain drain of the 1950s into brain regain and subsequently brain/knowledge circulation (Robertson 2006) and knowledge-based development (Klagge and Klein-Hitpaß 2010). In this framing, a positive relationship is posited, sometimes over-fervently, between RM on one hand, and sustainability and development on another, in the context of Africa. This assessment reflects northern viewpoints which assume triple wins for migrants, their countries 246

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-19

Return Migration to Africa and Its Development Potential

of origin, and recipient societies (Datta 2009: 108). But an agent–structure perspective of RM-2-A seems to be lacking. Through qualitative desk research, I critically assess the development potential of RM-2-A in the continent. Using a contextual analysis situated in agency–structure perspectives, I reveal that complex, multilocated, and context-specific dynamics inform RM-2-A’s potential and render its developmental promise less straightforward. I argue that agent-specific and structure-specific factors combine to inform RM-2-A’s development potential, making its promise difficult to assess and predict. The quality and capacity of returnees are used to characterise agency: while networked, skilled, experienced, financed, and investment-savvy return migrants are important for catapulting their home countries’ development, RM-2-A can also entail non-skilled and old return migrants. In some circumstances, unhealthy migrants deported back home (some 29 countries around the world deport HIV/AIDS-positive migrants due to this status), while in other situations migrants “are forced to return home because of ill-health, chronic diseases, and terminal illnesses, as they often prefer to retire or die in their place of origin” (Davies et al 2011: 1–2). For these return migrants, contribution to home-country development may be minimal at best, negative at worst. The receptivity of African polities and economies, conditions under which return takes place (from the origin country), and return-policy innovations in Africa speak to structure. Politically conscious and human-rights-interested return migrants are likely to face off with authoritarian regimes whose human rights records are poor, political governance processes wanting, and the ease of doing business is low. Such migrants will likely meet with discomfort, and apathy soon sets in. Non-receptive African locales, such as rural areas or urban enclaves, can also affect their development potential. Return policy is also important – for instance, “Ethiopia has extended diaspora members the same benefits and rights as domestic investors through the issuance of yellow cards, and introduced investment incentives for diaspora members” (Chand 2019: 14). These structural factors (like governance) combine with return-migrantspecific factors (like capacity, skills, and health) to determine the rate and degree of reintegration and contribution to development. Both agency and structure help us to understand who the return migrants might be, why (reasons and conditions under which) and how they return, and the different structural dynamics they face upon return. These issues are multilocated – obtaining in re-sending and returning societies. They are also complex, involving personal, group/associational, professional, institutional, and financial implications and dynamics. They are embedded in multilayered structures at local, national, international, and supranational levels. They involve multiple actors, and can be sometimes difficult to navigate. Giving return migrants agency – the ability to act, initiate, and drive developmental change – is as important as giving the recipient society agency, an ability to receive and integrate return migrants, because willingness precedes actual return, and return can have multiple motives. The sending country needs to give returnees the opportunity to save, and repatriate their finances, a policy-context-specific issue in the re-sending country. The receiving country’s policy strategies and tools are important for providing return migrants either soft or hard landings: “state preparedness in terms of the availability of institutional frameworks to fully engage and harness diasporic resources is of paramount importance” (Nwozor et al. 2022: 9). While some practices in Africa support RM and are amenable to its transformative potential (Chand 2019), there are also instances of failures: “RM is fraught with several integration dilemmas for returnees as they are confronted with adjustment crises on return” (Nwozor et al. 2022: 1), such as the misconception that RM entails permanent physical relocation; 247

Sabastiano Rwengabo

balancing education and career prospects and interests of spouses and children with desire to return; employability and transferability of skills; transcending transnational identities/ attachments to acquire (localised) African-national attachments; which transcend negative stories and experiences about and in Africa; and economic sacrifices related to wage differentials, return on investment, work ethics in home country, and risk/ease of doing business in Africa. By understanding the agential and structural drivers and impediments to RM, I summarise the complex influences that mediate the development potential of RM-2-A. To these agent–structure issues, keen attention is needed from international development agencies, donor countries and agencies, civil society, academia, media, and policy practitioners. This approach has important implications for grasping and predicting possible differences in the contribution of RM-2-A to countries’ development outcomes across different African locales. Countries which receive or deliberately attract relatively skilled, experienced, and capable return migrants; those which offer investment benefits for their returning citizens; and those which design and implement return-and-reintegration policies, are likely to benefit more from knowledge and skills circulation occasioned by RM-2-A. Unskilled returnees are likely to have less contribution given their low-income earnings while outside and their limited ability to transform ideas into tangible products and services (Sabadie et al. 2010: 6). Equally, countries which have no or ambiguous return-migration policies, or lack coherent diaspora-engagement and return-migration policy strategies and tools, will likely benefit less, or in a haphazard manner, from RM-2-A. It follows, then, that while RM-2-A has development potential, actualising that potential into socio-economic, techno-scientific, political governance, ideational and structural, transformation is contingent upon the quality and capacity of returning migrants, policy innovations within and outside Africa with regard to RM-2-A, governance dynamics within the African polity, and the level of political goodwill and bureaucratic commitment to turn RM-2-A into a development catalyst. Thus, deliberate engagement of return migrants and recipient societies alike is critical for skills and knowledge transfer to Africa’s young demographic. The rest of this chapter proceeds as follows: the first section reviews the literature on RM in Africa, paying specific attention to the conceptual issues and then assessing the possible drivers (pull and push factors) of RM-2-A. The second section outlines the chapter’s conceptual and theoretical framing, giving a specific focus on agent–structure perspectives in understanding the multiple agential and structural issues that animate the development potential of RM-2-A. The third section has three empirical sub-sections: recent trends and the development potential of RM-2-A as seen from the lenses of actual return (physical relocation vs. virtual return), and sustainability of capital and technology flows through and/or by return migrants; circulation of knowledge and skills, specifically highlighting the areas in which such competencies are needs and whether there are enough willing returnees to change the continent’s knowledge and skills landscape; and historical and contemporary experiences, challenges, and lessons. The final section, the conclusion, summarises the main arguments and draws implications for research and practice.

Return Migration to Africa: What Do(n’t) We Know? The starting point for summarising current debates on RM-2-A is to acknowledge the conceptual difficulty of articulating and specifying return migrants. Should our definitions include returning students who left for further studies? Should we include returning expa248

Return Migration to Africa and Its Development Potential

triates temporarily hired by international organisations and companies? Should we include other short-term contract employees, such as those outsourced at American military bases and/or deployed by American companies in Iraq and other parts of Northwest Asia since the early 2000s (Christensen 2015)? Should we include returning exiles, asylum seekers, and refugees? Should we use a time horizon, a threshold, to define who was a migrant and who was a mere long-term visitor to a foreign country? These questions are important because they help us understand that migration (and thus RM) can be difficult to define for three reasons. First, it is not clear whether persons who left their home countries and lived temporarily in other countries, for specific reasons, actually define or view themselves as migrants. Second, descendants of migrants who become domiciled in other countries, acquire dual or foreign citizenship, and/or change their nationalities are sometimes lumped up with the concept of “diaspora”. While this concept provokes reflection about migration, the descendants of diasporic citizens, who have acquired foreign citizenship, socialisation, and culture, may not readily see or define themselves as Africans unless circumstances – such as racism, conflict, discrimination, and persecution – force them to question their very identities, nationalities, and attachments to a country they now call home. Thus, concepts like “African Diaspora” remain problematic because they encompass African-born migrants of post-coloniality as well as descendants of African slaves taken during the 11th–19th centuries, yet those descendants, while aware about their African origins, have no African country they call home. Besides, the processes that led to their diasporisation, such as racial capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism (Patterson and Kelley 2000: 13; Zeleza 2005), are not the same as those that led to postcolonial emigrations, such as the search for education and employment opportunities or escaping mal-governance crises, even though these latter processes may be related to unequal development as well. Finally and related, it is unclear whether to conceive of migration to Africa of Africans in the diaspora (especially across the Atlantic), as RM-2-A when these diasporas may have different conceptions of Africa from their ancestors who migrated centuries ago. These observations indicate that definitions by international organisations, such as International Organization for Migration (IOM), United Nations (UN) agencies, and World Bank, are merely operational. Such definitions should not be taken to be unproblematic but as evolving articulations of a mutable concept. Drawing on, and acknowledging these difficulties, I compare IOM and World Bank definitions with various conceptualisations in the academic literature (Plaza and Ratha 2011: 3–4). The IOM defines a “migrant” as “a person who moves away from his or her place of usual residence, whether within a country or across an international border, temporarily or permanently, and for a variety of reasons”, and the definition encompasses migrant workers, smuggled migrants, and international students (IOM 2019: 132). This all-encompassing, “inclusivist” definition is an umbrella term. It encompasses all forms of movement. The other, the “residualist” definition, excludes “those who flee wars or persecution”, rendering exiles, asylum seekers, and refugees, non-migrants (ibid). The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA)’s equally exclusivist definition was adopted for purposes of measuring international migration flows. It defines an international migrant as “any person who changes his or her country of usual residence” (that is, a country where one resides or “normally spends the daily period of rest”), adding that “Temporary travel abroad for purposes of recreation, holiday, business, medical treatment or religious pilgrimage does not entail a change in the country of usual residence” and is henceforth not international migration (UN-DESA 1998: 9, par. 32). 249

Sabastiano Rwengabo

While the idea of movement and/or human relocation cuts across these definitions of migration (as a process) and migrants (as actors), their nuance is limited to persons who can trace their “country of usual residence”. This leaves out descendants of earlier migrants with whom diaspora studies are concerned. Equally, the political sensitivities associated with IOM’s definition, which leaves out would-be forced migrants, especially “those who flee wars or persecution”, render the definition inherently contradictory for many such forced movers tend to alter their country or place of usual residence (cf Nawyn 2013). Were they or their children and latter descendants to return, especially after some minimum amount of time, they would be “return migrants”. From this time-bound and person-specific definition, we come to the IOM’s conception of RM as: (i) “the movement of persons returning to their country of origin after having moved away from their place of habitual residence and crossed an international border”, in the context of international migration; or (ii) “movement of persons returning to their place of habitual residence after having moved away from it” (IOM 2019: 186). If persons who flee wars and persecution are not included in this definition, but move away from their place or country of habitual residence, one wonders where to place, or conceptualise, them. Thus, Article 12 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (OAU 1981, 1986)1 grants the right to asylum, intra-country and international migration and return, protections against mass expulsions, and subjects all these rights to national laws. The Charter does not use the word “migration”, or “migrant”, but its provisions on movement and residence clearly speak to migration, whose implications would be all-encompassing. Anne Koch has called for consideration of “state-induced returns” in conceptualisations that cover migration as entry, integration, and return, and migration governance as the exercise of authority, control, and regulation along these three stages in a continuous process, without compromising international legal protections against the forced return of refugees under the non-refoulment principle (Koch 2014). From the foregoing, we can know enough about RM-2-A when we also cater for migration or return of both voluntary and forced migrants. This will also cater for both forced return and other forms of return, such as voluntary and assisted-voluntary returns, forced returns, deportations, long-term or permanent relocations, as well as facilitated migrations and (re)integrations within a country or internationally (IOM 2019). The World Bank uses two broad categories – forced and voluntary return migration – and underscores the challenges associated with the former (World Bank 2017: 15–19). The dynamics history of RM-2-A is fluid. Some countries have been receiving returning students, and statistics are hard to find. Recent studies, however, indicate adjustment problems, identity crisis, and return cultural shocks related to language, social, and other intellectual integration (Phasha 2021), as well as other forms of reintegration challenges (Nwozor et al. 2022). For the case of high-schooled return migrants, research reveals a dual positionality, in which returning researchers are perceived by local colleagues as having acquired superior foreign skills and competencies, which engenders researcher-power differentials (Gwenzi et al. 2017). Some of this may be reinforced through personal self-perception as being better trained, more exposed, and better connected or networked with the international research community. Analyses of the social and economic characteristics of return migrants in Africa reveal that in some countries recently arrived returning migrants have better educational achievements than immigrants, non-migrants, and local citizens. In the case of Uganda, migrants who returned following or after the fall of Idi Amin’s regime in 1979 “had the lowest educational 250

Return Migration to Africa and Its Development Potential

levels and lowest living standards compared to other returnees”, and that previous residence in Western countries (Europe and North America) was “associated with four additional years of schooling while returning migrants arriving from other African countries had the lowest levels of schooling among returning migrants” (Thomas 2012: 85). In the case of South Africa, returnees who arrived soon after the Apartheid regime collapsed in 1994 were also relatively more educated than immigrants and non-migrants alike, with returnees having “the highest household living standards in South Africa” (ibid) possibly due to their skill sets, incomes, and pre-return savings. Relatedly, South African returnees who arrived “towards the end of the century had lower educational endowments compared to immigrants who arrived in the country two to four years after the end of Apartheid” (ibid). These findings indicate that: (i) the capacity and competence of return migrants is a function of the geographical location from which they are returning – rendering it important to underscore where return migrants have been living in order to dissect their potential contribution to development. (ii) Returnees who were initially forced migrants may have had difficulties developing their human capacity, rendering them less productive upon return. (iii) There is a positive relationship between pre-return incomes, savings, and investments, as well as education, training, and working experience, on the one hand, and living standards and potential contribution to development on the other. (iv) Returnees who perceive themselves to be superior to non-migrants may face difficulties of integration and/or adjustment, forcing them to waste time before becoming integrated enough to take part in local development processes. (v) Policy strategies and tools for facilitating returnee integration are necessary ingredients of countries’ migration policies – but little information is available about continental, regional, and national innovations in this regard. This renders the recent AU Migration Policy Framework for Africa and plan of action (2018–2030), a revision of the 2006 AU Migration Policy Framework (MPFA), a timely intervention at the continental level (AU 2018). The framework warns about the dangers of mismanaged migration and also underscores the urgent need for African countries to develop comprehensive policies on migration (AU 2018: 23). RM-2-A has been evolving since decolonisation, first as returning Africans studying abroad, return of forced migrants who had fled crises, and recent diaspora return processes (Thomas 2012). While the AU framework is not explicit on RM-2-A and takes a broad perspective on issues of migration, it does recommend strategies for countering the effects of “brain drain” by not only encouraging diasporas to support the development of their origin countries via financial and human capital transfers but also “short and long term return migration”; skills, knowledge, and technology transfer; and participation in programs like the Migration in Development for Africa (MIDA) of the IOM, International Labour Organisation (ILO), and World Health Organization (WHO) (AU 2018: 39; IOM 2004). Launched in 2001 in Libreville, Gabon, MIDA targets African experts, entrepreneurs, and professionals, scattered across the globe, in the diaspora. It roots for those who may be willing and able to contribute their skills, financial, and other resources, to home countries’ development efforts. As a capacity-building intervention, MIDA posits that skills and resources transfer to Africa can present options for “reinvestment of human capital, including temporary, long-term or virtual return” (IOM 2004: 2). The MIDA assumption is this: Equipped with their competences, new ideas and expertise gained abroad, migrants can be a tremendous asset for the development of their countries of origin in differ251

Sabastiano Rwengabo

ent fields (education, social affairs, health and other priority areas). They bring a new vision, they represent forces for change . (IOM 2004: 2) As Nuozor et al. (2022) and Thomas (2012) have revealed, however, country experiences differ with RM-2-A. Conditions forcing return can militate against productive RM-2-A. Adequate information on returnee investments, the sectors in which they invest, the nature and depths of knowledge’s and skills they come with, and partnerships and networks they build in the local economy and society, remains scanty. This is so even for countries like Ghana, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda, and Rwanda about which research on RM-2-A has been attempted. Despite the observed contributions through knowledge and skills transfer, investments, diasporic remittances, and other ways, information about returnees with relatively limited skills, experience, foreign networks and collaborations, savings, and good health, remains limited as well. We can, therefore, only postulate that returnees with limited capacity tend to be less beneficial for the recipient African country and suppose that capable, resourced, and networked returnees are developmental actors. Conditions driving return ought to be considered as much as policy context and societal dynamics they encounter in Africa. For instance, it has been observed that “the unrelenting conflict in Yemen has created intolerable conditions, forcing migrants to return to Eastern Africa” (McAuliffe & Triandafyllidou, 2021: 61). Such returnees hardly display productive capacity. Similar challenges are faced by victims of trafficking and forced migrants. Country policy strategies and tools also differ (Chand 2019), as are forced return policies and returnees’ experiences (World Bank 2017). The foregoing literature reveals three issues that should inform our assessment of the development potential of RM-2-A: (i) theoretical and policy-practical dynamics of framing and measuring RM-2-A’s development potential can be difficult to situate, but assessing returnees agency and the structural issues moderating their potential can be helpful here. (ii) The potential for circulation of knowledge and skills arising from RM-2-A (as opposed to other processes, such as globalised linkages occasioned by postmodern information and communication technologies) relates both to returnees’ capacity (skill sets acquired via experiences and other competencies). (iii) Experiences of the different countries with regard to RM-2-A can enrich our grasp of its development potential. On (i), while the starting point is to consider moving beyond diaspora-engagement policy strategies and practices of different African countries to strategies and/or processes that facilitate RM-2-A, given the remittance benefits of diasporas for African economies, we can assess the continental, sub-continental, and national policies and programmes that seek to go beyond receiving earnings from “citizens abroad” to receiving, integrating, and utilising “short and long term return migration” for development (AU 2018: 39). On (ii), potential for knowledge and skills circulation, available information, if any, on the natures and varieties of knowledge and skills that can circulate within Africa after RM would be important, but given the diversity, multiplicity, multisectoral nature of the skills and knowledge Africans have acquired outside of the continent, it becomes difficult to pin-point specific skills and knowledge. What can be reasonably undertaken, however, is a qualitative assessment of the possible levels of education, specialised trainings, professional networks, and working experiences, which return migrants might have acquired relative to their African peers (Thomson 2012). This will, at least theoretically and analytically, unravel the potential for RM-2-A-related circulation of knowledge and skills in the continent. 252

Return Migration to Africa and Its Development Potential

On (iii) – different countries’ experiences with regard to RM-2-A – where different country experiences are decipherable from existing studies, we can assess the relationship between return migrants’ agency, the influence of sociopolitical structures in the foreign country, and the destination African country, as well as how interactions between agency and structure (can potentially) influence development outcomes in a given African context. In other words, by framing RM-2-A using agency–structure lenses, we can assess its development potential while acknowledging the complexity involved in such assessments.

Framing RM-2-A: Conceptual and Theoretical Issues In this study, RM-2-A means migration processes involving return to, as opposed to return within Africa. This conception disregards the question of whether or not return was originally forced or voluntary, assisted or facilitated, whether or not return takes on any or all of these features plus “legal”/“illegal”, “regular”/“irregular”, and other statist definitions (IOM 2019). Beyond voluntary return, RM can also take non-voluntary forms, such as deportations, expulsions, and flight (socio-economic, racial, ethnic nationalism, or cultural drivers) (World Bank 2017). RM-2-A might appear as a form of reverse migration, but differs from circular migrations involving movement across different countries without necessarily a final return to Africa as the original country or place. “Return to” implies from outside Africa and back to Africa as a geopolitical space. This includes return by what I call “extra-African diaspora”, such as African-American diaspora born of “transoceanic transactions” and exchanges during the era of slave trade, colonialism, Anglo-American empire building, and later attractions (Zeleza 2005). The MIDA programme seems not to be clear about African diasporas who have no specific and/or specifiable African country of origin. “Return within” implies RM within one country or region, and from one African country or region to another – that is, migration by an “intra-African diaspora”, which speaks to country-specific diasporas within Africa (Rwengabo 2014). Between-country migrations within Africa fall in this category. Intra-Africa return encompasses intracountry RM, such as typifies urban–rural RM within a country, that is, internal migration and return (Cattaneo and Robinson 2020). While specified here, intra-Africa RM is not taken beyond this conceptual usage – mainly because RM-2-A assumes “return to”, not “within” Africa. This broad conceptualisation caters for most categories of return migrants while also being specific enough to allow for empirical and analytic parsimony and tractability. This inclusive conceptualisation encompasses three interrelated phenomena: (a) return, to Africa, of people who originally lived in and identified as Africans, regardless of their racial, other socio-identity, geospatial aspects, longevity of stay outside, or level of professional and business acquirement before and after emigration; (b) return of peoples of African origins and African descent, whether they are first migrants or their descendants. This transcends the generational domain and state-territorial confines of presenting return migrants as countrydefined (common with IOM definitions), thus subsuming descendants of former African slaves and other African diaspora. (c) Country-level RM, that is, return to different African countries (regardless of which African sub-region), encompasses return to Africa regardless of which country was the return migrant’s origin and is the destination. Here, African diasporas who may not know their origin regions/countries in Africa but choose to return to an African region/country of their choice would still be categorised under RM-2-A. Emigrants 253

Sabastiano Rwengabo

from specific African countries (e.g., Ethiopia) may choose to return to Africa but live in another country (e.g., eSwatini) and still fall under RM-2-A. I am rooting for conceptualisation which caters for Africans who had become domiciled in other African and non-African countries for a given period of time; migrants who acquired permanent residence in their destination countries but now they or their descendants desire or decide to return to Africa regardless of which country or region they chose to return to; those who acquired citizenship in foreign countries, or hold dual or multiple citizenships with an African country, a non-African country, or two or multiple African countries, but chose to relocate from another non-African country of residence or domicile to Africa broadly conceived; descendants of African emigrants to other parts of the world born and raised outside Africa or outside their parents’ original home-African countries (such as colonial and postcolonial migrants); descendants of African slaves taken during the era of slave trade into other continents; and the multiplicity of factors, drivers, and motives that engender, fuel, and inform their RM to Africa. Regardless of drivers and motives, I critique the view that RM-2-A has development potential. This potential (assumed or actual) is rooted in the apparent contributions of African diasporas to their home-country revenues through remittances (Adekunle et al. 2020; Donou-Adonsou et al. 2020). The possible return of highly qualified African expatriates has the potential to turn previous “brain drain into brain gain and now brain (and knowledge) circulation” subject to a combination of polices, like those favouring return of nationals, and other incentive programmes (Gaillard, Gaillard, and Krishna 2015: 273). About two decades ago, it was possible to argue that the “subtleties and complexities of linkages between migration and development have meant that governments world-wide have been slow to incorporate population movements into development policies” (Thomas-Hope 1999: 185). Today, however, the narrative has changed. Emphasis is placed on migration to contribute to development. In particular, RM has also acquired the centre stage. By “development potential of RM” it meant the conceivable prospects and latent possibilities that RM can [directly or indirectly] engender quantitative and qualitative improvements in a given society’s productive capacity and standards of living. Conceivable prospects consist in the utility that can be acquired from capable and resourced returnees. Latent possibilities are here in the investment interests and policy innovations of the receiving country. Together, prospects and possibilities can enable intersectionality between returnees’ capacity and resources and recipient economies’/polities’ policy strategies and tools. The resulting intersectionality bridges the gap between RM and local development, by linking resources and capacity with local development needs. This viewpoint integrates quantitative aspects, such as measured in returnees’ contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) and gross national product (GNP), volumes of quantifiable goods and services returnee investments can engender, and measurable indicators of progress, such as changes in human development index (HDI) and human capital index (HCI) as a result of (at least a degree of) RM and returnees’ investments and integration in the local society. The approach here also covers qualitative aspects, such as quality of life, positive influence, and standards of living, which result from the positive influence of returnees upon individual, family, community, and national achievements. The means of attaining these achievements, and the distribution of benefits of positive qualitative and quantitative change, are also catered for. This avoids debates with deep-rooted theorisations about development which have been viewed from different angles since the beginning of written literacy (e.g., Sen 1988; Philipps 1977). The approach caters for important aspects like structural transformation (e.g., in 254

Return Migration to Africa and Its Development Potential

agriculture, industry, science and technology, urbanisation) as a necessary aspect of human progress (Chenery and Srinivasan 1988), as well as human security as a concern during the current age of Anthropocene (the era in which human beings “have become central drivers of planetary change, radically altering the earth’s biosphere”) (UNDP 2022: iii). It follows that unravelling the development potential of RM-2-A lies in the grasp of the subtleties and complexities of RM. These nuances obtain at agency and structure. Return migrants need to be viewed, and view themselves, as active agents of change. Do they view themselves as such, given the structural conditions animating their return, their capacities, and competencies? Do they return with the intent of acting as catalysts of progress by working with local and foreign actors and networks? The (rather multidimensional, multi-location) conditions animating migrants’ return and those which they find in Africa constitute the structure. Giving agency to return migrants enables us to assess their potential to be key actors in the development process. As agents, returnees can mobilise technology and finances, build networks, and create/expand markets for African products and services. They can also transfer knowledge and skills acquired while outside of Africa, if such acquirements were made. Considerations about agency help us to avoid sugarcoating RM. The phenomenon “remains quite often a painful, demanding and challenging process that is not always successful” (Gaillard, Gaillard, and Krishna 2015: 274). The inherent, rather problematic, assumption that RM-2-A entails return of willing, capable, and productive returnees, encounters serious critique. Returnees’ agency starts before return itself: desire is followed by decision, to which actual return follows. Forced return stymies pre-return agency, because it stymies returnees’ preparatory and decisional imperatives. These personal subtleties are constrained, moderated, facilitated, and fuelled by objective and subjective conditions – economic, social, political, professional, ideational, and acculturation – which potential returnees experience and have to navigate before return. There may also be attractions in Africa, such as enabling and supportive policies, professional and business networks, and new discoveries and developments, which heighten incentives to return to the continent (Chand 2019). How, then, can multilocated actors exercise agency in Africa? How may they navigate structural constraints outside and in Africa? Addressing this question requires focus on the potential, not actual, development. Therefore, attention is paid more to what returnees have and might bring, which may contribute to development in Africa, not whether they actually cause such development. It is assumed that return migrants have better skills, stronger professional networks, and more desire and experience in organised operations, as well as more finance capital, than their generational non-migrant peers in Africa (Thomson 2012; AU 2018). While empirically this may not always be the case–people can, do, mobilise and have mobilised more investment capital, acquired stronger professional competencies and more reliable networks while in Africa than those outside–the analysis has a west-centric bias: development (and potential thereof) flows from the West/North to the Rest/South. But this is problematic as well, because RM-2-A is neither limited to return from the northern hemisphere nor is it obvious that Africans who have lived in the Global North working menial jobs, earning low incomes amidst high costs of living in northern economies, acquiring nonproductive skills (or no significant skills at all), can have transformative potential. The greatest structural impediment outside Africa might be return-supportive policies. These may have improved over the years of managing migration internationally, as seen in the MIDA programme. Some policies and practices constrain finance capital transfers to Africa, and, instead, encourage local consumption of migrants’ and diaspora’s savings. 255

Sabastiano Rwengabo

Others inflict multifarious prejudices and discrimination upon African immigrants, which limit their professional and economic growth. Such policies negate the development potential of RM. These structural issues militate against capacity development, saving, networking, and collaboration, which are necessary features of a development agency. In Africa, structural impediments may be multifaceted, but supportive governance frameworks and practices, levels of technological and infrastructure development, and prior connections with home-based professionals and networks are important (Gaillard, Gaillard, and Krishna 2015). While these and other issues affect returnees’ reintegration, adaptation, and investment choices in various ways, we can reduce them to governance-related structural enablers, constraints, and/or impediments. Assuming, again, that the Global North has the requisite policy, legal, sociocultural, and ideational environment that supports RM-2-A, we can reduce the western/northern structure to capacity development support and pro-RM-2-A policy and legal environment. The first relates to training, employment, professional linkages, and payments to immigrant labour. The second relates to governance frameworks and procedures that support and/or facilitate RM-2-A. We can then focus on the African side of structure and also reduce it to pro-RM-2-A policy and legal environment and structure of the economy. The first relates to (return) migration policies and other aspects of the incentive structures, as well as frameworks and practices that provide an enabling environment for returnees’ reintegration. The second, economic structure, roughly approximates the aspects of business/ investment climate, technological change (ICT access, use, and mainstreaming in state and non-state operations), human capacity (skills, work ethic), infrastructure development (road and rail network), and adaptation to postmodern industrial processes. By foregrounding these agent–structure dynamics, though briefly and with limited depth, I underscore the multilocated, multidimensional, and complex issues that inform the development potential of pro-RM-2-A. In other words, this potential lies not just in the skills and knowledge and finances return migrants may bring to Africa (assuming they have such savings and attainments) but is intricately woven in the very problematic notion of RM. Many a time, RM always follows some dissatisfaction with one’s current home for various reasons; Africa’s growing attractiveness (as a foreign investment destination); integration challenges in the non-African society; ideational and ideological convictions (e.g., Pan-Africanism); and various political, racial, sociocultural, and socio-economic developments and processes that constitute push factors. Return may also mean losing employment from which remittances may have been based, or weaken networks and institutional affiliations from which returnees could draw inspiration to further their professional growth. Thus, studying the development potential of RM-2-A requires empirical attention to the already-built capacity of returnees, resources at their disposal, their professional and business networks, and investments outside Africa. While the IOM has been holding International Dialogues on Migration (IDM), including workshops on return migration since 2008 (IOM 2008b), data on return flows, returnee investments, and their impact on the local economy remain difficult to compile and analyse, leaving the development potential of RM-2-A mostly assumed (IOM 2008a). But since this would not be an easy empirical feat, due to inadequacies in data compilation at national and regional levels, difficulties of accommodating virtual and short-term returns, and individualised natures of many return decisions and processes, attention focuses on existing studies to assess whether RM might bring finances (i.e., returnees’ savings), knowledge, and skills, and important networks based on diaspora associations (EUDiF 2021; Chand 2019). This enables an assessment of the quality and capacity of returnees. Equally existing studies and 256

Return Migration to Africa and Its Development Potential

reports have uncovered the receptivity or supportive dynamics of African policy instruments and tools supporting RM-2-A. The conditions under which RM-2-A takes place may be complex, but only mention will be made of the evolving international embrace of RM and how it has been linked to development.

RM-2-A: Development Potential, Brain Circulation, and Experiences. Returning migrants also contribute to local development by rejoining the workforce or becoming entrepreneurs, but … this works better if certain conditions are met. Migrants need to have spent enough time abroad to accumulate sufficient human and financial capital but to still be of an age where they are willing to undertake new projects on their return. The return is likely to be more beneficial for the home country when individuals choose to return rather than are forced to do so. Finally, home countries can benefit more from the return of skilled migrants than unskilled ones as long as local conditions allow them to make good use of their skills on their return. (Sabadie et al. 2010: 4–5 – emphasis added) The above-quoted study resonates with the argument that RM-2-A is developmental only when agency and structure are simultaneously conducive to development. The nature and extent of its development impact depends on the characteristics (e.g., skill level, age, gender, health), resources, interests, and behaviour of individual migrants, as well as the environment (social, political, legal, and economic conditions) in which return takes place even as accurate data on return flows (at national, regional, and global levels) remain elusive (IOM 2008a: 5). Unskilled, resource-constrained, and forced returnees have little to contribute on return. Preparation is essential as is cooperation between sending and recipient country – all of them complex processes involving incentives, options, support structures, loss of remittances in case of permanent return, and challenges of integration of returnees (IOM 2008a). While longer stays abroad enable the accumulation of “sufficient human and financial capital”, overstaying outside means one grows older, and one’s willingness and readiness to “undertake new projects”, upon return, is limited with age. Capacity, health, and age can seriously influence returnees’ productive potential. Sabadie et al. thus underscore crucial agential factors that mediate the development potential of RM-2-A. Forced returnees require financial incentives and reintegration support, but reintegration is easier with returnees who were economically well-off prior to emigration; who viewed emigration as temporary and thus maintained social and professional networks with origin societies; and younger, more educated, migrants with families and children (World Bank 2017: 18). Without reintegration support for especially forced returnees, the development potential of RM-2-A diminishes. The IOM implements an assisted-voluntary return-and-reintegration (AVRR) programme. Since 1979, the AVRR programme has provided pre-departure counselling, flight tickets, and administrative and travel assistance. In some instances, reintegration assistance has been offered. Between 2005 and 2014, about 34,000 migrants benefited from the AVRR per year. In 2018, more than 63,000 migrants returning from 128 host or transit countries were assisted back to 169 countries or territories of origin (McAuliffe & Triandafyllidou, 2021: 37). Returnees from Niger, Djibouti, and Morocco to Guinea, Mali, and Ethiopia (intra-Africa RM) amounted to more than 22% of the global total in 2018, with West and Central Africa accounting for 31% origin for AVRR beneficiaries in 2018 (ibid). How developmental are such returnees? 257

Sabastiano Rwengabo

Perhaps the much-hyped discourse on RM-2-A is driven by the ever-increasing emigration from Africa and settlement outside the continent. It follows growing concerns about migration to the Global North. Since 1990, African emigrants to the outside world have more than doubled. Countries with the largest number of emigrants living abroad are Egypt (3.6 million), Morocco (3.2 million), South Sudan (2.6 million), Somalia (2.1 million), Sudan (2.1 million), and Algeria (1.9 million); while Ethiopia and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) had the highest numbers of nationals internationally displaced within Africa. Africa’s growing emigration to Europe is most pronounced perhaps due to policy and legal contexts, but also geographical closeness and historical and sociocultural ties make integration easy. In 2019, African-born migrants lived in Europe (10.6 million), Asia (4.6 million), North America (3.2 million), and elsewhere. Asia is becoming prominent in Africa’s emigration dynamics (especially to Northwest Asia’s Gulf Cooperation Council member countries; India; and China), due to increasing trade and economic ties, labour migration to Gulf Council Cooperation (GCC) countries, and social attractions (e.g., education and health services). Population growth in Africa, aside from other pull-push factors, also accounts for increasing absolute numbers of emigrants from the continent (McAuliffe & Triandafyllidou, 2021: 54–61). These trends challenge advocates of RM-2-A to think carefully about possible incentives for increasing RM-2-A for almost 15 million recent emigrants from Africa by identifying their whereabouts, capacitating, and enticing them to return. This can also be historically problematic, for immigrants into Africa from Asia and Europe have never been subjects of discussion with regard to their return: why should the world concern itself about the perceived need for African emigrants to return to Africa but shy away from the issue of non-African immigrants returning home from Africa (see, e.g., Malki, 2018)? The answer to the above question lies in grasping the context: RM-2-A is not an African problem but a problem of foreign polities and societies seeking to entice Africans back home while avoiding the problematic stay of foreigners in Africa. Between 1990 and 2019, a striking aspect has been observed about international return migrations to Africa: the number of migrants born (and raised) outside the continent who have since returned to Africa remains significantly small compared to the number of Africans leaving the continent. Between 2015 and 2019, “the number of migrants born outside the region [who returned] remained virtually unchanged (around 2 million), most of whom were from Asia and Europe” (McAuliffe & Triandafyllidou, 2021: 54–57). The still limited rate of RM-2-A arises from agential and structural factors that complicate return choices. Dissecting all these complexities is a tall order. Some of the returnees are pushed not by choice but by coercive dynamics: for example, conflict in Yemen “created intolerable conditions, forcing migrants to return to Eastern Africa” and bringing with them Yemeni refugees to the sub-region. While Africans emigrate to Asia, Chinese migrant workers, as well as immigration from India, have also increased to eastern and southern Africa, indicating a cycle of Afro-Asian migration flows (ibid: 61–62) which have not yet become subjects of policy and intellectual debates about return migration from Africa. Conflicts, socio-economic constraints (e.g., unemployment and poverty), political instabilities, and the mentality that “pasture is greener across the river” continue to push emigrants out of different African countries while militating against RM-2-A. Africa continues to lose the still-much-needed professionals, skilled workers, teachers, medical personnel, and other specialists whose return would alter the African development landscape. Simultaneously it receives unskilled labour migrants from Asia to work in Asians-owned 258

Return Migration to Africa and Its Development Potential

companies, some of whom acquire small capital and become small foreign investors that are currently observable across the continent’s sprouting urban landscapes. While some African diasporas made deliberate decisions to return regardless of Africa’s limiting conditions, there are several structural drivers in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. These factors are forcing hither-to-settled African immigrants to reconsider their further stay, incentivizing qualified human resources to consider reconnecting with Africa, and facilitating policy and academic conversations about the rationality of RM-2-A. For example, former US President, Donald John Trump, proposed a ban on Muslims coming to the USA, on counterterrorism grounds, possibly sending signals that African Muslim immigrants were unwelcome altogether and sparking a reaction from Muslim groups in the country (CAIR, 2017; Executive Order 13769, January 27, 2017). Trump’s language and policy pursuits, including the proposed wall along the Mexican border, were direct affronts to immigration and possibly contributed to encourage RM-2-A. In Europe, there has been resurgence of far-right extremist groups. About 32,000 rightwing extremists have been identified in Germany alone in 2019, an increase from 24,100 in 2018 (DW, 9 July 2020). This sent signals that societal tolerance for immigration and migrants’ stay in Europe was dwindling. Racism (real or perceived) was increasing alongside anti-immigration rhetoric and everyday practices. There are other indications of growing nationalism, almost Euro-puritanism, in Europe despite public and policy avoidance of the sensitive issue (Berwick 2011). Some European polities pursue programmes for preventing further immigration (DW, 27 August 2017). As US and European policies and societies became increasingly intolerant of African immigration, such as characterised by unrelenting racism and racialised police and non-state killings in the USA, some African actors embarked on pro-RM-2-A policies and programmes. Ghana, for instance, championed the so-called Year of Return, a programme seeking to reattract African diasporas, including descendants of African slaves, to return to and settle in the continent. Ghana’s government reportedly negotiated with local chiefs, the custodians of land in the country, to earmark 500 acres of land for newcomers. This would accommodate about 1,500 families of returnees for whom land survey and registration fees were waived (Washington Post, 4 July, 2020). Ghana declared 2019 a “Year of Return” for African diasporas, targeting the US and building on the fact that it hosts the tombs of W.E.B. and Shirley Du Bois, a famed AfricanAmerican civil rights leader and his wife. Du Bois had founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, based in the USA, and had moved to and settled in Accra in 1961, where he died in August 1963. Such is the context in which Ghana positioned itself as a pro-RM-2-A country (UN Africa Renewal 2019). The “Year of Return” was dubbed a success – not because it attracted many returnees but signalled an Africa that is willing (at least in the case of Ghana) to receive returnees while also attracting to Ghana high-profile personalities, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the US House of Representatives (who headed the Congressional Black Caucus), and the late John Robert Lewis, former civil rights leader and Georgia’s representative to the US House of Representatives (Tetteh, 20 September 2020). There seems to be high-level political interest in RM-2-A. African leaders, especially in Ghana, believe they have a responsibility to the diaspora, and that Africans taken during the transatlantic slave trade should decide whether or not to return: If they come back, we should offer them land and dual citizenship as a kind of restorative and social justice. It’s as if diasporans’ rights as citizens were torn away from them 259

Sabastiano Rwengabo

[during the transatlantic slave trade]. We should be urging them to come and take what belongs to them; it’s their entitlement. (Engmann, 2021: 733) This is not to say that returnees can come and grab whatever they can in Africa, but to recognise that Africans “are obligated” to ensure that returnees can regain human entitlements, not favours, while receiving respectful assistance to re-establish themselves in the continent. As they escape centuries of racist exploitation and abuse, descendants of former slaves can also work with fellow Africans for the continent’s transformation (ibid) alongside other diasporas and local citizens. The idea is that returnees must decide whether or not to return, which underscores their agency. This agency can be exercised in the face of anti-immigration as well as receptive policies in the present-day host countries, promises of land/resource allocations upon return, and preparations for reintegration, all of which are structural issues. In other words, interaction between agency and structure influences the development potential of RM-2-A.

Agency and RM-2-A’s Development Potential: Questions about Return Migrants’ Capacity and Resources. Studies of African diasporic communities, especially those living in the Global West, reveal the opportunities for capacity development that these diasporas acquired compared to nonmigrant Africans in home/origin countries (World Bank 2017; Chand 2019). In comparative terms, recent experiences of RM-2-A from the Arab world would be less conducive to returnees’ development potential: the IOM estimates that after Saudi Arabia’s 90-day amnesty for irregular migrants in 2017 expired, about 340,000 migrants were returned to Ethiopia (more than 99% of them involuntarily) and 2,284 to Somalia (IOM 2020: 47). Since migration to the Arab world has been dominated by low-skilled workers and opportunities for personal professional growth are limited, it is reasonable to say that RM-2-A from Northwest Asia (while allowing for some few exceptions) has limited developmental potential. Thomson (2012), Chand (2019), and the World Bank (2017) stress that Africans who emigrated to Europe and North America acquired better education and training and accessed professional-development and personal-aggrandisement opportunities that are unavailable to their peers back home. Observations have been made of the contributions of diasporas to home-country development financing: “positive long-run relationships between remittances and financial development in the top remittance recipient countries in Sub-Saharan Africa … a one percentage point increase in remittance inflows promotes financial development by more than one percentage point” in Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Kenya, Uganda, Mali, South Africa, Liberia, Ethiopia, and Madagascar, fluctuating between US$ 0.4 billion in Madagascar and US$ 19 billion in Nigeria (Donou-Adonsou, Pradhan, and Basnet, 2020: 5808–5809). Donou-Adonsou et al. recommended deepening remittance inflows to Africa in order to beef up development financing. They also make an indirect revelation that diasporas are high-earners, potential change agents in Africa’s professional and expertise landscape, and can be resourceful when re-attracted to back Africa’s development as virtual, short-term, and long-term returnees. The AU (2018) has also acknowledged this potential and welcomes pro-RM-2-A initiatives. 260

Return Migration to Africa and Its Development Potential

Diasporic remittances to Sub-Saharan Africa can appear counterintuitive when thinking about RM-2-A. Remittances grew tenfold over a 20-year period from US $4.8 billion in 2000 to US $47 billion in 2019. While they predictably declined (by about 23% in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic), remittances remain important foreign exchange sources – for the largest receivers in total amount (Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal, DRC, Zimbabwe, Uganda, and Mali) and for the largest recipients in the share of GDP (Zimbabwe, Cape Verde, Comoros, Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, and Togo) (EUDiF 2021: 13). How, then, can conversations evolve about RM-2-A when emigration is associated with increases in remittances – and ought to be encouraged from a FOREX perspective? The answer lies in understanding the numbers, capacities, and therefore potentials of returnees. Shifting from diasporic development financing to returnee contribution to development, however, presents new dynamics of agency and structure. At the agency level, expert returnees, those returning with reasonable amounts of savings, and healthy enough and still-young returnees, can contribute more meaningfully. At present, many African countries have large numbers of diaspora in the Global West who can contribute to Africa’s development trajectory if conditions both in Africa and abroad are conducive.

Structure and RM-2-A’s Development Potential: Sending and Recipient Country Contexts A key element of structure relates to the perceptions that migrants acquire upon exposure to different worlds, expectations about the society to which they are returning, and the society’s or country’s expectations. This interplay affects reintegration and re-establishment processes. In Burundi, for instance, “many returnees continued to face a great number of reintegration challenges back home”, including lack of social and economic infrastructures that would support sustainable reintegration; limited livelihood opportunities; restricted access to land; insufficient coping mechanisms in the face of food insecurity; and other challenges (IOM 2020: 22). Note that these challenges are faced by a majority of Burundian returnees from within the Eastern Africa sub-region (where sociocultural affinity is reasonably high): expectedly, returnees from outside Africa would face far greater challenges. The number of returnees facing reintegration challenges is increasing because forced return is growing and the returnees lack the wherewithal to build and sustain new productive networks or businesses: The IOM reports that out of 120,825 Ethiopian returnees who arrived at Bole Airport in Addis Ababa, 99.6% reported that they were returning involuntarily, 82% of them being male, 9% children below 18 years, and 78% aged between 18 and 29 years old – indicating that Ethiopian emigrants being forced to return are relatively young, inexperienced, and less likely to contribute to the country’s development processes (IOM 2020: 47). Majority of them, 80% of the males and 76% of the females, had primary-level education. Another 19% males, and 23% females, had less than primary-level education. With around 69% of male returnees having been unemployed while in Saudi Arabia and 16% working as manual labourers (ibid), it follows that these returnees lack the capacity (skills, knowledge and experience, resources, and networks) to contribute to development upon return. Context (displacement before migration combined with forced return) militates against effective reintegration, while capacity gaps (age, skills, resources) make it difficult for returnees to integrate in ways that would enable them to enhance the productivity of the local economy. Host-country conditions are unpredictable and dynamic, and vary from country to country. Mention has been made of the changing policy and societal landscapes in western socie261

Sabastiano Rwengabo

ties – from anti-immigration and racist rhetoric to policy choices and practices that create pressure upon new migrants and those already living in the country. While in Europe farright and racist agitation against foreigners may be causing a rethink of longer stays by African migrants, in others like Yemen civil conflicts are pushing migrants out. These contexts, though different, tend to create coercive dynamics that push African returnees in such a way that their productive potential is diminished. As humanitarian conditions deteriorated in Yemen, for instance in 2019, pressure from the large refugee and asylum-seeker population (277,820), mainly from Somalia and Ethiopia, forced the IOM to work with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), and other partners, to facilitate the return of 3,751 Ethiopians, of which 37% were children. Another 1,681 Somali refugees were returned to Somalia, 40% of them minors (IOM 2020: 49). These migrants had escaped conflict at home only to find themselves into another conflict situation. The conflict structure and conditions forcing both emigration and return make it inescapably difficult for such returnees to become meaningful development agents. The structural dynamics of facilitated-forced return involving IOM, UNHCR, and other humanitarian agencies, in such a context, may not be of much help in enabling African returnees to act as meaningful agents of post-return development given the intricate dynamics of reintegration. A conducive dynamic related to structure involves supportive policy and legal regime, as well as social-development support and opportunities, in the sending and recipient country. Recent research reveals a positive relationship between returnees with university degrees, vocational credentials, and higher qualifications, and employability of these returnees. The more the educated/qualified returnees are, the higher is the likelihood of their getting employed in Africa compared to their non-migrant and immigrant counterparts (Thomas 2012). Human-capacity development policies that are inclusive or which provide opportunities for immigrants to develop their competencies (such as in Nordic countries) allow African migrants to acquire the wherewithal to be employable, transfer skills and knowledge, and join and maintain networks which can enhance their productivity upon return. While first-generation migrants may retain various sociocultural, economic, and political links to their origin countries, these attachments may be passed on to second-generation diasporas and beyond. Evidence has revealed that some second-generation Zimbabwean, Somali, Sudanese, and Kenyan migrants in the UK display emotional attachments to their origin countries and consider themselves as belonging to both the UK and African origins (Waite and Cook 2011). This possibly reveals that the sociocultural environment in the UK does not de-socialise migrants against their origins, compared to, say, American socialisation that was inflicted upon African slaves. The resulting continuity of origin-country attachments, in the case of the UK, may facilitate transmission of ideas, knowledge and skills, and even technologies and investments, which contribute to the development of origin countries. A final element of structure inheres in the destination country. Mention is already made of the fact that some of the RM-2-A individuals and groups are not necessarily former citizens but are descendants of migrants who may have left before current countries and states ruling over them were crafted during the 20th century. Such returnees would be attracted by their strong attachments to Africa as well as the already-mentioned receptive policies and reintegration support programmes in countries like Ghana, Rwanda, and Nigeria. Such frameworks and practices can encourage RM-2-A from especially recent migrants, expatriates and their descendants, former asylum seekers and refugees, but it can also attract descendants of African slaves in the West who hold strong pan-African convictions. While 262

Return Migration to Africa and Its Development Potential

these frameworks and practices can be moderated by the general political economy environment – such as governance (respect for human rights and rule of law), ease of doing business, corruption and patronage perceptions and practices, general security, levels of socio-economic development and technology adaptation – they are the starting points for understanding the changing structural imperatives of RM-2-A. Given these positive developments, it may be enticing to forecast a growing contribution of RM-2-A for the continent’s development.​

The Dynamics of Skills and Knowledge Transfer Before delving deep into the promises and potentials of skills and knowledge transfer, I need to mention that Africa has also been receiving returnees from areas where they acquired skills and experiences that may not be conducive to development. Some of the rebel officers and fighters in Africa have been trained outside the continent and have returned to contribute to the continent’s ruin through founding or participation in brutal armed conflicts. Others have been involved in security operations outside Africa, hired by foreign companies, and returned without reintegration support. Mention is already made of forced returnees, some of them young, uneducated, and inexperienced, who oscillate between precarities across space due to structural push factors and those forcing them to return. Examples are many, but few are sufficient here. In addition to East Africans hired by US companies to support operations in Iraq, demobilised Sierra Leonean ex-militias, who had belonged to Foday Sankoh’s rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the West Side Boys (WSB)/West Side Niggaz/West Side Junglers, under Foday Kallay, became attractive to private security companies (PSCs), such as Sabre International. The company outsourced security at American military bases in Iraq. These Sierra Leoneans seized the opportunity for employment and socio-economic survival to deploy their skills and expertise in violence. While participation in American war interests in northwestern Asia presented opportunities, it was awash with difficulties. Several women recruits were accused of involving in pornographic activities and unceremoniously deported from Iraq. These Sierra Leonean contract recruits staged a strike on grounds of racial abuse and low payment, lack of medical supplies, and long duty hours. “On 27 May 2010, 150 Sierra Leonean contract recruits were deported from Camp Shield in Baghdad as a result of their strike”, returning with feelings of doubt, uncertainty, anger, and fear, all of which rendered the whole return process problematic (Christensen 2015: 38–39) and antithetical to any supposed developmental potential of such return. From the foregoing, the nature of skills returnees are expected to transfer, the knowledge they have acquired while outside Africa, and the transferability of these competencies, can be difficult to theorise and empirically navigate. For purposes of migration-development synthesis, we can lay emphasis on three kinds of knowledge and skills whose transfer and circulation would have a longer-lasting impact on the continent’s development processes: economically productive knowledge and skills, ideational and research competencies, and networks and collaborations. By Economically productive competencies is meant those acquirements resulting from education and training, employment in productive sectors (e.g., mechanised agriculture or infrastructure development), industrial process skills, innovation and invention, and management capabilities. Returnees who have acquired these capabilities, such as engineers, computing and ICT specialists, extractives (oil and gas, mining), practitioners, energy experts, and 263

Sabastiano Rwengabo Table 15.1 Migration Context of Selected African Countries vis-à-vis RM-2-A Country

Policy Interventions

Implications for RM-2-A

• Civic and political rights for • Morocco

Moroccans abroad (e.g., dual citizenship) Supportive institutions and participation of civil society (e.g., Hassan II Foundation for Moroccans Residing Abroad; and Mohammed V Foundation for Solidarity).

• Reforms to strengthen the business/

•

Cape Verde

•

investment climate, improving public-sector efficiency and support to the diaspora. Casa do Cidadão (“Citizen’s House”) created in 2007 as main point of access and information for diaspora; and DIAS (Diaspora for Development of Cape Verde) initiated by Cape Verdean Institute of Communities in partnership with IOM and EC. Franchise rights: Cape Verdeans living abroad have the right to vote in presidential and legislative elections since 1992 – six members of parliament represent Cape Verdeans abroad: two each from the Americas, rest of Africa, and Europe.

• Return investments: “There is

•

an increasing trend for diaspora entrepreneurs to return to Morocco to set up businesses, with more interest being shown in supporting start-ups and innovative industries” Influence and Benchmarking: a delegation from DRC visited Morocco in 2018 on a factfinding mission on the Conseil de la communauté marocaine à l’étranger (Council of the Moroccan Community Living Abroad (CCME)).

• Improved/enhanced coordination •

• •

with diaspora – increased interest in RM-2-A and investments back home. Mobilisation of diaspora resources (human, social, and professional) for capacity building in key development sectors (health, education, infrastructure, tourism). Strengthened ties with diasporas in Portugal, Italy, and the Netherlands. Positive feeling of participation in home-country politics.

(Continued)

264

Return Migration to Africa and Its Development Potential Table 15.1 (Continued) Country

Policy Interventions

Implications for RM-2-A

• PANAFEST African diaspora

• Ghana

• •

•

celebration, during the 1990s – government actively courts Ghanaians abroad, and launched a process to formalise a relationship with the diaspora – defined as Ghana’s 11th region. Held “Homecoming Summit” and broadened focus on diaspora investors to include the development role of remittances. Permission of dual citizenship (includes anyone of African descent). In 2017, the Presidency established Diaspora Affairs Office (DAOOP) to engage with diaspora associations and international partners. 2019: Ghana organised the “Year of Return”, asking Ghanaian and African diaspora communities across the world to “come visit” Ghana and possibly “return home”.

• Establishment of systems and

•

• Senegal

•

•

institutions to manage and monitor Senegalese abroad (e.g., Direction Générale des Sénégalais de l’Extérieur, General Directorate of Senegalese Abroad, DGSE). Senegalese municipalities have territorial migration profiles to better understand and engage with diasporas. Encouraging the diaspora to engage in Senegal’s economic development, through investment. State “seeks to attract the return migration of highly skilled Senegalese diaspora professionals”, allows diasporas to civic and political participation (right to vote or be elected in Parliament). 2008: two funds created for Senegalese abroad to invest in diaspora projects in Senegal and also promote Senegalese-women entrepreneurship in host countries.

• Evolving feature as attractive destination for RM-2-A.

• International recognition as pro-RM2-A polity.

• Minimum assurance of land access and reintegration support.

• Increasing remittances and support

•

from diasporas, e.g., Ghana Physicians and Surgeons Foundation of North America; and another about 20 active diaspora organisations. Potential to benefit from linkages with the African Diaspora Marketplace (an umbrella group of African diaspora organisations).

• Positive feelings and perceptions of • •

home country as the destination for RM-2-A. Attraction of diaspora in investment finances, technologies, and expertise – which may re-attract them. Maintenance of attachment to homecountry civil and political affairs.

(Continued)

265

Sabastiano Rwengabo Table 15.1 (Continued) Country

Policy Interventions

Implications for RM-2-A

• Diaspora engagement integrated

•

• Kenya

•

with foreign policy and national development policies – hence the creation of institutional structures to facilitate diaspora engagement. Diaspora recognised as cultural and brand ambassadors – hence dedicated diaspora portals for each Kenyan embassy and consulate, including a skills matching programme. Successful issuance of diaspora bonds, which were open to all investors, including foreign individuals – hence Kenya continued with the first Eurobond issuance (in two tranches of five and 10 years) for US $2.6 billion in 2014; and US $2 billion in 2018 (in two tranches of 10 and 30 years). 2017: Kenya launched M-Akiba, the world’s first-ever mobile-phonebased bond, raising US $2.4 million (24%) of the US $10 million target. Re-launched in February 2019, increasing bond subscription to 79% and subscribers rose to 450,000.

• Government works with chapters

• Rwanda

•

of diaspora Rwandan community associations in countries of settlement – which can mobilise people and resources for initiatives in Rwanda. Government has “reached out to those who are politically neutral and invited them to participate in Rwanda’s development and reconstruction” – creating structures to facilitate diaspora engagement since the early 2000s. 2001: Diaspora desk created in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, and Diaspora Desk formalised into the Diaspora General Directorate in 2008.

Sources: EUDiF (2021: 8–9); Chand (2019: 11–16).

266

• Continued self-presentation as an

investment destination for diasporas.

• Continued building and maintenance • •

of diaspora’s interest in possible RM-2-A. Self-representation as a leading innovator in the migrationdevelopment discourse and praxis. Potential to exploit foreign-based support programmes – e.g., Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program.

• Steady, continuous access to and engagement with diasporas.

• RM-2-A facilitated, welcomed,

•

and encouraged for politically neutral returnees who can support reconstruction and development. Formal structure for more than diaspora engagement – making RM-2-A more attractive for willing diasporas.

Return Migration to Africa and Its Development Potential

environment and natural resource management specialists, have the potential to contribute meaningfully to Africa’s development. By Ideational and research competencies I mean proficiencies related to advanced research and knowledge production. These are acquired through specialised and postgraduate training, such as at doctoral and post-doctoral levels. They can be horned via employment in these (advanced-research) realms of engagement, such as international consulting and collaborative multi-country research. Thus, doctoral and post-doctoral graduates, still-productive professors, and other researchers are important in augmenting the African knowledge landscape through mentorship and institutional capacity building. By networks and collaborations, we combine the two above into globalised spaces of engagement and access to which these competent returnees can turn for novel solutions to the development problems of the day. Research has revealed that these and other similar competencies tend to be more employable (Thomson 2012). Once a critical mass of these peoples made decisions to permanently return to Africa, they can catalyse progressive change: Equipped with their competences, new ideas and expertise gained abroad, migrants can be a tremendous asset for the development of their countries of origin in different fields (education, social affairs, health and other priority areas). They bring a new vision, they represent forces for change. (IOM-MIDA 2004: 2) This perspective has informed the IOM’s return-and-reintegration programmes based on the view that “qualifications and experience acquired abroad by migrants can contribute to strengthening the human resource capacity of priority sectors for the socio-economic development of their country” (ibid). In 1983, the IOM’s Return and Reintegration of Qualified African Nationals (RQAN) programme assisted the return and reintegration of over 2,000 highly skilled, highly experienced African nationals, in 41 countries. Another 2,565 fellowship students were assisted to bring back their experiences in “management and administration, social and legal services (27%), sciences and public health, education (17%), physical and mathematical sciences, engineering (15%) and senior executive level personnel (11%), to address identified gaps in key socio-economic sectors of the countries of origin” (ibid: 2). Some African countries have imbibed the northern assumption that returnees’ skills and knowledge, when transferred to Africa, constitute assets for development that can be translated into “remittances, technology transfers, links to professional networks, investment and – arguably – a better integration of origin countries into the global markets” (Åkesson and Baaz 2015: 3). When returnees develop small-scale businesses, they are construed as contributing to poverty reduction in Africa. Northern funders have also supported new programmes “to help returnee entrepreneurs set up businesses in their country of origin”, and returnees are also encouraged to join politics, work for international organisations, and participate in reconstruction processes in post-conflict countries (ibid). In countries like Ghana, skilled returnees, after studying or working in Western countries, built transnational and translocal connections and engagements, through which they identified business and professional opportunities, to construct and maintain local affiliations that link up with local opportunities for growth (Kleist 2015). Since skills acquired abroad are perceived to have a positive impact on employability and involvement in commerce and trade when local conditions allow returnees to “make good use of their skills on their return”, 267

Sabastiano Rwengabo

these skills can be transformed into socio-economic productivity (Sabadie et al. 2010: 5–6). This brain gain (Gillard, Gillard and Krishna 2015) or regain has the potential to ameliorate the negative impacts of the ongoing brain drain in Africa. This would be so if brain-drain statistics and brain-gain/regain statistics match at some minimum equilibrium (the numbers of skilled, educated, experienced Africans leaving the continent being equal or nearly equal to the numbers of skilled, educated, experienced returnees). This remains allusive. It is reasonable to surmise that the development potential of return migration remains at the level of conjecture. There is no concrete evidence relating ongoing development in Africa to return migration much less relating specific individuals’ investment successes with the phenomenon. This is not to say that some returnees have not made meaningful investments, but to underline the difficulty of comparing returnees with non-migrant Africans and concluding that returnees are more economically or professionally productive. This is because (i) measuring the success of returnee investors can be difficult due to variations in individuals’ perceptions of success; (ii) returnees can cluster in commercial retail, wholesale trade, transport, animal breeding, agriculture, and ICT and secretarial service provision (Sinatti 2015: 88), but the returnees-turned traders and other agents of foreign products contribute to Africa’s perpetual consumption of foreign products and services; and (iii) RM-2-A cannot be reduced to simplistic economic motives, thus reproducing the reductionist economic arguments about emigration in the first place. Returnees’ calculations are not reducible to rational economic thinking: their development potential may be counteracted by their noneconomic interests as well as their frustrations during years of stay outside and reintegration challenges.

Conclusion This chapter has revealed that RM-2-A is a dynamic, not black-box, system in which actors and structure relate in complex ways. Even if we thought of “pioneer” developmental returnees, such as Du Bois’s return and settlement in Ghana, or the return of freed slaves to Liberia and Sierra Leone, we also find that these actors were driven by structural conditions (racialised exploitation, for instance) which influenced them and which the agents in turn influenced. This agent–system relationship (Bakewell, de Haas and Kubal 2012) challenges us to think of RM-2-A beyond the policy discourses and propositions of international organisations. The decisions, choices, and actions of returnees constitute foundations for systemic linkages at a later stage – linkages between returnees and host states on the one hand, and between host-sending and recipient states on the other. The context of return (e.g., forced vs. voluntary), the motivations for return (e.g., escaping abuse and exploitation vs. seeking investment opportunities), and the policy, legal, and societal complex in both the sending and recipient states, in turn, affect actors’ decisions and choices. This cyclic, multi-locational, dynamic, and complex relationship between agency and structure creates complications for conceptualizing and measuring the development potential of RM-2-A. While African governments and regional–international organisations have joined northern discourses to consider RM-2-A as a development catalyst in Africa (Åkesson and Baaz 2015), the touted development potential remains problematic to assess and empirically demonstrate. The promise of technology transfer, facilitating “brain regain”, creation and sustenance of foreign networks and market access, North–South capital mobility, and knowledge and skills circulation, is theoretically articulable. Empirically, however, both agent-specific and structure-specific factors seriously influence RM-2-A’s development potential. While return 268

Return Migration to Africa and Its Development Potential

might be welcome through governance frameworks and process practices, such as Senegal and Ghana have attempted and Ethiopia and Rwanda selectively demonstrated, the quality and capacity of returnees remain key to their development potential. To distinguish capable returnees from less capable ones, we need to consider where they are returning from, how they are returning, their sources of livelihood while outside Africa, and other personal and familial factors. To understand the receptivity of African polities and return-policy innovations, conditions under which return takes place, and the global structural landscape, many other factors are considered. These agency and structure issues are complex, located within re-sending and return societies (multilocated), reflect the changing international–political economy issues (including anti-immigration sentiments in the Global North), and are difficult to navigate and reach conclusive, empirically nuanced, articulation of the development potential of RM-2-A. The very opportunities, networks, capital, technologies, and skills returnees bring can be acquired without return, or by Africans at home, indicating the inadequacy of tagging these development opportunities to RM-2-A. From an African perspective, RM-2-A deserves caution given the possible instrumental, possibly even selfish, considerations that animate its conduct by western organisations and policy practitioners. Questions will soon arise, building on present-day xenophobic experiences in countries like South Africa and precarious citizenship issues affecting Asian migrants in West and East Africa, about why it is trendy to talk about RM-2-A without equally considering RM from Africa. Critical-mass RM-2-A may be sufficient to speed up development, but such a programme would necessitate prior arrangements with African governance actors and societies, creating new levels and loci of agency. This may confront contradictory agendas pursued by return migrants, host-sending countries, and Afro-receiving countries. Recent practices in Africa that support RM-2-A, those that seek to exploit benefits presented by African diasporas (Chand 2016), or are amenable to its transformative potential (Chand 2019), have been countered by experiences of failures, including adjustment crises on return-and-reintegration challenges (Nwozor et al. 2022: 1). Understanding these agential and structural drivers and impediments informs new conversations about how to craft RM-2-A studies that are attentive to the microdynamics of this phenomenon. We need rigorous quantitative studies that establish correlations between RM-2-A, on the one hand, and brain regain, creation and sustenance of foreign networks and market access, North–South capital mobility, technology transfer, human capital development, and knowledge and skills circulation, on the other. We also need in-depth analyses that link recent development trajectories in Africa to RM-2-A, taking into account issues like local revenue mobilisation, the metamorphosis of an indigenous entrepreneurial class, foreign direct investment, negotiations with multinational companies (especially in extractives industry), industrialisation processes, climate-change-sensitive investments (green growth development strategies and praxes), and adaptation of Industry 4.0 and Industry X processes and systems in different African countries. Such studies need to give agency to returnees, recipient societies, recipient states, and sending states, while also examining the evolving structural impediments and facilitators to this possible trajectory. We need keen attention from African states and regional inter-governmental organisations, bilateral and multilateral development agencies (such as UN agencies, World Bank, IMF, and African Development Bank), donor countries, African and foreign civil society, academia, media, and policy practitioners. This multi-stakeholder interest and engagement, undertaken at various levels, has three implications. First, it can enrich our grasp of possible variations in the contribution of RM-2-A to countries’ development outcomes across Africa. 269

Sabastiano Rwengabo

In other word, some countries may benefit from RM-2-A more than others and these differential outcomes need to be understood and best practices scaled up. Second, some countries may deliberately attract, and hence receive, relatively skilled, experienced, and capable return migrants. Others may offer investment benefits, reintegration support, and accommodate both virtual and short-term return, for their returning citizens and non-citizens alike. The factors informing such policy choices need to be understood and their impact assessed. Finally, the design and implementation of return-and-reintegration policies may reflect some forms of discrimination, whereby unskilled, old, politically active, and unhealthy returnees may be less welcome than healthier, skilled/qualified, politically agnostic, and resourced returnees. This can create new difficulties, especially for forced/involuntary RM-2-A. The resulting contribution of RM-2-A may have an underbelly of discrimination. It follows, then, that actualizing RM-2-A into socio-economic, techno-scientific, political governance, business investment, ideational, and structural, transformation is contingent upon multidimensional agency and multidimensional structure. It relies, as well, on the latitude, acuity, aptitude, innovativeness and adaptiveness with which both African and non-African stakeholders appropriate this phenomenon for Africa’s multidimensional transformation.

Note 1 The Charter was concluded at Nairobi on 27 June 1981. It entered into force on 21 October 1986. It was registered with the UN on 28 December 1988 (see https://treaties​.un​.org​/doc​/ Publication​/UNTS​/Volume​%201520​/volume​-1520​-I​-26363​-English​.pdf, accessed 8 Feb 2022).

References Adekunle, I. A., S. B. Adegboyega, S. A. Tella and K. Subair, 2020. “Remittances and Financial Development in Africa”, Journal of Public Affairs, 2020, e2545. https://doi​.org​/10​.1002​/pa​ .2545 Agaptus Nwozor, A., S. Oshewolo, J. S. Olanrewaju, M. B. Ake and O. Okidu, 2022. “RM and the Challenges of Diasporic Reintegration in Nigeria”, Third World Quarterly. https://doi​.org​/10​ .1080​/01436597​.2022​.2026216. Åkesson, L. and M. E. Baaz, eds., 2015. Africa’s Return Migrants: The New Developers? Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute. Andrew Breivick, A., 2011. 2083  – A European Declaration of Independence. London: Online (from https://www​.washingtonpost​.com​/r​/2010​-2019​/WashingtonPost​/2011​/07​/24​/National​ -Politics​/Graphics​/2083+-​+A​+European​+Declaration​+of​+Independence​.pdf, 17 February 2022). Anne Koch, A., 2014. “The Politics and Discourse of Migrant Return: The Role of UNHCR and IOM in the Governance of Return”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 40(6), 905–923. Anne Phillips, A., 1977. “The Concept of ‘Development’”, Review of African Political Economy, 8, 7–20. AU [African Union], 2018. Migration Policy Framework for Africa and Plan of Action (2018–2030). Addis Ababa: AU. Bakewell, O., H. De Haas and A. Kubal, 2012. “Migration Systems, Pioneer Migrants and the Role of Agency, Journal of Critical Realism, 11(4), 413–437. CAIR [Council on American-Islamic Relations], 2017. Stand for Justice, Mobilise for Change, Annual Report 2017. Los Angeles: CAIR (from https://ca​.cair​.com​/wp​-content​/uploads​/2018​/08​ /2017​-Annual​-Report​.compressed​.pdf, 16 February 2021). Cattaneo, A. and S. Robinson, 2020. “Multiple Moves and RM within Developing Countries: A Comparative Analysis”, Population, Space and Place. https://doi​.org​/10​.1002​/psp​.2335. Chand, M., 2016. “Leveraging the Diaspora for Africa’s Economic Development”, Journal of African Business, 17(3), 273–290. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/15228916​.2016​.1160856.

270

Return Migration to Africa and Its Development Potential Chand, M., 2019. “Brain Drain, Brain Circulation, and the African Diaspora in the United States”, Journal of African Business, 20(1), 6–19. Chenery, H. and T. N. Srinivasan, 1988. Handbook of Development Economics. Amsterdam & Elsewhere: Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. Christensen, M. M., 2015. “The Underbelly of Global Security: Sierra Leonean Ex-Militias in Iraq”, African Affairs, 115(458), 23–43. Datta, K., 2009. “Transforming South–North Relations? International Migration and Development”, Geography Compass, 3(1), 108–134. Davies, A. A., R. M. Borland, C. Blake and H. E. West, 2011. “The Dynamics of Health and Return Migration”, PLOS Medicine, 8(6), e1001046. https://doi​.org​/10​.1371​/journal​.pmed​.1001046 Donou-Adonsou, F., G. Pradhan and H. C. Basnet, 2020. “Remittance Inflows and Financial Development: Evidence from the Top Recipient Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa”, Applied Economics, 52(53), 5807–5820. DW, 2017 (29 August). “Opinion: Europe Is Paying for African Migrant Deterrence”, Bonn: DW (from https://www​.dw​.com​/en​/opinion​-europe​-is​-paying​-for​-african​-migrant​-deterrence​/a​ -40289016, 16 February 2022). DW [Deutsche Welle], 2020 (9 July). “Number of Right-Wing Extremists in Germany on Rise, Security Report Suggests”, Bonn: DW (from https://www​.dw​.com​/en​/germany​-right​-wing​-extremists​/a​ -54105110, 16 February 2022). Engmann, R. A. A., 2021. “Coups, Castles, and Cultural Heritage: Conversations with Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings, Former President of Ghana”, Journal of Heritage Tourism, 16(6), 722–737. EUDiF [European Union Global Diaspora Facility], 2021. Diaspora Engagement: Africa Regional Series. Brussels: EUDiF. Publication was written by Dr F. Tittel-Mosser for EUDiF, with editorial support from Dr A. Sgro and C. Griffiths, and document layout and design by Marc Rechdane. Fayissa, B. and C. Nsiah, 2010. “The Impact of Remittances on Economic Growth and Development in Africa”, The American Economist, 55(2), 92–103. Gaillard, J., A.-M. Gaillard and V.V. Krishna, 2015. “Return from Migration and Circulation of Highly Educated People: The Never-Ending Brain Drain”, Science, Technology and Society, 20(3), 269–278. Gwenzi, G., U. S. Anaduaka and E. A. Asante, 2017. “Insider/Outsider Status of ‘Returning’ Researchers in Sub-Saharan Africa”, International Journal of Academic Research and Reflection, 5(3), 1–10. International Organisation for Migration (IOM), 2019. Glossary on Migration. Geneva: IOM. IOM, 2004. MIDA: Mobilising the African Diasporas for the Development of Africa. Geneva: IOM (from https://publications​.iom​.int​/system​/files​/pdf​/mida​_en​.pdf, 16 February 2022). IOM, 2008a. “Enhancing the Role of Return Migration in Fostering Development”, Geneva: IOM (from https://www​.iom​.int​/sites​/g​/files​/tmzbdl486​/files​/jahia​/webdav​/shared​/shared​/ mainsite​/microsites​/IDM​/workshops​/return​_migration​_development​_070708​/enhancing​_benefits​_return​_migration​.pdf, 17 February 2022). IOM, 2008b. Return Migration: Challenges and Opportunities - MC/INF/293. Geneva: IOM (from https://www​.iom​.int​/sites​/g​/files​/tmzbdl486​/files​/jahia​/webdav​/shared​/shared​/mainsite​ /microsites​/IDM​/workshops​/return​_migration​_challenges​_120208​/MC​_INF​_293​_Return​ _Migration​.pdf, 17 February 2022). IOM, 2020. A Region on the Move: 2019 Mobility Overview in the East and Horn of Africa and the Arab Peninsula. Nairobi: IOM. McAuliffe, M. and A. Triandafyllidou, eds., 2021. World Migration Report 2022. Geneva: IOM. Klagge, B. and K. Klein-Hitpaß, 2010. “High-Skilled Return Migration and Knowledge-Based Development in Poland”, European Planning Studies, 18(10), 1631–1651 Kleist, N., 2015. “Pushing Development: A Case Study of Highly Skilled Male Return Migration to Ghana”, in L. Åkesson and M. E. Baaz, eds., Africa’s Return Migrants: The New Developers?. London: Zed Books, pp. 64–86. Malki, I.P.X. (2018). “Citizenship, Strangerhood, and Exclusion: The Fate of Lebanese ‘Aliens’ in British West Africa and Ghana”, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 51(3), 459–486. Nawyn, S. J., 2013. “Refugee Resettlement Policies and Pathways to Integration”, in S. J. Gold and S. J. Nawyn, eds., Routledge International Handbook of Migration Studies. London: Routledge, pp. 107–117.

271

Sabastiano Rwengabo Organization of African Unity (OAU), 1981/1986. African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Addis Ababa: OAU. Patterson, T. R. and R. D. G. Kelley, 2000. “Unfinished Migrations: Reflections on the African Diaspora and the Making of the Modern World”, African Studies Review, 43(1), 11–45. Phasha, T. S., 2021. “The Transitional Experiences of South African Medical Students Returning from Cuba”, PhD Thesis. University of Pretoria (from https://repository​.up​.ac​.za​/bitstream​/handle​ /2263​/80501​/Phasha​_Transitional​_2021​.pdf​?sequence​=1, 15 February 2022). Plaza, S. and D. Ratha, eds., 2011. Diaspora for Development in Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank. Robertson, S. L., 2006. “Brain Drain, Brain Gain and Brain Circulation”, Globalisation, Societies and Education, 4(1), 1–5. Rwengabo, S., 2014. “The Dark Side of Diasporas in Africa’s Great Lakes Region”, in S. Sahoo and B. K. Pattanaik, eds., Global Diasporas and Development: Socioeconomic, Cultural, and Policy Perspectives. New Delhi: Springer, pp. 283–304. Sabadie, J. A., J. Avato, U. Bardak, F. Panzica and N. Popova, 2010. Migration and Skills: The Experience of Migrant Workers from Albania, Egypt, Moldova, and Tunisia. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Sen, A., 1988. “The Concept of Development”, in H. Chenery and T. N. Srinivasan, eds., Handbook of Development Economics, Vol. I. Amsterdam & elsewhere: ElsevierScience Publishers B.V., pp. 9–26. Sinatti, G., 2015. “‘Come Back, Invest, and Advance the Country’: Policy Myths and Migrant Realities of Return and Development in Senegal”, in L. Åkesson and M. E. Baaz, eds., Africa’s Return Migrants: The New Developers?, London: Zed Books, pp. 87–108. Tetteh, B., 2020 (20 September). “Beyond the Year of Return: Africa and the Diaspora Must Forge Closer Ties – Dr. Barfuor Adjei-Barwuah, Ghana’s Ambassador to the United States”, New York: UN [Africa Renewal] (from https://www​.un​.org​/africarenewal​/magazine​/september​-2020​/ beyond​-year​-return​-africa​-and​-diaspora​-must​-forge​-closer​-ties, 17 February 2022). Thomas-Hope, E., 1999. “RM to Jamaica and Its Development Potential”, International Migration, 37(1), 183–205. Thomas, K.J.A, (2012). “The Human Capital Characteristics and Household Living Standards of Returning International Migrants in Eastern and Southern Africa”, International Migration, 50(4), 85–106. https://doi​.org​/10​.1111​/j​.1468​-2435​.2009​.00541​.x. UN Africa Renewal, 2019. “2019: Year of Return for African Diaspora - Ghana Rolls Out the Red Carpet to Encourage Resettlement in the Motherland”. New York: UN (from https://www​.un​ .org​/africarenewal​/magazine​/december​-2018​-march​-2019​/2019​-year​-return​-african​-diaspora, 17 February 2022). United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA), 1998. Recommendations on Statistics of International Migration – Revision 1. New York: UN-DESA. United Nations Development Program (UNDP), 2022. New Threats to Human Security in the Anthropocene: Demanding Greater Solidarity. New York: UNDP. United States Government, 2017. Executive Order 13769 of January 27, 2017. Washington DC: US Government (from https://www​.govinfo​.gov​/content​/pkg​/FR​-2017​-02​-01​/pdf​/2017​-02281​ .pdf, 16 February 2022). Waite, L. J. and J. Cook, 2011. “Belonging among Diasporic African Communities in the UK: Plurilocal Homes and Simultaneity of Place Attachments”, Emotion, Space and Society, 4(4), 238–248. Washington Post, 2020 (4 July). “Ghana to Black Americans: Come Home. We’ll Help You Build a Life Here”, Washington, DC: Washington Post (from https://www​.washingtonpost​.com​/world​/africa​ /ghana​-to​-black​-americans​-come​-home​-well​-help​-you​-build​-a​-life​-here​/2020​/07​/03​/1b11a914​ -b4e3​-11ea​-9a1d​-d3db1cbe07ce​_story​.html, 12 February 2022). World Bank, 2017. Migration and Remittances: Recent Developments and Outlook Special Topic: Return Migration. Washington, DC: World Bank Migration and Development Brief 28. Zeleza, P. T., 2005. “Rewriting the African Diaspora: Beyond the Black Atlantic”, African Affairs, 104(414), 35–68.

272

16 RECONSIDERING THE CONCEPT OF INTERNATIONAL RETURN IN THE AFRICAN CONTEXT The Place of Immobile Cognitive Return Mary Boatemaa Setrana and Adolf Awuku Bekoe

Introduction Generally, return migration has received limited attention because it is seen as normal, while in some cases, return migration is only associated with irregular migration and mostly discussed under human trafficking and migrant smuggling. The assumption that every departure automatically comes with return in most traditional migration theories contributes to the normalisation of return. Departure is novel and generates a lot of academic, political, legal, familial and sociocultural excitement. However, return fuels departure to the extent that return migrants serve as inspiration to aspiring migrants. Even with irregular returnees, countries still stand a chance of harnessing their development potential if they are well reintegrated. In response to calls for mechanisms for ensuring effective governance on return migration and reintegration in 2015, migration management (which also includes sustainable return and reintegration) was highlighted as a key indicator in the 2030 Global Development Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Additionally, the Global Compacts on Migration (hereafter GCM) and Global Compacts on Refugees (hereafter GCR) discussed how to ensure dignified return of migrants as well as developing the home country to ensure that migrants returned to safe and secure environments different from what pushed them out initially. The SDGs, GCM and GCR recognise the need for a comprehensive approach (known as the “whole approach” in the GCR) to minimise the cost and maximise the benefit of international return migration while addressing risks and challenges for individuals and communities in countries of origin, transit and destination. Although broadly limited in academic and research debates, the emerging discourse on (im)mobility gives the opportunity for scholars to reconsider the concept of return within the broader discourse of migration. While migration, which is the physical movement of persons, broadly has categorised return into voluntary and involuntary, this chapter argues that there is a more complex categorisation than this binary division in the African context, especially when the concept of return is introduced into the (im)mobility debate. The category DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-20

273

Mary Boatemaa Setrana and Adolf Awuku Bekoe

of immobile cognitive returnees or cognitive return migrants, a novel immobility category delineated from the concept of cognitive return migration by Bekoe (2021), is a significant category to consider while reconsidering the concept of return. The stories of immobile cognitive returnees have not yet been told as migration scholars unravel the complexities of migration to include immobility discourse. In this chapter, the immobile returnees term is used synonymously with cognitive return, which is conceptualised as the return of those who at some point in their lives have ever dreamt of migrating and even pursued that migration project, but due to personal, emigration and immigration factors among others, they decided to forget about their migration dream and resettle or reintegrate into the home country (Setrana, 2021). In other words, we define cognitive returnees as prospective persons with an earlier outward future cognitive orientation displaced to an imagined destination that has been returned into a homeward future cognitive orientation in the wake of failing to physically travel to embody their migration imagination abroad (Bekoe, 2021). The cognitive return concept represents a new immobility category. So far, three immobility categories can be identified. The first is voluntary immobility or stayers (Carling & Schewel, 2018; de Haas, 2021; 2010; Mata-Codesal, 2015; 2017; Schewel, 2015; 2019; Setrana, 2021); the second is involuntary immobility (Carling, 2002; Carling & Schewel, 2018; Lubkemann, 2008); and the third is acquiescent immobility (Carling & Schewel, 2018; Schewel, 2015, 2019). The voluntary immobile has the resources but not the desire to pursue a livelihood option abroad and therefore decides to stay. On the other hand, the acquiescently immobile never desired or imagined nor has the resources to pursue a migratory dream. The involuntary immobile has desire and aspiration but no ability or capability, and keeps searching for the opportunity to achieve the migration dream. Beyond cognitive return, we also demonstrate how return migrants contribute to the development of Africa. In the African context, young person’s fall into all categories of return migration, including voluntary, involuntary and cognitive return. Unfortunately, while research and policy has ignored the presence of the latter category, they play a significant role once they take the decision to resettle in their minds to live in their home countries or remain on the continent. Although return migration has been explicated in the literature using international migration theory (Makina, 2012), there is a need for scholars to begin to explore return migration within the context of internal migration. In spite of imagined destination being predominantly international, we acknowledge that imagined destination can also be internal. However, in this book chapter, we focus on international return migration. This type of cognitive return is mostly common in West Africa, which regards higher numbers of young people migrating through the Mediterranean to Europe. The high cost of migration, increasing opportunities at home and increasing tightening of restrictive immigration laws are pointing good signals to these young West Africans to utilise the opportunities in the sub-region. Unfortunately, there is no official migration statistics of this phenomenon; Bekoe (2021), in this regard, submits thus: A home-grown policy that celebrates and popularises cognitive return migrants or immobile cognitive returnees, is needed. Celebrating and popularising cognitive return migrants or immobile cognitive returnees, means making them visible in national statistics. Knowing the number of people in a particular country that have imagined, pursued, failed and emplaced and invested their migration imaginations in a homeward future is the beginning of appreciating the extent to which migration broadly shapes social and developmental processes. 274

Concept of International Return in the African Context

While we talk about return and development of physical return migrants, we tend to ignore this important group of immobile returnees who also contributes immensely to the home country once they decide to readjust to the home country. The aim of this chapter is to explore the concept of return in the immobility debate; here the category of returnees goes beyond the usual category of voluntary and involuntary to include the return of immobile persons. The chapter draws on a variety of predominantly anglophone academic sources, including our own studies on various dimensions of Ghanaian migration and (im)mobilities. It also profits from work from the Centre for Migration Studies (CMS), the University of Ghana, and other local and international institutions.

Factors Influencing Both Return Migration and Cognitive Return This section explores motivations for return migration including immobile or cognitive return. Return migration literature has evolved from adducing purely economic reasons for return to more sociocultural reasons. This development follows the debate within the migration–development nexus where historically both neoclassical and neo-Marxist paradigms have taken turns to explicate motives for return migration. From an era of predominant economic reasons, recent motivations for return have included sociocultural reasons (Sinatii, 2019). Avle (2014) observed that usually returnees’ impact is explained in strictly economic terms ignoring the fact that returnees themselves articulate social and cultural change as part of their contributions. Citing Ghana as a case in point, Avle (2014) recounted how returnees who mostly ended up in the private sector described how changes to workplace and public culture constituted an important dimension of their contribution to Ghana’s socioeconomic development. In the following, we explore these motivations (i.e., economic and non-economic) and further clarify that economic and non-economic motivations translate into investment/entrepreneurial activities and cultural and democratic brokerage activities, respectively. It is important to note that although economic and non-economic reasons have been ascribed to return migration, economic considerations predominate at the emigration phase and less so at the return phase. The dominant theoretical considerations in migration studies, namely neoclassical, New Economics of Labour Migration (NELM) and HistoricalStructural perspective all emphasise economic rationale in migration decision-making, including return migration. Economic reasons come to play in the evaluation of the marginal utility of consumption; according to Galor and Stark (1991) for example, the marginal utility of consumption is higher in the home country compared to the host country. Additionally, Dustmann (1997) surmises that overseas capital human investments yield better dividends in host countries. These two intertwined reasons orchestrate the accumulation of both financial and cultural capitals that propel the economistic argument for return migration at the migration–development nexus. Nevertheless, the overreliance on wealth accumulation and superior knowledge acquisition in destination countries have been criticised for not being nuanced. This is because migrants are confronted with so many challenges including labour market discrimination and racism in the immigration contexts that undermine their acquisition of both financial and cultural capital. Most highly educated migrants from Africa have had to survive in destination countries through deskilling (Sair, 2013). Deskilling occurs in instances where human capital (i.e., education and experience, skills and know-how) is not deployed in meaningful and produc275

Mary Boatemaa Setrana and Adolf Awuku Bekoe

tive ways (Bach, 2003; Man, 2004; Neiterman & Bourgeault, 2015; O’Brien, 2007; Parutis, 2014; Trevena, 2013). This could be due to racial and ethnic undertones which ensure that skilled migrants regress to the level of unskilled non-migrants (Fossland, 2013; O’Brien, 2007; Parutis, 2014; Pung & Goh, 2017; Sert, 2016). In some immigration contexts, the education and skills of highly skilled migrants can be recognised at the time of entry but subsequently “deskilled” or deployed to positions much lower that their education, training or experience, within the domestic labour market. Non-recognition of the skills and education of migrant professionals after their qualifications met admission criteria into a host country has been described as “direct deception” (Siar, 2013, p. 2). Deskilling is considered a form of brain abuse from a human rights perspective (Bauder, 2003). Beyond economic losses, deskilling results in psychological and health problems that limit affected migrants from fully realising the rewards of their human capital. These challenges notwithstanding, there are varied reasons that instigate return migration as enumerated in the following. In Ghana, studies by Setrana and Tonah (2016) and Setrana (2017) identified a number of reasons for return migration. These include completion of education in the host country, availability of investment opportunities in Ghana, loss of employment abroad, decision to join the family in Ghana, homesickness and difficulty integrating abroad. Among the returnees of Somaliland, Hammond (2015) identified finding more fulfilling work, escaping the marginalisation and exclusion meted out to Somali migrant communities abroad in host nations of settlement, multiple motivations including personal ambition or a desire for profit, the aspiration to help promote recovery and development in Somaliland, or a combination of both. The same mixture of motivations characterises the return experience of Senegalese. Sinatii (2011, 2019) found a mixture of motivations that include a wish to reunite with families and take up responsibilities as family heads, not enduring the hardships of immigration. The desire to invest economically does it feature among the most important motivations. The rationale for this stems from the fact that for most returnees, return marks a significant dip in earnings compared to earnings abroad, even among business-minded returnees. Some authors have put forward the need to transcend the neoclassical optimism versus neo-Marxist pessimism divide because of circuits of transfer comprising human, social and cultural resources and skills that exist within a transnational context; return migration does not present a complete break between countries of origin and destination (Setrana & Tonah, 2016; Sinatii, 2019). Sinatii (2019) argues that return migration is an empowering process that results in the mastery of one’s life, taking one’s destiny into their own hands and determining the outcomes of their lives. The decision to return, therefore, is a metacognitive process that enhances self-regulation. The decision could result in a business endeavour but it’s not originally a business decision. Sinatii (2011) describes return migration as “the enactment of people's capability to be mobile” (Sinatii, 2019, p. 615). Return migration therefore becomes a trade-off between economic/material advancement and non-economic/social validation, which is settled in favour of social validation. The motivation for returning cognitively is influenced by layers of factors such as economic, social and personal traits. As indicated in Setrana (2021), the decision to return cognitively is influenced by transnational links, positive emigration environment and individual factors such as jobs, international links with diaspora, a relatively comfortable life, marital life, children and other dependents, their extended families as well as a distressful past they would not want to go back to. Other factors influencing cognitive return decisions were individual factors such as marriage, children, age, gender and education, among others. Cognitive returnees have strong attachment which is nurtured overtime through children, 276

Concept of International Return in the African Context

owning a house, and being married are conditions that constrain migration but attracts them to return immobility. In Setrana (2021, p. 254), she highlight why Dul, an immobile cognitive returnee, decided to remain in Ghana. He said: I am self-employed, trading in car spare parts. If I make the mistake of leaving my job to anywhere abroad, my business will collapse. Also, I am a family man, with a wife and kid. I have several dependents I am caring for. Imagine I travel in the midst of all these responsibilities, there will be a huge problem. The other problem is also that in Ghana I have my freedom. I decide when and what time to report to work; my cousin in the USA cannot do that at his work place. On the other hand, my cousin in the USA, earns more than I do here in Ghana but does not have the freedom. I know [that], with time, I will earn much more although with a bit of struggles. Similarly, in Setrana (2021, p. 255), another respondent called Akos who is an immobile cognitive returnee shared her experience of remaining in Ghana as her preferred choice: My brother who is in Southampton, for instance, told me that his monthly salary is 1,440 pounds. He pays 270 pounds for accommodation. He sometimes spends less than 100 pounds on food. At least he is able to save about 900 pounds every month. In Ghana, if one is not a politician or doing any better job, it is difficult to save. With all my years of working, I have not been able to even save $280 per month. One advantage is that I run my own business, employing more than five workers, so, even if I am not at work, the job still progresses. Unlike me, my brother, goes to work at 6 AM and closes at 5:30 PM. By the time he closes from work, he is tired and has to retire to bed; and the routine continues the next day.

Contribution of Return Migrants and Immobile Cognitive Returnees to Development The conversation at the intersection of migration and development (i.e., the migration– development nexus) has followed both trajectories of theoretical orthodoxy and neoliberal policy considerations emanating from the Global North, particularly Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. Neoclassical migration theory conceptualises migration as “a form of optimal allocation of production factors to the benefit of both sending and receiving countries” (de Haas, 2010, p. 230). Also couched as “migration for growth”, this policy is a metamorphosis of an earlier discourse about migration with a “brain drain” pessimistic outlook about the development impacts of migration for origin countries. Its current rendition highlights or overrates the belief that migration and spiraling remittances have poverty-reducing and growth-stimulating potential for origin countries (de Haas, 2010). The historical–structuralist perspective, on the other hand, conceives migration as a “flight from misery” instigated by global capitalist expansion unable to address the structural conditions that cause migration. Migration is seen as heightening problems of underdevelopment. Papademetriou’s verdict is apt that in sending countries, migration adds to “the evolution into an uncontrolled depletion of their already meager supplies of skilled manpower – and the most healthy, dynamic, and productive members of their populations” (1985, pp. 211–212). Obeng-Odoom further questions this overly optimistic outlook of migration for source countries; thus, “If migration in the past was an instrument to under-develop 277

Mary Boatemaa Setrana and Adolf Awuku Bekoe

Africa, are Africans and Africa now using migration to develop the continent as advocates of neoliberal and neocolonial growth-led development suggest?” (Obeng-Oddom, 2016, p. 397). The reformist iteration of the neoclassical paradigm in the New Economics of Labour Migration does not escape the critical lenses of political economists. Its purported reconciliation of structure and agency under the rubric of a third way is deemed a rehash of the neoclassical paradigm centred on methodological individualism and individual rationality (Abreu, 2012; Obeng-Odoom, 2016). While return is sometimes characterised as being a sign of a failed migration attempt, to characterise return as such would be to overlook the growing body of evidence that suggests that return migrants often accumulate skills, savings and know-how while away and use these upon return (Schoch et al., 2020). Similarly, the reverse is true for cognitive returnees, once the decision is made to return, they begin to experience improvement in their well-being and that of their families. Abandoning one’s dream to pursue livelihood abroad and returning the mind home to invest in the local future is profitable. The decision for cognitive returnees to eventually focus on the home country’s development present them with opportunities they had glossed over. For example, failure to embody one’s migration imaginations abroad is transformed into a catalyst for change, where abandoned educational projects in the country of origin is revived and completed. This, in effect, enhances cultural capital and makes one employable. Setrana (2021) in her study among Ghanaian young adults, she noticed that all the potential migrants who decided to remain at home invested in businesses as traders, businessmen and women. They were trading in different goods and providing services such as catering. We explore two issues in the following sections: (1) return and brain gain and (2) return investment/entrepreneurship.

Return and Brain Gain The discourse around return migration and brain gain is an optimistic outcome emanating from concerns by developing countries about the loss of their brain power to the host countries. This is a result of the demand for skilled emigration by developed countries through their skill-intensive immigration systems (Gibson & McKenzie, 2009). Skilled migration rates are particularly high in Africa. According to Ratha et al. (2011), in 2000, one out of every eight Africans with a university education lived in a country in the OECD, surpassing developing regions except the Caribbean, Central America and Mexico. Estimates by the African Union indicate that about 70,000 skilled professionals emigrate from Africa every year. In 2016, the IMF’s World Economic Outlook estimated that the total number of African migrants in OECD countries could rise to 34 million by 2050. In 2013 alone, the estimated number of African migrants in OECD countries was about 7 million with France, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) hosting about 50.0% of the total sub-Saharan African diaspora. Most impacted by this exodus are African island countries, with almost one-third of Cabo Verde’s population and about 10.0% of Mauritius, São Tomé & Príncipe, and Seychelles’ population living outside the country. Evaluated through the lenses of public service delivery, the impact of brain drain becomes accentuated, especially in the health sector. In 2015, 86.0% of all African-educated physicians working in the US were trained in Egypt, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa. The return migration literature does not paint so gloomy a picture of migration. The literature points to the likelihood of “brain gain” from highly skilled returnees (Gibson & McKenzie, 2009). In Cape Verde, “brain drain” has not been found to be a 278

Concept of International Return in the African Context

serious problem as it was traditionally thought to be. Instead, the massive emigration in Cape Verde has encouraged the accumulation of human capital (Batista et al., 2007). Some authors find evidence that the opportunity for brain drain does stimulate skill accumulation and that this effect seems to offset the direct loss of skills from brain drain and no evidence for an adverse effect of brain drain on economic growth (Easterly & Nyarko, 2008). We present a nuanced position on return and brain gain. In Ghana, studies on returnees indicate that decision to return is not only based on lifecycle considerations but also on the desire to contribute skills and experiences to some development goals (Ammassari, 2004; Black et al., 2003; Chacko, 2007; Gibson & McKenzie, 2011). Older skilled returnees tend to mention nation building as a motivation for return, with the possibility of playing a role being more salient to them than the younger generation (Ammassari, 2004). Research on the return of health professionals to Ghana finds that motivating factors for return include the desire to impart knowledge to young health professionals and to improve the health sector of the country. There has been large human capital gains in areas such as proficiency in in-vitro fertilisation and care for neonatal abnormalities, which migrant health professionals have acquired in their host countries that would not otherwise have been available in medical practice in Ghana, the establishment of clinics, diagnostic centres and laboratories and teaching medical training institutions (Adzei & Sakyi, 2014). In the healthcare sector, research on return migration of health professionals to Nigeria finds that they have had a positive impact on the country’s healthcare system through the spread of health-related knowledge and good practices stemming from the high-quality training they received overseas (Okafor & Chimereze, 2020). All participants in a study on returnee health professionals to Botswana indicated that their migratory experience would beneficial to the country. They were looking forward to transferring the work ethic, professionalism, clinical skills and knowledge acquired to other health professionals in Botswana (Motlhatlhedi & Nkomazana, 2018).

Return and Investment/Entrepreneurship According to Bruck et al. (2018), the rationale for temporary migration is to support initiatives in the home country often. This support comes through an accumulation of funds for household consumption or for investment in a business (Dustmann & Görlach, 2016). Often, returnees’ investment is directed towards self-employment as an occupation. A number of studies have found more returnees get into self-employment than stayers (Wahba & Zenou, 2012; Wahba, 2015; Batista et al., 2017). This finding has bolstered belief in the fact that migration facilitates entrepreneurship and hence economic development in sending countries. de Vreyer et al. (2010) opine that return-migrant-run businesses (especially those returning from OECD countries). Although returnees accumulate cultural and financial capital which are useful for clearing the bottlenecks in the way of starting a new business (Marchetta, 2012; Rapoport, 2002), the challenge is that entrepreneurship and migration policies often do more harm to the poor and to development than good. Not all entrepreneurs create sustainable or substantial jobs, most do not innovate much and substantial numbers of firms (Naudé, 2010, 2011). For example, Ghana, Egypt and Burundi are used as cases to demonstrate the contribution of returnees to investment and entrepreneurship in the home countries of Africa In Burundi, most returnees are unable or unwilling to depend on their family networks to secure income. Most returnees consider setting up their own enterprises as a means of 279

Mary Boatemaa Setrana and Adolf Awuku Bekoe

generating income as the most viable investment option. Returnees in Burundi view their exposure to different work ethics and principles of business management as the most valuable capital upon return and not the specific work done abroad. Beyond the provision of jobs and income for people, their most treasured contribution to Burundian society is their ability to influence their society with the principles of equality, respect, time-keeping, perseverance and work morale they have acquired from abroad. According to Sagmo (2015), without social capital, it will be difficult for returnees in Burundi to apply and leverage the skills acquired in destination countries. Thus, in Burundi, the potential of business advances in “parallel with the process of accumulating social capital” (Sagmo, 2015, p. 127). Sagmo emphasises the centrality of social networks by quoting a returnee; thus, “in Burundi you need to know people, you need to talk to people. You need to know how to talk to people and they need to trust you … Everywhere you go, you have to sell yourself” (Sagmo, 2015, p. 122). In Egypt, Wahba and Zenou (2012) find that experience, savings and duration abroad obviate the loss of social capital through migration and the determination of business startups. Males were found to engage in entrepreneurial activities upon return more than females (Batista et al., 2017). Younger individuals were more likely to become entrepreneurs. There was a positive relationship between education and entrepreneurship among returnees and pre-migration conditions mattered for entrepreneurship among returnees. Being unskilled reduces the probability of entrepreneurship, which is consistent with the finding that it is the more educated who tend to invest on return. Also migration alone was not sufficient to enhance the performance of entrepreneurial activities but industry-specific human capital accumulated abroad had a significant impact on net earnings (Bensassi & Jabbour, 2021). Return migrants in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire are more likely to start a new enterprise by virtue of their longer stay abroad and their accumulation of savings (Black & Castaldo, 2009). These authors also found that poor return migrants are the most likely to set up business while formal education abroad did not predict entrepreneurship once they returned. Issifu (2018) also found that a majority of return migrants invested in a business in Ghana, particularly in IT, finance and insurance, all in the wealth-enhancing activities in the service industry. Nevertheless, these initiatives were fraught with access to credit and entrepreneurship training challenges. Consistent with the literature (Åkesson & Baaz, 2015), Issifu (2018) reported the existence of social networks as crucial to the success of entrepreneurial activities. Issifu (2018) recommended the implementation of business-support programmes with mentoring, entrepreneurship training and start-up capital to lessen challenges on returnee entrepreneurship. Return migration, according to Issifu (2018), has many positive impacts on Ghana but to fully harness it as “the entrepreneurship tool which it has tremendous potential to be, the government of Ghana must incorporate measures to improve the domestic business climate” (p. 168).

The Place of Cognitive Return to Development The effect of cognitive return migration has been less explored due to the overemphasis placed on actual return, specifically within the arguments on the accumulation of capital, skills and know-how. In this chapter, we argue that often, it is only when a person makes the conscious effort to stop pursuing migrating out of the home country and resumes staying in the home country can they make a meaningful contribution to the origin country. Thus, cognitive return presupposes the investment of capital accumulations for intended migration purposes in the home country economy. Just like actual return, cognitive return can 280

Concept of International Return in the African Context

result in redirecting accumulated skills, savings, and know-how otherwise for migrating to a destination country back to the home country. The effect of reinvesting this capital in the local economy should thus, not be overlooked as it contributes to post-return gains. Like actual returnees, the cognitive return can sometimes be characterised as failed return, especially among closer social networks of persons who are aware of the migration aspirations of the cognitive returnees. While the failed attempt to migrate is already considered a failure, the inability to retrieve invested resources that were spent on attempting to migrate is also considered a failed investment. More so, a depletion of resources (including financial capital) in hopes of migrating could result in the cognitive returnee returning without accumulated financial capital to invest in the home society. In terms of similarity, the immobile cognitive returnee can disconnect from the social realities in the home country and be more present in the desired destination country by following what happens in that country. For such a person, although she/he could be physically present in the home country, his preoccupation, cognitive and state of mind might not be in the home country. The mental preparedness registers a state of leaving rather than a state of stay. Connection to the home country becomes transactional and trans-local – being in the local but following transnational happenings. For example, such a person might learn the dialect or language of the desired destination country as part of the preparation for the actual migration. The cognitive return also takes preparation and needs time to happen, and it is only when cognitive return happens that such persons might be able to reassess the home society and recalibrate and social and cultural capital at their disposal. By tapping into the available resources in the home country, the cognitive returnees can finally reestablish a more meaningful connection to the home society for reinvesting the accumulated capital. Here, the experiences from failed attempts and the whims of cognitive contacts with foreign cultures could be converted to solidify return regarding the reappreciation of the home society. On the side of cognitive return, the “brain” that was almost lost to migration becomes a gain when the prospective migrant makes a cognitive return. The gain for the home country is the rechannelling of the human capital for contributing to national development. Not necessarily that the cognitive returnees would return with newly acquired skills or professional advancement but put the already existing skills and know-how to work to the benefit of the home country. For example, when John decided to resettle his mind to remain in Ghana, he invested in his education to enhance his skills in media issues. John said, once I decided to forget about migration to Europe, I decided to add value to my life, I wanted to get into Media and do it so well. At that time, I was a regular contributor to BBC Africa network program. I took it upon myself to be making comments. He finally found opportunities in the home country. John is currently a media practitioner who contributes to enhancing people’s knowledge. Others, as indicated earlier, invest in businesses – Emma for example is a trader who decided to invest her money in trading information technology equipment and phone accessories. She fortunately had a partner living in the UK who started a joint venture with him. She explained that, I remember the small money that was left when I decided to resettle in my mind in Ghana, which was what I gave to my UK business partner to buy me goods. Since that 281

Mary Boatemaa Setrana and Adolf Awuku Bekoe

time, I have established different shops in the business centres. I employ more than 15 people in total. All these employees depend on me. (Setrana, 2021) Victor also recounts some of the benefits that accrued from his decision to invest in a local or homeward future. His current company gave him a loan to buy a car. He needed a bigger car because his sister and her family including their mother were visiting from the US. Victor narrated his story: I felt the thrill so much when I got to Tema and put all of them in the 7-seater car; even though I didn’t say it to them right in their faces but that was the feeling. I said look at the man who initially felt that he was rejected because he didn’t travel to America, look at him rather carrying the American people along in his car in Ghana. (Bekoe, 2021) Victor has become more socially and culturally embedded in Ghana and has several opportunities as he stated including being invited as a special guest of honour in his former school: I was once a teacher, now I am a special guest for a programme in the same school and it was thrilling. And I felt maybe if I had gone to America probably I wouldn’t get that privilege of meeting great people, big people.

Conclusion and Policy Recommendations The concept of cognitive return migrants or immobile cognitive returnees subverts the prevailing conceptualisation of return migration as bifurcated voluntary and involuntary physical movement. It highlights how migratory thought is structuring the lives of some West African youth who fail to physically embody their livelihood aspirations through migration. The realisation that non-movement is not failure but unleashes an indomitable spirit to thrive in the home country once associated with poverty, which presents an epistemic site for intellectual engagement for migration scholars on the continent. It is clear from the experiences of the stories that the benefits of migration to the continent are in the return phase of migration. They also highlight the fact that migration is just a conduit for seeking greener pastures, not an end in itself and that if opportunities are created and actively presented to the West African youth as sustainable livelihood options, the indignities our compatriots suffer in search of livelihood will abate. It therefore behoves African governments to invest in opportunities to stem the tide of south–north migration through irregular means. The chapter has also emphasised the importance of immobile returnees who also contributes immensely to their home country once they decide to readjust to the home country. Immobile returnees play a critical role once they take the decision to resettle in their minds to live in their home countries or remain on the continent.

References Abreu, A. (2012). The new economics of labor migration: Beware of neoclassicals bearing gifts. Forum for Social Economics, 41(1), 46–67. https://doi​.org​/10​.1007/ s12143-010-9077-2 Adzei, F. A., & Sakyi, E. K. (2014). Drivers of return migration of Ghanaian health professionals: Perspectives from doctors and nurses in urban Ghana. International Journal of Migration, Health and Social Care, 10(2), 102–120.

282

Concept of International Return in the African Context Ammassari, S. (2004). From nation-building to entrepreneurship: The impact of elite return migrants in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana. Population, Space and Place, 10(2), 133–154. https://doi​.org​/10​ .1002​/psp​.319. Avle, S. (2014). Articulating and enacting development: Skilled returnees in Ghana’s ICT industry. Information Technologies and International Development, 10(4), 1–13. Baaz, M. E. (2015). Successive flops and occasional feats: Development contributions and thorny social navigation among Congolese return migrants. In L. Åkesson & M. E. Baaz (eds.), Africa’s return migrants: The new developers? The Nordic Afrikan Institute (pp. 24–44). London: Zed Publishing. Bach, S. (2003). International migration of health workers: Labour and social issues. Geneva: International Labour Office. Batista, C., Lacuesta, A., & Vicente, P. C. (2007). Brain drain or brain gain? Micro evidence from an African success story. Micro Evidence from an African Success Story (September 2007). IZA DP No. 3035 Batista, C., McIndoe-Calder, T., & Vicente, P. C. (2017). Return migration, self-selection and entrepreneurship. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 79(5), 797–821. https://doi​.org​/10​.1111​ /obes​.12176. Bauder, H. (2003). “Brain abuse”, or the devaluation of immigrant labour in Canada. Antipode, 35(4), 699–717. Bekoe, A. A. (2021). (Im)mobility, cognitive migration and return in Ghana. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Ghana, Centre for Migration Studies, Accra. Black, R., & Castaldo, A. (2009) Return migration and entrepreneurship in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire: The role of capital transfers. Journal of Economic and Human Geography, 100(1), 44–58. https:// doi​.org​/10​.1111​/j​.1467​-9663​.2009​.00504​.x. Bensassi, S., & Jabbour, L. (2021). Beyond experience and capital. Is there a return to return migration? The Journal of Development Studies. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/00220388​.2021​.1988076. Black, R., King, R., Litchfield, J., Ammassari, S., & Tiemoko, R. (2003). Transnational migration, return and development in West Africa (final research report). Sussex: Sussex Center for Migration Research, University of Sussex. Brück, T., Mahé, C., & Naudé, W. (2018). Return migration and self-employment: Evidence from Kyrgyzstan IZA DP No. 11332. Carling, J. (2002). Migration in the age of involuntary immobility: Theoretical reflections and Cape Verdean experiences. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 28(1), 5–42. https://doi​.org​/10​ .1080​/1369183012010391. Carling, J., & Schewel, K. (2018). Revisiting aspiration and ability in international migration. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 44(6), 945–963. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/1369183X​.2017​ .1384146. Chacko, E. (2007). From brain drain to brain gain: Reverse migration to Bangalore and Hyderabad, India’s globalizing high tech cities. GeoJournal, 68(2–3), 131–140. https://doi​.org​/10​.1007​/ s10708​-007​-9078​-8. de Haas, H. (2010). Migration and development: A theoretical perspective. International Migration Review, 44(1), 227–264. https://doi​.org​/10​.1111​/j​.1747​-7379​.2009​.00804​.x. de Haas, H. (2021). A theory of migration: The aspirations-capabilities framework. In Comparative Migration Studies (Vol. 9, Issue 1). https://doi​.org​/10​.1186​/s40878​-020​-00210​-4. de Vreyer, P., Gubert, F., & Robilliard, A. S. (2010). Are there returns to migration experience? An empirical analysis using data on return migrants and non-migrants in West Africa. Annales d’Economie et de Statistique, 97–98, 307–328. Dustmann, C. (1997). Differences in the labor market behavior between temporary and permanent migrant women. Labour Economics, 4(1), 29–46. https://doi​.org​/10​.1016​/S0927​ -5371(96)00025-5. Dustmann, C., & Görlach, J. S. (2016). The economics of temporary migrations. Journal of Economic Literature, 54(1), 98–136. Easterly, W., & Nyarko, Y. (2008). Is the brain drain good for Africa? Brookings Global Economy and Development Working Paper No. 19. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn​.com​/abstract​=1121853 or http://dx​.doi​.org​/10​.2139​/ssrn​.1121853. Fossland, T. (2013). Crossing borders – Getting work: Skilled migrants’ gendered labour market participation in Norway. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift - Norwegian Journal of Geography, 67(5), 276–283.

283

Mary Boatemaa Setrana and Adolf Awuku Bekoe Galor, O., & Stark, O. (1991). The probability of return migration, migrants’ work effort, and migrants’ performance. Journal of Development Economics, 35(2), 399–405. https://doi​.org​/10​.1016​/0304​ -3878(91)90058-4 Gibson, J., & McKenzie, D. (2009). The microeconomic determinants of emigration and return migration of the best and brightest: Evidence from the pacific IZA DP No. 3926. Gibson, J., & McKenzie, D. (2011). The microeconomic determinants of emigration and return migration of the best and brightest: Evidence from the pacific. Journal of Development Economics, 95(1), 18–29. http://doi​.org​/10​.1016​/j​.jdeveco​.2009​.11​.002. Hammond, L. (2015). Diaspora returnees to Somaliland: Heroes of development or job stealing scoundrels? In L. Åkesson & M. E. Baaz (eds.), Africa’s return migrants: The new developers? The Nordic Afrikan Institute (pp. 44–63). London: Zed Publishing. Issifu, I. (2018). Empirical investigation of impediments to returnees’ entrepreneurship in Ghana: An application of structural equation modelling. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 9(1). https://doi​.org​/10​.2478​/mjss​-2018​-0015 Lubkemann, S. C. (2008). Involuntary immobility : On a theoretical invisibility in Forced Migration Studies. Journal of Refugee Studies, 21(4). https://doi​.org​/10​.1093​/jrs​/fen043 Makina, D. (2012). Determinants of return migration intentions: Evidence from Zimbabwean migrants living in South Africa. Development Southern Africa, 29(3), 365–378. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​ /0376835X​.2012​.706034 Man, G. (2004). Gender, work and migration: Deskilling Chinese immigrant women in Canada. Women’s Studies International Forum, 27(2), 135–148. Marchetta, F. (2012). Return migration and the survival of entrepreneurial activities in Egypt. World Development, 40(10), 1999–2013. Mata-Codesal, D. (2015). Ways of staying put in Ecuador: Social and embodied experiences of mobility–immobility interactions. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 41(14), 2274–2290. https:// doi​.org​/10​.1080​/1369183X​.2015​.1053850. Mata-codesal, D. (2017). Gendered (im)mobility: Rooted women and waiting Penelopes. Crossings Journal of Migration and Culture, 8(2), 151–162. https://doi​.org​/10​.1386​/cjmc​.8​.2​.151. Motlhatlhedi, K., & Nkomazana, O. (2018). Home is home—Botswana’s return migrant health workers. PLOS ONE, 13(11), e0206969. https://doi​.org​/10​.1371​/journal​.pone​.0206969. Naudé, W. (2010). Promoting entrepreneurship in developing countries: Policy challenges. Helsinki: United Nations University Policy Brief No. 4, UNU-WIDER. Naudé, W. (2011). Entrepreneurship is not a binding constraint on growth and development in the poorest countries. World Development, 39(1), 33–44. Neiterman, E., & Bourgeault, I. L. (2015). The shield of professional status: Comparing internationally educated nurses’ and international medical graduates’ experiences of discrimination. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine, 19(6), 615–634. O’Brien, T. (2007). Overseas nurses in the national health service: A process of deskilling. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 16(12), 2229–2236. Obeng-Odoom, F. (2016). Migration, African migrants, and the world: Towards a radical political economy. African Identities, 14(4), 396–408. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/14725843​.2016​ .1147342 Papademetriou, D. G. (1985). Illusions and reality in international migration: Migration and development in post-World War II Greece. International Migration, XXIII(2), 211–223. Okafor, C., & Chimereze, C. (2020). Brain drain among Nigerian nurses: Implications to the migrating nurse and the home country. International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation, 7(1), 15–21. Parutis, V. (2014). ‘Economic migrants’ or ‘middling transnationals’? East European migrants’ experiences of work in the UK. International Migration, 52(1), 36–55. Pung, L. X., & Goh, Y. S. (2017). Challenges faced by international nurses when migrating: An integrative literature review. International Nursing Review, 64(1), 146–165. Rapoport, H. (2002) Migration, credit constraints and self-employment: A simple model of occupational choice, inequality and growth Economics Bulletin, 15(7), 1–5. Ratha, D., Mohapatra, S., Özden, C., Shaw, P. W., & Shimeles, A. (2011). Leveraging migration for Africa remittances, skills, and investments. Washington, DC: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank.

284

Concept of International Return in the African Context Sagmo, T. H. (2015). The role of social capital in post-conflict business development: Perspectives from returning migrants in Burundi. In L. Åkesson & M. E. Baaz (eds.), Africa’s return migrants: The new developers? The Nordic Afrikan Institute (pp. 109–129). London: Zed Publishing. Schewel, K. (2015). Working papers understanding the aspiration to stay a case study of young adults in. January, 1–37. Schewel, K. (2019). Understanding immobility: Moving beyond the mobility bias in migration studies. International Migration Review, 1–28. https://doi​.org​/10​.1177​/0197918319831952. Schoch, M., Litchfield, J., & Tsegay, A. H. (2020). The effect of return migration on the household welfare: Evidence from Ethiopia. Migrating out of Poverty Working Paper 66 Brighton: School of Global Studies, University of Sussex. Sert, D. (2016). From skill translation to devaluation: The de-qualification of migrants in Turkey. New Perspectives on Turkey, 54, 97–117. Setrana, M. B. (2017). Back home at last! Factors influencing return and reintegration of Ghanaian returnees. Journal of Identity and Migration Studies, 11(1), 27–195 Setrana, M. B. (2021). Choosing to stay: Alternate migration decisions of Ghanaian youth. Social Inclusion, 9(1), 247–256. Setrana, M. B., & Tonah, S. (2016). Do transnational links matter after return? Labour market participation among Ghanaian return migrants. The Journal of Development Studies, 52(4), 549–560. Siar, S. V. (2013). From highly skilled to low skilled: Revisiting the deskilling of migrant labor, PIDS discussion paper series, no. 2013–30. Makati City: Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS). Sinatti, G. (2011). “Mobile transmigrants” or “unsettled returnees”? Myth of return and permanent resettlement among Senegalese migrants. Population Space and Place, 17(2), 153–166. Sinatti, G. (2019). Return migration, entrepreneurship and development: Contrasting the economic growth perspective of Senegal’s diaspora policy through a migrant-centred approach. African Studies, 78(4), 609–623. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/00020184​.2018​.1555310. Trevena, P. (2013). Why do highly-skilled educated migrants go for low-skilled jobs? A case study of polish graduates working in London. In B. Glorius, A. Kuwvik, & I. Grabowska (eds.), Mobility in transition: Migration patterns after EU enlargement (pp. 169–190). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Wahba, J. (2015). Selection, selection, selection: The Impact of return migration. Journal of Population Economics, 28(3), 535–563. Wahba, J., & Zenou, Y. (2012). Out of sight, out of mind: Migration, entrepreneurship and social capital. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 42(5), 890–903.

285

17 THE NATURE AND “LIVED” EXPERIENCES OF CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN DIASPORAS Thabani Mutambasere and Dominic Pasura

Introduction This chapter examines the relationship between home, identity, and belonging among contemporary African diasporas. The notions of home and homeland influence diasporic connections to place and people across national borders. Diaspora levels of engagement with or disinterest in their actual or imagined places of origin are determined by, among other factors, how diaspora members conceptualise and relate to “home” or their homeland. The idea of home evokes many emotions, experiences, places, and connections among diverse transnational and diasporic groups. The chapter examines how contemporary African diasporas, embedded in multiple social worlds, relate to different spaces (local, national, regional, and transnational) and places. How do transnational migrations transform ideas, views, feelings, and practices of home? To address these questions, we first examine the intersection of transnational migration and diaspora and then discuss the three dominant meanings of home: material, relational, and representational.

Transnational Migration and Diaspora Theorising migration through a transnational lens offers analytical tools for questioning the assumed linearity of migration processes and the bounded nature of migrant identities and cultures (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002). As Yeoh and Collins (2022, p. 2) explain, “transnationalism is an overarching scholarly signifier for a bundle of concepts – transnationality, transnationalisation, transmigrant, transnational fields/spaces – that emphasise transversal dimensions of cross-border practices, lives and connections”. Nevertheless, the focus on connectedness in transnationalism studies has sometimes masked the importance of place and locality and how states, institutions, and social formations always enable, configure, and restrict cross-border actions and linkages (Yeoh & Collins, 2022). States and state politics

286

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-21

Nature and “Lived” Experiences of Contemporary African Diasporas

impact migrants’ and diasporas’ transnational practices and social action. Diasporas are “the exemplary communities of the transnational moment” (Tölölyan, 2018). In theorising diaspora as a concept, there are tensions between diaspora as an entity and diaspora as claims, projects, and stances (Alexander, 2017; Brubaker, 2005). As a typological tool, diaspora has been used to categorise social formations; the archetypal model is one of forced expulsion or scattering, often indicating trauma, as is the case with the Jewish diaspora (Cohen, 2008; Safran, 1991). Diaspora conceptualisations based on modernist theories of social formation often emphasise ethnicity and relationship to the homeland. By contrast, those influenced by postmodernism have appropriated articulations of deterritorialised identities by using terms such as hybridity, fluidity, creolisation, and syncretism. Brah (1996, p. 16) regards diaspora as “an interpretive frame for analysing the economic, political and cultural modalities of historically specific forms of migrancy”. So, “diaspora is a condition rather than being descriptive of a group” (Anthias, 1998, p. 565), and that condition is characterised by multiple orientations and identifications, simultaneous embeddedness in the place where diasporas live and the place in which they do not reside, the country of origin. Rather than referring to ethnicity, homelands, or particular places of residence, the new notion of diaspora implies hybridity, deterritorialised identities, and multiple belongings (Kalra et al., 2005). The conceptualisation of diaspora among scholars has shifted from understanding the diaspora as a substantive entity to understanding it as a process, a stance, or a mode of practice (Brubaker, 2005). Some believe that diaspora theory refers to the triadic relationships between ethnic diasporas, their host countries, and their countries of origin. These three relevant actors to the notion of diaspora engage in a dynamic, multifaceted set of relationships that can be examined at a bifocal or trifocal level (Sheffer, 1986; Shuval, 2000). At the heart of diasporas is a notion of home, whether real or imagined (Cohen, 2008). Brah (1996) calls home the “subtext of diaspora”. Within the new environments that diasporic communities call “home”, they long to establish a sense of belonging (Stock, 2010). Yuval-Davis (2006, p. 199) suggests three major analytical levels on which belonging is constructed: “The first level concerns social locations; the second relates to individuals’ identifications and emotional attachments to various collectivities and groupings; the third relates to ethical and political value systems with which people judge their own and others’ belonging/s”. Yuval-Davis (2006) argues that whereas home is a private and tangible location for individuals, it is a shared and contentious space with its politics about who belongs and who does not. The sense of alienation, exile, or disenfranchisement with one’s country of citizenship, location, or place of residency can serve as a powerful trigger for feelings of “home” after migration.

Home: Making Home for Diasporic Communities The notion of home has been the subject of a large body of interdisciplinary literature in recent decades (Blunt, 2005; Boccagni, 2014; Mallett, 2004; Ralph & Staeheli, 2011). In this section, we restrict our discussion to three dominant meanings of home: material, home as a fixed and stable location; relational, as an assortment of relationships with people; and things; as representation in the diasporic imagination. We are living in a world of intersectionality, multiculturalism, and fluidity, in which the concept of “home” becomes increasingly nebulous and “ethnicities” destabilised (Cohen & Fischer, 2018). The dominant view of home is that it is a physical location, a material setting, which is fixed and stable and a source of distinct emotions and social practices (Boccagni, 2022; Ralph 287

Thabani Mutambasere and Dominic Pasura

& Staeheli, 2011). As Blunt (2005, p. 506) puts it, “the home is a material and an affective space, shaped by everyday practices, lived experiences, social relations, memories and emotions”. In this view, the concept of home is defined as a place where meaningful relationships are formed, grounded, and imagined in time and space, as well as establishing individual and collective identities. Within migration studies, the binary classification of sending and receiving countries, “home” and “host” countries, reinforces the sedentary bias that migrants belong at “home”, ideas of identity which privilege a place of origin to which migrants should return (Page & Mercer, 2018). A point noted by Boccagni (2022, p. 142) is that for migrants and diasporas, “home is often used as synonym for place of origin. This raises the question of the ‘what’ of that place and of the related ways of living that persist over time, after displacement”. Historically, the concept of homeland was at the heart of the concept of diaspora (Cohen & Fischer, 2018). In fact, Sokefeld (2006) argues that diasporic societies’ imaginations are activated by master frameworks centred on the concepts of roots, home, and the significance of history. Van Hear and Cohen (2017) distinguish three primary spheres of diaspora engagement: the household, the known community, and the imagined community (ethnic, national, religious, and other affiliations). The three spheres allow us to better understand the connections or disconnections between those in the diaspora and those at home. Diaspora’s financial and material capital is being harnessed through the re-creation, naturalisation, and mythologisation of home or homeland. Scholars have criticised the instrumentalisation of diasporas by sending and receiving governments as well as the international development industry (Page & Mercer, 2018). In the problematic politicisation of diasporas as agents of development of their countries of origin, the notion of home is seen as a metaphor and a way to assert control over space in the context of large-scale emigration, Boccagni (2022, p. 143) refers to it as the “dual process of scaling up and reaching out of home”. Because the homeland is more ascribed than self-identified, there is a risk of essentialism. Post-modern diaspora scholars emphasise hybridity and deterritorialised identities and multiple belongings rather than ethnicity, a homeland, or a particular settlement location (Kalra et al., 2005). In response to methodological nationalism (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002), migration and mobility scholars have sought to de-centre the idea of home as bounded, a fixed location, and the place of origin. The diaspora and transnational literature demonstrate that home is not necessarily the place where one lives. In fact, “one of the major changes in migration patterns is the growth in diasporic populations anchored (socially and culturally as well as physically) neither at their places of origin nor at their places of destination” (Vertovec & Cohen, 1999, p. xiii). Diasporas and migrants “may have a plurality of homes as places of residence, as sources of identification and emotional attachment, even as housing infrastructures” (Boccagni, 2022, p. 141). Diaspora as an analytical tool provides a lens to deconstruct essentialised identities and representations of home as fixed, enabling the construction of multiple places as homes. Diasporas are “ethnic-parochial and cosmopolitan” (Werbner, 2004). The challenge is to map out how these tendencies are played out in actual situations. The second conception of home is that it is fundamentally relational and provides a sense of belonging and identification. Home as a set of relationships to both people and things encompasses a wide range of practices with various geographical boundaries as well as entities that are attached yet mobile (Nowicka, 2007). Ralph and Staeheli (2011, p. 518) points to “the tension between home as mobile and home as stable”. According to Nowicka’s (2007) study of how United Nations staff experience home, they build a sense of home around 288

Nature and “Lived” Experiences of Contemporary African Diasporas

people and objects emplaced, but it is a mobile emplacement. A home is not merely a fixed location, but also how people relate to places and objects inside it. Relationality encompasses meaningful experiences of the present, the past, and the future. In this sense, home refers to “its practical and performable dimension, as an emplaced social experience” (Boccagni, 2022, p. 142). In its temporal aspect, home-making is a social process that relies on meaningful connections to the past and to the future. For Brah (1996), diaspora feels “at home” and anchored in the place of settlement, even if their homeland is elsewhere. Although “real” or “imagined” homeland linkages can be maintained, diasporas connect with other diaspora members across borders and geographical regions, making “new homes”, what Clifford (1994, p. 306) refers to as “lateral connections”. For migrants and diasporas, home can be viewed as a representation of the diasporic imagination. In postmigration and when there is an inability to establish a sense of belonging, home “live on in shards of memory, stories, narratives and fragments of nostalgia. Home is largely inaccessible, immaterial and always elsewhere for migrants who have been displaced” (Tolia-Kelly, 2018, p. 215). Postcolonial geography has explored the tangible and imaginary spaces of home and the contentious politics of identity and belonging in urban, indigenous, imperial, settler, and diasporic homes (Blunt, 2005). So, as a result of losing their conventional territorial reference points, migrants and diasporas build new deterritorialised identities and subjectivities, resulting in a mobile and multi-located culture whose homes are virtual or uncertain (Cohen, 2007). Examples of these “deterritorialised diasporas” are Roma (Gypsies), Caribbean peoples, and religious diasporas. Gilroy’s (1993) concept of the Black Atlantic sees the African diaspora as a transnational and nonterritorial collective identity that challenges the fixed geographies of Africa, America, Europe, and the Caribbean.

Contemporary Case Studies of African Diasporas: Nature and Lived Experiences As noted in the above discussion, there are various meanings of “home” or homeland but often produced in dichotomous terms such as material or metaphorical, rooted or immaterial, real or imagined, which provides an essential set of dialectics that continues to structure the debates about the meaning of home. Diasporas and migrants’ lived experiences illustrate “the tension between the ascriptive dimension of home as place of origin and all that comes afterwards – which is marked, in this case, by an unusually high degree of geographical, and possibly socio-cultural discontinuity” (Boccagni, 2022, p. 142). Compared to historical African diasporas, who are descendants of the transatlantic slave trade, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean, the contemporary African diasporas maintain strong connections with their homelands (Zeleza, 2005). As Pasura (2014, p. 18) argues, “the extent to which Africans abroad engage in social, cultural, political and economic networks and activities related to their original homeland, real or imagined, and other regions in which diasporans reside define their transnational practices”. Pasura (2014) classifies African diasporas as core, epistemic, dormant, and silent to emphasise their transnationality, the intensity and frequency of transnational flows and counterflows, networks, activities, and identities across and within nation-states.

Zimbabwean Diaspora in Britain In his study of the Zimbabwean diaspora in Britain, Pasura (2014) identifies a pattern of diasporic identity development that is primarily framed by the homeland. The study identi289

Thabani Mutambasere and Dominic Pasura

fied different types of transnational practices, including economic, social, cultural, political, and religious practices. The author focuses on Zimbabwean Catholics in Britain and discusses how they maintain religious transnationalism (Pasura, 2012). The study provides an ethnography of the transnational extended family rooted in local diaspora congregation for the diaspora community. Transnational identities are constructed through affirmations of connections to the homeland, as well as using one’s mother tongue in diaspora congregation. In the dominant view, home is a physical location, a material environment, which is fixed and stable, and a source of distinct emotions and social practices. As some of his respondents said, “When you attend mass [Zimbabwean], you will only know that you are in the UK when you are outside the church, it’s truly Zimbabwean”. Another respondent agreed: “If you don’t look around in that church you would have the feeling that you are in Zimbabwe, as if you are back home” (Pasura, 2012). The migrants’ transnational religious ties are anchored by the consumption of homeland products, as well as their desire to transform existing religious communities by celebrating mass in vernacular languages, wearing religious uniforms, and playing African drums. Most migrants consider Zimbabwean Catholicism to be the source of authentic Catholic practices. As a result, migrants bring with them sacred associations, practices, and theologies that help them transform and evaluate their conduct, experiences, and outcomes in the country of settlement, as well as those of non-migrants. Additionally, home was conceived in terms of thought, cultural and religious reproduction, and the struggle to create “new homes”, spaces of transnational belonging within a hostile environment. Important to transnationalism is the simultaneous commitment to two or more social worlds (Levitt & Glick Schiller, 2004) and, in this example, feeling “at home” in both the country of origin and the country of destination, Britain and Zimbabwe. Participation in transnational practices is gendered. Pasura and Christou (2018) show how African men in Britain, including Zimbabwean migrants, respond to the loss of their gendered identities as family providers by negotiating respectable forms of masculinities. Most of the men invested in properties in the homeland and engaged in shipping magonyeti (trucks) and cars, which were seen as the diasporic cattle equivalent. For these men, participating in transnational activities and community associations can be seen as alternative social spaces of recognition. Transnational engagement of migrants is typically selective and context- and time-dependent. In addition, it takes place in parallel with several trajectories of integration into receiving countries (Boccagni, 2022).

Transnational Politics and Activism Mutambasere (2022) employs the concept of diaspora citizenship in a recent study of transnational political activism among Zimbabweans in Britain to illustrate how diasporas participate in homeland politics (Sheffer, 2003; Laguerre, 2006; Adamson, 2020) as well as growing body of research on citizenship and the diaspora (Spiro, 2006; Barabantseva and Sutherland, 2011). Diaspora citizenship is defined by Mutambasere (2022, p. 734) as “enmeshed with both a sense of belonging and active practices of civic engagement in both host and homeland”. This shows that it is also concerned with the “home” and can be regarded as relational as it involves creating a sense of belonging and identification through memories and emotions. This understanding, which we use in this section, helps us in further making sense of how transnational civic practices can become a place where meaningful relationships are formed and grounded but, most importantly, the creation of a collective 290

Nature and “Lived” Experiences of Contemporary African Diasporas

identity. Participating in political mobilisation and transnational activism can show us how diaspora citizenship constructs a notion of home through social relations. Here, we draw from a case of the Zimbabwe Citizens Initiative (ZCI), a transnational global network which had a hub in the UK around 2018/2019. In the same vein that Pasura (2022), for instance, argues that diasporic leisure can be “re-appropriation and re-enactment of homeland-oriented practices, deploying the homeland as the frame of reference in constructing diasporic identities”, similar arguments can also be made about transnational political mobilisation and activism and the notion of home. Because of the composition of ZCI, which was mainly middle-class Zimbabwean professionals in mid-level and senior positions, most of them had regularised their stay in the UK. As such, they did not have to focus on lobbying the UK Government about their status in the country, unlike what other diaspora organisations do, but focused their energy on lobbying on behalf of those they left at home. Home here being the physical space they left to come to the UK. Members of the initiative engaged with the homeland through various transnational activities that included working with local organisations in Zimbabwe as well as funding different movements and mobilisations. This was all through the money that they collected and fundraised together as members in the UK for disbursement to partner organisations on the ground. As one of the members argued when probed about their work, Takunda explained the wide range of activities that they as a network aspired to undertake and their ambitious goals in relation not only to the diaspora vote, but rights and democracy in Zimbabwe more broadly; started the organisation to mainly introduce a platform where citizens in the diaspora could play a vital role in the political formation of Zimbabwe so we wanted to provide them that opportunity where they could all come to one place to share ideas. We could do so many things, launch initiatives from there as well such as getting the diaspora vote […] as well as influencing the opposition politicians towards a coalition. From this quotation, it is easy to see how the work of the network was mainly to impact Zimbabwe and, in other words, home – the physical space. But coming together and sharing ideas also helps in creating a sense of diasporic identity and belonging as members of the network share their memories of home. In this instance, home then becomes both material – as shaped by memories and practices – and relational – as it provides a sense of belonging. A sense of belonging was created through events where the network fundraised. For instance, in order to fund their work with various social movements in Zimbabwe, ZCI held gochi-gochis (barbecues) and other “family-friendly” events in which members would pay an entry or attendance fee. Gochi-gochis are a very popular and common activity in Zimbabwe where family and friends get together to roast meat, drink, and socialise. As such, they can be used to create a sense of community and belonging. ZCI members were therefore participating in similar practices that reminded them of home, but at the same time also helped them deepen their own social relations and create an identity as Zimbabweans in the UK who wanted change at home. This shows how complex the idea of home is as an intertwining of meanings can exist at the same time. Other activities that were also used for fundraising included dinners where members would pay a fee to reserve a table. Again, “breaking bread”, together as it were, was another common community-building activity within the African context that ZCI members also utilised. 291

Thabani Mutambasere and Dominic Pasura

There are also other similar organisations that members of the Zimbabwean diaspora in the UK use to participate in transnational politics and activism based on their diasporic citizenship which in turn impacts home. One such organisation is the Zimbabwe Vigil Coalition (hereafter the Vigil) which Mutambasere (2020) studied and has a long history of activism in the UK since its founding in 2002. Memberships of the Vigil drew mostly from supporters of the main opposition party in Zimbabwe, then the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) before its subsequent split and further break up more recently. A majority of these members had fled persecution from Zimbabwean state agents based on their involvement in opposition politics. As such, unlike members of ZCI we discussed above, members of the Vigil did not always have regularised stays in the UK, and were precarious since most of them had come to the UK to apply for asylum. However, this did not stop the members from participating in political activism within the UK, as well as transnationally, to impact home. Due to the fact that some members had applied for asylum and had been denied or had appealed and waiting to hear back, they could not necessarily travel back to Zimbabwe whilst waiting for their outcomes. For these individuals, home, as in Zimbabwe, then becomes a representation in their imagination. Some members had arrived in the UK as early as between 2002 and 2012 and had been battling with the Home Office to regularise their stays and had not been able to travel out of that country for that long. Despite this, the Vigil had different transnational initiatives in which they attempted to impact the politics at home by working to restore human rights and democracy in Zimbabwe. For instance, in 2017/2018, in the run-up to Zimbabwe’s general elections, the Vigil, together with its partners on the ground in Zimbabwe, was trying to create a sort of citizen watchdog or civilian army which would have consisted of peace actors and protectors from different political parties and the police to monitor violence and human rights abuses. The idea behind this was this civilian army would be able to bring human rights violators to the police to face prosecution. Though this eventually failed to take off, it is interesting to note here that those members of the Vigil who could not travel back home still wanted to contribute to a better and more democratic Zimbabwe through some of these initiatives even though their prospects of returning home were slim. Additionally, members of the Vigil met every Saturday in front of the Zimbabwean Embassy in London, where they demonstrated and made their grievances about the state of the country known. During this, they engaged in song and danced and also engaged in prayer. Members argued that the songs they sang were protest songs and they were some of the songs that citizens also used to protest the government in Zimbabwe. It was one of the ways in which they imagined a better home but also used these memories of their country of origin to create a sense of belonging within the UK, where some of them had not even settled formally. As such, we can see how the idea of home can also be understood in different ways, depending on the situation of African diasporas in the UK. Various religious and deterritorialised diasporic groups have defined home in ways that are neither rooted in “here” nor “there”. In the case of young Somali Muslims who chose not to orient their religious home to their parents’ birthplace in Somalia nor to their place of settlement in the UK, but prioritise universal “authentic” Islam as opposed to the culture of their parents, which they see as particularistic and tied to a particular place or country (Liberatore & Fesenmyer, 2018). “Memories of home are no factual reproductions of a fixed past … they are fluid reconstructions” (Stock 2010), selective, contextual, and contested. The experiences of Somalis in the UK illustrate the presence of diverse diasporic attitudes toward other Somalis, other Muslims, and the host community, as well as fractures within and between 292

Nature and “Lived” Experiences of Contemporary African Diasporas

generations (Liberatore & Fesenmyer, 2018). It is reminiscent of Gilroy’s (1993) notion of the black Atlantic, where the African diaspora is viewed as a transnational and nonterritorial collective identity that challenges the fixed geographical boundaries. Using diasporas as a lens, we can assess how people claim, feel, make, and place “home” in different spaces (local, national, regional, and transnational). In the study of transnationalism and integration among Ghanaian migrants in the Netherlands, Mazzucato (2008) employs the concept of double engagement to describe the fact that while migrants send money to Ghana and maintain transnational practices such as funeral spending, they also make a significant financial contribution to the country where they reside by purchasing services, businesses, taxes, and goods. Mazzucato employs the concept of “double engagement” to force us to consider how “here” and “there” contribute to the construction of a single transnational social field. As diasporas and migrants straddle societies of settlement and origin, they sometimes are described as performing “balancing acts”, in order “to move beyond simply acknowledging the co-existence of transnationalism and integration and towards an analysis of the nature of interactions between the two understood in relation both to particular places and contexts and to the human beings involved and their functional, emotional and pragmatic considerations” (Erdal & Oeppen, 2013, p. 867). For Brah (1996), diaspora people feel “at home” and anchored in the place of settlement, even if their homeland is elsewhere. “On the one hand, ‘home’ is a mythic place of desire in the diasporic imagination … On the other hand, home is also the lived experience of a locality. Its sounds and smells, its heat and dust, balmy summer evenings”.

Conclusion The chapter has discussed three dominant meanings of home: material, home as a fixed and stable location; relational, as an assortment of relationships with people and things; as representation in the diasporic imagination. As a concept and lived experience, home is highly contextual and equivocal, referring to numerous past, present, and future locations and areas. The multiplicity of belonging “here” and “there” can offer up spaces to reflect and critique essentialist concepts of home, nation, ethnicity, and gender (Anthias, 1998; Brah, 1996) and build hybrid, syncretic, or fluid identities. Cohen (2008) considers home a puzzle rather than a given. Ralph and Staeheli (2011, p. 525) argue “for the importance of understanding home as simultaneously mobile and sedentary, as localised and extensible”, likening home “an accordion, in that it both stretches to expand outwards to distant and remote places, while also squeezing to embed people in their proximate and immediate locales and social relations”. Home is a delicate balancing act between home as permanent, bounded, and stable, and home as fluid, movable, imagined, and perpetually recreated. Diasporas and migrants maintain and sustain homes within and across national borders in global contexts in which the movement of people is being highly controlled, regulated, and constrained by various gatekeeping institutions and channelling mechanisms (Sheller & Urry, 2006). African diaspora’s connection to home is not fixed to a particular land and territory, but rather varies according to local, national, and global factors. For African diasporas, home refers to both practical, material, symbolic, and imagined transnational relationships and the hope of returning to one’s homeland. If we consider diasporas as “culturally and politically reflective and experimental; they involve internal discussions of identity about who ‘we’ are and where we are heading” (Werbner, 2004), consequently, shared identities emerge as a combination of “past” recovering, experienced, and imagined possibilities. Diaspora 293

Thabani Mutambasere and Dominic Pasura

identity is imagined and mobilised within the frameworks of feelings of belonging, attachment to a home, and thoughts of a place of origin (Sokefeld, 2006). Diaspora and transnational communities are potent agents of transformation in their countries of origin through participation in their country’s social, political, and economic processes and events. As part of transnational home-making, migrants and left-behinds conduct cross-border transactions, such as remittances, transnational caregiving, and crossborder investments (Boccagni, 2022). Diasporas display multiple orientations by fighting for citizenship and equal rights in their places of settlement while simultaneously cultivating transnational connections. In a study of Zimbabwean transnational activism in Britain, Mutambasere (2022) demonstrates that the experience of feeling at home, particularly in this country of origin, is not just imagined, but activated through a claim to belonging and membership in the country of origin. Migrants and diasporas may feel that, despite having connections both here and there, they are unable to connect with these locations as homes because they do not play a role in the collective memory or in the daily interactions of the group (Stock, 2010).

References Adamson, F. B. (2020). Non‐state authoritarianism and diaspora politics. Global Networks, 20(1), 150–169. Alexander, C. (2017). Beyond the “the ‘diaspora’ diaspora”: A response to Rogers Brubaker. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(9), 1544–1555. Anthias, F. (1998). Evaluating “diaspora”: Beyond ethnicity. Sociology, 32(3), 557–580. Barabantseva, E., & Sutherland, C. (2011). Diaspora and citizenship: Introduction. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 17(1), 1–13. Blunt, A. (2005). Cultural geography: Cultural geographies of home. Progress in Human Geography, 29(4), 505–515. Boccagni, P. (2014). What’s in a (migrant) house? Changing domestic spaces, the negotiation of belonging and home-making in Ecuadorian migration. Housing, Theory and Society, 31(3), 277–293. Boccagni, P. (2022). Transnational migration and homemaking. In B. S. A. Yeoh & F. L. Collins (Eds.), Handbook on transnationalism (pp. 141–154). Edward Elgar Publishing. Brah, A. (1996). Cartographies of diaspora: Contested identities. Routledge. Brubaker, R. (2005). The “diaspora” diaspora. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 28(1), 1–19. Clifford, J. (1994). Diasporas. Cultural Anthropology, 9(3), 302–338. Cohen, R. (2007). Solid, ductile and liquid: Changing notions of homeland and home in diaspora studies. Retrieved October 25, from http://www​.qeh​.ox​.ac​.uk​/RePEc​/qeh​/qehwps​/qehwps156​.pdf Cohen, R. (2008). Global diasporas: An introduction (2nd ed.). Routledge. Cohen, R., & Fischer, C. (2018). Diaspora studies: An introduction. In R. Cohen & C. Fischer (Eds.), Routledge handbook of diaspora studies (pp. 1–10). Routledge. Erdal, M. B., & Oeppen, C. (2013). Migrant balancing acts: Understanding the interactions between integration and transnationalism. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 39(6), 867–884. Gilroy, P. (1993). The black Atlantic: Modernity and double consciousness. Harvard University Press. Kalra, V. S., Kaur, R., & Hutnyk, J. (2005). Diaspora & hybridity. Sage Publications. Laguerre, M. S. (2006). Diaspora, politics, and globalization. Palgrave Macmillan. Levitt, P., & Schiller, N. G. (2004). Conceptualizing simultaneity: A transnational social field perspective on society. International Migration Review, 38(3), 1002–1039. Liberatore, G., & Fesenmyer, L. (2018). Diaspora and religion: Connecting and disconnecting. In R. Cohen & C. Fischer (Eds.), Routledge handbook of diaspora studies (pp. 233–240). Routledge. Mallett, S. (2004). Understanding home: A critical review of the literature. The Sociological Review, 52(1), 62–89. Mazzucato, V. (2008). The double engagement: Transnationalism and integration. Ghanaian migrants’ lives between Ghana and the Netherlands. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 34(2), 199–216.

294

Nature and “Lived” Experiences of Contemporary African Diasporas Mutambasere, T. G. (2020). Diaspora citizenship and the transnational domain: Political, religious, charitable and familial practices amongst Zimbabweans in the UK (Doctoral dissertation, University of Sussex). Mutambasere, T. G. (2022). Diaspora citizenship in practice: Identity, belonging and transnational civic activism amongst Zimbabweans in the UK. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 48(3), 732–749. Nowicka, M. (2007). Mobile locations: Construction of home in a group of mobile transnational professionals. Global Networks, 7(1), 69–86. Page, B., & Mercer, C. (2018). Diaspora and development. In R. Cohen & C. Fischer (Eds.), Routledge handbook of diaspora studies (pp. 320–327). Routledge. Pasura, D. (2012). Religious transnationalism: The case of Zimbabwean catholics in Britain. Journal of Religion in Africa, 42(1), 26–53. Pasura, D. (2014). African transnational diasporas: Fractured communities and plural identities of Zimbabweans in Britain. Palgrave Macmillan. Pasura, D. (2022). Negotiating diasporic leisure among Zimbabwean migrants in Britain. Ethnography. Pasura, D., & Christou, A. (2018). Theorizing black (African) transnational masculinities. Men and Masculinities, 21(4), 521–546. Ralph, D., & Staeheli, L. A. (2011). Home and migration: Mobilities, belongings and identities. Geography Compass, 5(7), 517–530. Safran, W. (1991). Diasporas in modern societies: Myths of homeland and return. Diaspora, 1(1), 83–99. Sheffer, G. (1986). A new field of study: Modern diasporas in international politics. In G. Sheffer (Ed.), Modern diasporas in international politics (pp. 1–15). Croom Helm. Sheffer, G. (2003). Diaspora politics: At home abroad. Cambridge University Press. Sheller, M., & Urry, J. (2006). The new mobilities paradigm. Environment and Planning: Part A, 38(2), 207–226. Shuval, J. T. (2000). Diaspora migration: Definitional ambiguities and theoretical paradigms. International Migration, 38(5), 41–57. Sokefeld, M. (2006). Mobilizing in transnational space: A social movement approach to the formation of diaspora. Global Networks, 6(3), 265–284. http://www​.blackwell​-synergy​.com​/doi​/abs​/10​ .1111​/j​.1471​-0374​.2006​.00144​.x. Spiro, P. J. (2006). Perfecting political diaspora. NYU Law Review, 81, 207. Stock, F. (2010). Home and memory. In K. Knott & S. McLoughlin (Eds.), Diasporas: Concepts, intersections, identities (pp. 24–28). Bloomsbury Publishing Tolia-Kelly, D. P. (2018). Diaspora and home: Interrogating embodied precarity in an era of forced displacement. In R. Cohen & C. Fischer (Eds.), Routledge handbook of diaspora studies (pp. 214–222). Routledge. Tölölyan, K. (2018). Diaspora studies: Past, present and promise. In R. Cohen & C. Fischer (Eds.), Routledge handbook of diaspora studies (pp. 22–30). Routledge. Van Hear, N., & Cohen, R. (2017). Diasporas and conflict: Distance, contiguity and spheres of engagement. Oxford Development Studies, 45(2), 171–184. Vertovec, S., & Cohen, R. (Eds.). (1999). Migration, diasporas and transnationalism. Edward Elgar Publishing. Werbner, P. (2004). Theorising complex diasporas: Purity and hybridity in the South Asian public sphere in Britain. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 30(5), 895–911. Wimmer, A., & Glick Schiller, N. (2002). Methodological nationalism and beyond: Nation–state building, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks, 2(4), 301–334. Yeoh, B. S., & Collins, F. L. (2022). Introduction to handbook on transnationalism. In B. S. Yeoh & F. L. Collins (Eds.), Handbook on transnationalism (pp. 1–28). Edward Elgar Publishing. Yuval-Davis, N. (2006). Belonging and the politics of belonging. Patterns of Prejudice, 40(3), 197–214. Zeleza, P. T. (2005). Rewriting the African diaspora: Beyond the black Atlantic. African Affairs, 104(414), 35–68.

295

18 THE LANDSCAPE OF THE AFRICAN DIASPORA Almaz Negash

Introduction The U.S. Black population is diverse in ethnicity, identity, and origin. According to the Migration Policy Institute (Batalova & Echeverria-Estrada, 2019), approximately 2 million immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa lived in the United States in 2018. While this represents only 4.5 percent of the country’s 44.7 million immigrants, it is a rapidly growing group. In the United States, the sub-Saharan African population increased by 52 percent between 2010 and 2018. These numbers reflected only the contemporary African diaspora (i.e., new immigrants), although the Black population in the country is 46.8 million strong (Tamir, 2021), of which approximately 4.4 million, are Afro-Caribbean. Just as globalization is a process that has been with us since the first Africans left the continent to inhabit other parts of the world, processes of the diaspora have been with us since the beginning of time. Driven by economics, politics, war, or a vision for a new life, humanity has migrated from country to country, bridging cultures and nations, and bringing new perspectives and possibilities to both host countries and countries of origin. As we consider modern Africa and the place of capital, enterprise, and impact investment within it, discussions often focus on the critical role of foreign direct relief, development, and investment. Accordingly, much of our mainstream culture’s attention is focused on the actions of foreign aid organizations, governments of the Global North offering assistance to the Global South, and regional or national initiatives within the diverse community that is Africa today. Receiving less attention, however, is the potential – and critical – role to be played by Africans of the diaspora: those Africans presently living overseas in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere around the world who maintain close personal and business ties with the nations from which they and their communities came.

The Impact of the Diaspora With Africa being the “world’s youngest continent” and the future base of the global economy, Bill Gates estimates that the continent, as a whole, will outpace India and China in

296

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-22

The Landscape of the African Diaspora

terms of workforce by 2040. Recognizing that there is a gap in the market, the African Diaspora Network1 continues to amplify the work of the diaspora. Innovators and investors from around the world can benefit from a more connected and mobilized African immigrant network that energizes our local and global networks to shape an inclusive, innovative future for the planet. The African diaspora contributes much to the United States and to Africa. In the United States, there is a significant number of intelligent and skilled sub-Saharan Africans. SubSaharan African immigrants have higher educational attainment compared to immigrants overall and native-born US citizens. According to a report by the Migration Policy Institute,2 tabulated with data from the US Census Bureau, 40 percent of sub-Saharan Africans aged 25 and over in 2017 held a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 31 percent of the total foreign-born population and 32 percent of the US-born population. In the same year, about 75 percent of sub-Saharan immigrants aged 16 and over were in the civilian labor force, compared to 66 percent of foreign-born and 62 percent of native-born adults, respectively. In addition, a high percentage of sub-Saharan Africans were employed in management, business, science, and arts occupations. According to a study by New American Economy (2020), African immigrants earned more than USD 133 billion in 2018 alone, paid almost USD 36 billion in taxes, and had a spending power of nearly USD 98 billion. The challenge of an African “brain drain” has long been recognized as a serious hindrance to capitalizing on Africa’s opportunities. Indeed, the continent loses millions of highly skilled, professional Africans who migrate to the United States and other countries, resulting in a severe brain drain. It has never been easy to calculate the value of the economic loss and/ or human capital loss when Africans leave their home country. Overcoming “brain drain” requires the involvement of the African diaspora. The African diaspora does not forget their home continent. Besides being committed to the communities they live in, the African diaspora also sends remittances home. According to the World Bank (2021), remittances to sub-Saharan Africa were approximately USD 42 billion in 2020. This amount is less than in previous years due to COVID-19, but nevertheless shows the diaspora’s commitment to the continent. According to the study, “The Diaspora and Economic Development in Africa” (Blaise Gnimassoun & Anyanwu, 2018), African diasporans also contribute to human capital and democratic development in Africa.

The African Diaspora Making a Difference: Beyond Giving to Family and Friends, to Becoming Entrepreneurs According to the United Nations World Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision (2017), Africa will be home to 2.2 billion people by 2050. This will require targeted new enterprise growth in areas that can enhance food supply, healthcare services, and educational solutions within local communities. This presents a wonderful opportunity for the diaspora to explore business development on the continent. Indeed, there is no lack of talent in Africa. According to African Economic Outlook (2017), released by the African Development Bank, 22 percent of Africa’s working-age population – the highest rate in the world – are starting new businesses, and 20 percent of new African entrepreneurs are introducing new products and services. Unfortunately, new entrepreneurs are met with barriers, including limited access to finance, unstable and costly access to electricity, political instability, high tax rates, corruption, and customs and trade regulations. Africans in the diaspora cannot resolve all of these 297

Almaz Negash

barriers, but they can provide resources and tools to equip local leaders to structure capital investments that optimize total impact.

The African Diaspora Network: Enabling Diaspora Investment, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Human Capital Development Opportunities are abound with innovation, social entrepreneurship, and impact investment in both the United States and Africa. The African Diaspora Network (ADN) believes there is a need for an intra-African voice for collaboration. There are over 46.8 million Black diasporans (Tamir, 2021) in the United States, composed of African-Americans, Afro-Caribbeans, and new immigrants from Africa, who present countless opportunities for collaboration and community building between the United States, Africa, and globally. Since 2010, ADN has energized collaboration among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and African diasporans to uplift its local community towards the benefit of Africa. ADN is dedicated to providing virtual and physical forums to accelerate access to resources that foster partnership, knowledge-sharing, and advance investment opportunities.

Knowledge-Sharing through Convenings African Diaspora Investment Symposium (ADIS) is the premier Silicon Valley conference that celebrates and fosters the entrepreneurial and innovative spirit of Africans in the Diaspora and friends of Africa. The symposium offers a dive deep into some of the hottest investment and development trends on the continent. African Diaspora Network launched the African Diaspora Investment Symposium in 2016 as a global convening to inspire Africans, African diasporans, and friends of Africa to be agents of change and active contributors to Africa’s development. This flagship event has drawn attendees from over 80 countries in the last eight years. In March 2023, African Diaspora Network brought back the in-person event to celebrate renewed connectedness and connection among Africans, Diasporans, and friends of Africa. For three days, leaders and entrepreneurs from across the globe gathered to reimagine possibilities, co-create solutions, and explore opportunities that reimagine and envision the future of the continent. The conference included keynote addresses, fireside chats, and panel sessions featuring seasoned moderators and experts on the theme “Future Ready: Africa.” This platform has been key to recognizing and fostering the ingenuity of the African community at home and abroad alongside champions from around the world.

Impact and Innovation Forums Beyond the annual conference, participants expressed an interest in ongoing, regional convenings. In 2018, African Diaspora Network launched the Impact and Innovation Forums (IIFs) as part of a year-round speaker series in Silicon Valley, Washington, DC, and New York City that engaged audiences in national hubs centered on entrepreneurship, policymaking, and finance, respectively. In 2020, ADN pivoted to engage a global audience via a virtual platform for the Impact and Innovation Forums. These events, hosted in collaboration with partner organizations, provided continuity in dialogue around timely topics focused on strategic and consistent diaspora engagement in Africa’s future. The IIF series enables the African Diaspora Network to continue harnessing 298

The Landscape of the African Diaspora

the knowledge and resources of Africans in the diaspora for positive impact through investment, entrepreneurship, and human capital development. In 2021, ADN partnered with Invest Barbados, SME.NG, King Baudouin Foundation United States, the Mastercard Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the Tiba Foundation to present webinars to Africans, diasporans, and friends of Africa around topics of healthcare, education, technology, and finance.

Accelerating African and Black Entrepreneurs One of the biggest challenges that Africans, Africans of the diaspora, and Black Americans face is a lack of access to capital for budding entrepreneurs to grow and scale the impact of their work. To address this issue, ADN has been mobilizing diasporans and friends of Africa to learn about and invest in grassroots African and US-based Black entrepreneurs through its Builders of Africa’s Future (BAF) and Accelerating Black Leadership and Entrepreneurship (ABLE) programs.

Builders of Africa’s Future Africa is an entrepreneurial continent. According to the 2017 African Economic Outlook Report, 22 percent of Africa’s working-age population are starting new businesses, the highest rate of any region in the world. 44 percent of African entrepreneurs start businesses to take advantage of opportunities in the market, whereas 33 percent do so because of a lack of employment opportunities. Small and medium enterprises provide the most jobs in Africa’s formal sector. Every year between 2015 and 2030, 29 million entrants are expected to join Africa’s labor force. Despite the rise in African entrepreneurship, not all enterprises in Africa are funded equally. Trends indicate that Africa-based enterprises led by non-African, foreign founders are more likely to receive funding. In an analysis of public data by The Guardian, eight out of the top ten African-based startups that received the highest amount of venture capital in Africa were led by foreigners. An analysis by Viktoria Ventures found that only 6 percent of startups in Kenya that received more than $1 million were led by locals. In the same study, only 55 percent of major deals in Nigeria went to local founders. The lack of representation on investment committees is considered another contributing factor to the disparities in investment. According to a survey by The Information, there were only seven Black decision-makers at 102 of the largest investment firms in the United States in 2018. In 2018, African Diaspora Network’s chairman of the board, Twum Djin, sparked a new program that would put African entrepreneurs at the forefront of the African Diaspora Investment Symposium. The third annual ADIS concluded with a dedicated awards ceremony for best-in-class, early-stage businesses that highlighted the future of African innovation and entrepreneurship. Known as the “Builders of Africa’s Future Awards,” the celebration of innovation and impact in African enterprises developed into ADN’s enterprise accelerator program for grassroots African entrepreneurs. Now in its sixth year, the Builders of Africa’s Future program awards 10 of Africa’s most promising entrepreneurs with enterprise development training, partnership, and mentorship opportunities, and a platform to boost brand visibility and investment potential in Silicon Valley. Since 2018, Builders of Africa’s Future has recognized and catalyzed 53 African start299

Almaz Negash

ups. African Diaspora Network has just finalized the 2023 cohort of BAF entrepreneurs who will participate in a virtual pitch session on Tuesday, September 12, 2023. With the support of Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, ADN developed a preparatory enterprise training program for Catholic Sisters who are connected to underserved communities facing poverty and other challenges across the continent. A part of Builders of Africa’s Future, the Start Your Social Enterprise program accelerates the entrepreneurial skills of Catholic Sisters to help them transform their charity models into sustainable social enterprises. In 2022, ten sister-led enterprises graduated as part of the inaugural cohort. Three were selected for Builders of Africa’s Future 2022. In 2023, an additional 9 Sisters will graduate from the Start Your Social Enterprise training and 2 Sisters will participate in Builders of Africa’s Future 2023.

Accelerating Black Leadership and Entrepreneurship Systemic barriers translate into a steep price that Black entrepreneurs must pay to become entrepreneurs. Minority enterprises begin with underlying wealth disparities, with the average Black median family income ten times less than the median net worth for white families. As a result, Black businesses have less capacity to bootstrap their businesses with resources from friends and family, credit card debt, and access to debt capital, starting with almost three times less in overall capital than new white-owned businesses. This gap rarely closes as firms mature, which may explain why Black entrepreneurs are more likely to drop out after starting a business. Accelerating Black Leadership and Entrepreneurship (ABLE) is an enterprise accelerator program designed to strengthen, energize, and support startups and small businesses led by Black entrepreneurs in the United States. ABLE identifies Black business leaders with impact-oriented solutions at the local and national levels across multiple sectors. This includes healthcare, finance, connectivity, agriculture, and renewable energy, all of which address essential community needs while spurring sustainable growth. Sixteen entrepreneurs graduated in the inaugural year of the program in February 2022, and 11 graduated from the second cohort of the ABLE program. African Diaspora Network first conceived of ABLE as an adaptation of the Builders of Africa’s Future (BAF) program. In January 2020, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF) observed the success of Builders of Africa’s Future Awards and pitch presentations by grassroots African entrepreneurs at the fifth annual African Diaspora Investment Symposium. They shared interest in an ADN program that would support US-based Black entrepreneurs through an enterprise accelerator similar to BAF. With seed funding from SVCF, African Diaspora Network sought partners from across Silicon Valley to help realize the program. Thanks to the support and insight of team BILL, we were able to secure full funding for ABLE, which ADN leveraged to garner additional support from the Makahakama Foundation, California Black Freedom Fund, KLA Foundation, BlackRock Foundation, and the County of Santa Clara. Accelerating Black Leadership and Entrepreneurship (ABLE) addresses the most significant systemic barriers to Black entrepreneurism, as well as women-led enterprises, recently noted by the Federal Reserve and others – the absence of ongoing technical and mentorship support and access to capital for Black entrepreneurs. It will combine Silicon Valley Executive Center’s tested global model and unparalleled ability to attract capital to sustainable, scalable enterprises, with leadership support and long-term mentorship from both Silicon Valley 300

The Landscape of the African Diaspora

global mentors and ADN’s incomparable network of Black leaders. It will provide a real system of human capital development that expands agency for people of color and offers an integrated approach to improving their overall investment readiness for an external funder, knowing the right types of capital to attract and available innovative funding vehicles for these early and mid-stage enterprises. Given these tools, the selected Black-owned businesses will be a potent force in generating new markets, rebuilding US local economies, and helping communities rebound. According to Bloomberg and Business Insider, 2021 marked a notable rise in interest and support of Black-owned businesses following the murder of George Floyd that galvanized communities in 2020. Between February 2020 and August 2021, Black Americans became the fastest-rising group of entrepreneurs in the United States, increasing by 38 percent. Despite this increase, the media attention and support for Black businesses has waned over time and promised capital has been slow to follow. Now approaching its third year, the Accelerating Black Leadership and Entrepreneurship (ABLE) program will provide the continuity of support needed by Black entrepreneurs across the United States. Through the BAF and ABLE programs, ADN demonstrates its commitment to connecting a global network of Africans, diasporans, and friends of Africa to entrepreneurs, investors, academics and leaders of nonprofit organizations, corporations, and official development agencies. Together, cohorts from BAF and ABLE will learn, engage, and co-create possibilities. The African diaspora will have a platform for learning about the innovative work of Africans, Africans from the diaspora and Black Americans, and the opportunity to invest in them.

Entrepreneurship Africa currently has the world’s highest entrepreneurship and female entrepreneurship rates (Gwaambuka, 2019). This not only demonstrates how Africa is thriving in the area of entrepreneurship but also amplifies how the culture of entrepreneurship and innovation may be primary drivers for the development of the continent. Successful entrepreneurs all over Africa taking a chance to start a business in an underdeveloped economy show the depth of reach and potential of this culture on the continent. Many young Africans have embraced the true concept of entrepreneurship, which, according to Harvard Business School professor Howard Stevenson, is “the pursuit of opportunity beyond resources controlled” (Eisenmann, 2013). The reason for such a high rate of entrepreneurship in Africa is due to the lack of jobs and an overall underdeveloped economy. Without proper education or pathway, it is difficult for Africans to find their way to success. Many Africans pursue entrepreneurship as it was all they had to work with at the time, and they were able to make the best of their situation. Through this mindset of finding one’s own way, many Africans have pursued entrepreneurship and successfully made careers out of them.

Diaspora and Innovation Africa is rising steadily as the next frontier for investment, with countries like China leading the way in direct investments and Y Combinator building an increasing number of African ventures. Y Combinator is an early-stage startup funder and accelerator based in San Francisco, California. According to the World Bank Group, in order for Africa to be sustainable, it needs to continue to innovate, especially in education. Innovation requires an ecosystem that enables the growth of startups and enterprises by Africans, for Africa. We 301

Almaz Negash

are again drawn back to the need for access to finance and talent or human capital to enable innovation. The diaspora is a natural repository for such capital. Innovation in financial technology has emerged as a leading driver of advancing innovation in Africa, with a huge volume of digital currency and blockchain initiatives building across the continent. According to Finnovating for Africa: Exploring the African Fintech Startup Ecosystem Report (2017), Africa is home to more than 300 fintech startups active in over 20 countries, with tremendous growth since 2015. Fintech has the potential to transform the African economy by “banking the unbanked” and by leapfrogging and disrupting inefficient systems.

African Diaspora Contribution to Action Diasporans represent a powerful constituency in the economic development of Africa and the United States. The World Bank (2022) reports that remittances from the African diaspora grew by 5.2% to USD 53 billion in 2022. As part of the 76th United Nations General Assembly in September 2021, ADN partnered with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa to host the side event, “Leveraging the Diaspora for the Benefit of Households and National Economics in the Countries of Origin and Destination.” The conversation explored the need for an intra-African voice for collaboration and the need to tap into the potential of financial inclusion with the diaspora, from remittances to elevating diaspora investments that can change the developmental landscape of local communities. We also co-hosted a high-level working lunch with the US Department of State on Beyond Remittances as part of the 2022 US–Africa Leaders Summit in Washington DC.

Profiles of Africans in the Diaspora Here I would like us to include a brief context on how these African diasporans make a difference in the United States and the continent. They give back to ADN their time, talent, and financial contribution to make the organization sustainable. Our boards and advisors play a key role in the advancement of Africans and friends of Africa through mentoring, leadership training, and providing access to funding to grassroots entrepreneurs.

Josh Ghaim, PhD Founder and Managing Partner, Ignite Venture Studio; Board Chairman, African Diaspora Network Josh Ghaim is the Founder and Managing Partner of Ignite Venture Studio, a new brand and innovation accelerator focused on the Health and Beauty markets as well as investments and support of Women and Minority led start-ups. Prior to his new venture, Josh was the former Chief Technology Officer of Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health.

Twum Djin Head of Engineering, Stripe Issuing Twum Djin is a software executive with extensive experience in organizational leadership, large-scale system architecture, and product management. Prior to Stripe, Twum was the 302

The Landscape of the African Diaspora

Chief Technology Officer at Goodwater Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm focused exclusively on consumer tech companies. Twum served as the chairman of the ADN board from 2018 to 2021.

Ndeye Makalou Head of Health Equity – Genentech Commercial, Medical and Government Affairs at Roche Genentech Ndeye Makalou leads a team of people committed to embedding Health Equity as a foundational practice to advance Genentech D&I Commitments and Roche Pharma vision. She is accountable for catalyzing and driving a sustainable approach to advance Health Equity best practices that center marginalized and underserved patients and drive better treatment outcomes. Ndeye deeply believes that strengthening the Healthcare system in Africa and public–private partnership will lead to improved health outcomes and a brighter and healthier future for the people in Africa.

Dr Josephine Fubara Chief Science Officer, Sanofi Consumer Healthcare Dr Josephine Fubara is the Chief Science Officer for Sanofi’s Consumer Healthcare business, where she leads a global team responsible for managing the organization’s end-to-end science agenda and operations spanning five categories covering pain care, allergy, digestive wellness, cough, cold & flu, and physical & mental wellness, representing over €5.0 billion (2022) of business. She is an award-winning R&D executive with over 22 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry. Prior to Sanofi, Josephine was the Global Head of Therapeutics, R&D at Bayer Consumer HealthCare and spent 18+ years in various technical and business roles at Whitehall Robins, Wyeth, and Pfizer Consumer Healthcare.

Innocent Shumba US-West EY Private Leader and Assurance Partner, Ernst & Young Innocent Shumba is a member of EY’s Assurance practice and has diverse accounting and auditing experience. He is involved in several organizations, including the EY Black Professional Network, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Certified Fraud Examiners, the Institute of Internal Auditors, and the National Association of Black Accountants.

Abbey Omokhodion CFO Abbey is a senior finance executive who held CFO roles at Fortune 100 companies including Intel and GE. She also worked at Ford Motor Company in Finance roles with increas303

Almaz Negash

ing responsibilities. She has served on a private For-Profit and Not-For-Profit Board as an Advisory member and as a Board member. She is passionate about diversity and Inclusion (D&I) and has chaired several D&I initiatives and teams. Abbey has an MA in International Affairs with a focus in Finance and Economics from Columbia University in New York, an MBA from the University of Connecticut with a focus on Technology management, and a BA in Accounting from the University of Lagos, Nigeria.

Kedest Tesfagiorgis Deputy Director of Global Partnerships & Grand Challenges, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Kedest Tesfagiorgis leads the Global Partnerships & Grand Challenges team within the Discovery & Translational Sciences group at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Kedest is deeply committed to building collaborative, inclusive, long-term partnerships that address the biggest challenges in health and development. Her career has been rooted in the conviction that, as a global community in pursuit of equity, we go faster and further by working together. Kedest is a non-voting member of the board.

Travis Adkins President and CEO, US African Development Foundation Travis Adkins is USADF’s 10th President and CEO, effective January 18, 2022. Previously, he served as the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Africa at the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Mr Adkins is also a Lecturer of African and Security Studies at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, where he concurrently teaches in the Prison Scholars Program of Georgetown’s Prisons and Justice Initiative. As an international development leader, he has over two decades of experience working in governance, education, humanitarian affairs, and women’s and youth empowerment in over 50 nations throughout Africa and the Middle East.

Yohannes Assefa Board of Directors, Ethiopia Diaspora Trust Fund Yohannes Assefa is an experienced international development professional with senior management experience spanning over 25 years of experience in the United States and Africa. Mr Assefa served as Chief of Party, Director, Senior Technical Adviser, and consultant on various donor-funded projects in 16 African countries. Mr Assefa served as Chief of Part of the USAID-funded Ethiopia WTO Accession Plus Project, Country Director/CoP for USAID Market Systems for Growth and was Senior Technical Advisor during the establishment of the Ethiopian Commodities Exchange (ECX). He is currently the Director of Market Systems for DT-Global, an international development consulting firm.

Latanya Map Frett President and CEO, Global Fund for Women 304

The Landscape of the African Diaspora

Latanya Mapp Frett is President and CEO of Global Fund for Women, one of the world’s leading foundations for gender justice. Global Fund for Women has fueled feminist movements across the world for over 30 years, putting resources directly in the hands of courageous activists who are working to end oppressive policies and change entrenched norms. As a feminist fund, Global Fund for Women offers flexible support to a diverse group of partners – more than 5,000 groups across 175 countries so far – to create meaningful change that will last beyond our lifetimes.

Roland Pearson Vice President and Executive Director, Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter (TCIS) Roland Pearson is an internationally recognized senior executive, who over 30 years has built national and international, private, and public institutions that deliver sustained social and economic impact and commercial value. He is the Vice President and Executive Director of Habitat for Humanity International’s Terwilliger Center for Innovation in Shelter (TCIS) – leading a global team of highly motivated and diverse professionals to conceptualize and prototype, and eventually scale and catalyze transformative market-oriented solutions that will accelerate the provision of safe, secure, sustainable habitats for the nearly 3 billion people who are or are projected to be subsisting in no or substandard shelter. Most recently, Roland was the Director and Portfolio Lead driving strategy, business development, and business execution of the finance and investment portfolio at Palladium, a global impact firm.

Diaspora Impact Investment and Social Entrepreneurship Africa’s economic growth is unleashing the creativity of entrepreneurs across the continent. These entrepreneurs are inventing novel solutions to address big, unsolved problems in their local markets. Unfortunately, the biggest problem they face is the lack of working capital to bring those solutions to scale. Diaspora entrepreneurs are competing with “white social and business entrepreneurs for funds.” In a recent article published by The Guardian, “American venture capital and private equity is dominating Africa, but it’s mostly funding other white foreign founders as black entrepreneurs continue to struggle to raise financing” (Madowo, 2020). There is a long way to go to unleash the abundant financial resources that are available in the United States and other countries for diaspora entrepreneurs to invest in their social enterprise. The question is, how can the diaspora turn remittances into investments to fund entrepreneurs? The conversation on the issue of remittances versus investments is ongoing.

Human Capital Investment By 2050, Africa is expected to experience a demographic doubling in population to reach 2.4 billion (IFC, 2016). This profound shift has the potential to amplify abundance and sets a vision for the continent to strengthen and support growing communities. In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the African Union (AU), African leaders established Agenda 2063 to plan for prosperity, shared growth, and economic opportunity for all. African governments need to develop infrastructure conducive to investment opportunities that pave a foundation for skills development, education, mentoring, and employment training. According to the 305

Almaz Negash

African Development Bank Group, Africa aims to harness its human capital potential through investments in new technologies. This would allow for skills development and increase job opportunities for African youth. Clearly, the potential and possibilities to foster African talent and ingenuity for a competitive and inclusive marketplace are ripe, though it will require massive investment from the public and private sectors.

Diaspora Talent, Education, and Potential Impact Capital: Beginning of a New Moment The challenge of an African “brain drain” has long been recognized as a serious hindrance to capitalizing on Africa’s opportunities. And many of those who left their homelands represented the best and the brightest of their generations. In the United States, there is a large number of intelligent and skilled sub-Saharan Africans. While the word “immigrant” speaks to the general movement of populations, the term “diaspora” speaks to the idea that those in motion maintain strong cultural, economic, or social ties to their home country. According to a study by New American Economy, African immigrants boast higher levels of education than the overall US population, with a particular focus on science, technology, engineering, and math, and contributed US $55.1 billion to the economy and taxes in 2015. With Africa being the “world’s youngest continent” and the future base of the global economy, some estimate that Africa as a whole will outpace India and China in the workforce by 2040. The World Bank estimates Africans in the diaspora save about US $53 billion per year and, in 2020, recorded remittances reached US $40 billion. This figure reflects the magnitude by which Africans in the diaspora are participating in the economic development of the continent. In addition, the figures reflecting the levels of both education and economics show the latent potential of the African diaspora community for mobilizing greater human and capital assets in support of their home communities in Africa. According to the 2017 UN Population Report, by 2050 Africa will be home to 2.2 billion people. This will require targeted new enterprise growth in areas that can enhance food supply, healthcare services, and educational solutions within local communities. And this presents a wonderful opportunity for the diaspora to explore business development in the continent. Even more significant, the potential value of African diasporans financing social enterprises, mission-driven for-profits, and collaborating with local leaders to structure capital investments that optimize total impact is potentially at the heart of leveraging diasporan talent and capital to the benefit of all. The African Union has been encouraging the diaspora to play a key role in the development of the continent. In 2007, the African Union partnered with the World Bank to launch the African Diaspora Program (ADP). The purpose of the ADP is to support the African Union in its diaspora global program and projects. The AU in 2012, in its effort to bring the diaspora together, hosted the Global African Diaspora Summit in Sandton, South Africa. Since then, the AU has created the Citizens and Diaspora Directorate (CIDO), which serves as the lead mobilizer of the diaspora. The African diaspora has a vested interest in leveraging their knowledge to support the continent. The dire poverty, unemployment, conflicts, and diseases that afflict millions of people in the continent affect diasporans as well. They are their brothers, sisters, neighbors, and friends. These problems, therefore, demand that governments engage the diaspora in strategic areas of economic development. Harnessing the African diaspora’s collective knowl306

The Landscape of the African Diaspora

edge is not an easy proposition. It is a challenge for both governments and individuals. It requires effort, creativity, transparency, and collective innovation from governments and individuals working together to develop long-term sustainable solutions.

African Diaspora Network Telehealth Pilot According to the World Health Organization, a person aged between 30 and 70 years living in Africa had a 1 in 5 chance of dying from one of the major chronic illnesses like cancer, diabetes, or cardiovascular disease prior to the pandemic. That number is expected to rapidly increase. At the same time, telehealth technologies developed by Africans to diagnose, treat, and monitor health conditions remotely are leapfrogging traditional systems of healthcare and enabling new, exciting collaborations to deliver quality digitized healthcare services to whoever has a cell phone connection and wherever they may be. Medical professionals no longer need to be in Africa to provide quality healthcare and diagnostics in the context of where people live and work on the continent. Technology innovations like secure data analytics are also enabling faster response times, especially those in crisis. African Diaspora Network (ADN) is developing a new telehealth pilot with the support of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Formally titled “The Future of Healthcare in Africa: Expanding digitized healthcare services by mobilizing African medical professionals abroad.” The project seeks to address challenges amplified by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that has placed a spotlight on the global shortage of healthcare workers at all levels. Across Africa, overburdened healthcare systems are drowning with the demands of the pandemic while attempting to address non-pandemic patient needs with limited budgets and inefficient systems. The pilot will mobilize African medical professionals from the Diaspora – highly trained doctors and nurses who know what the challenges and opportunities are, who may speak the same languages, and who can connect and build trust with clients, and work together with peer African doctors and nurses on the ground to deliver exceptional care with an African-led telehealth platform provider. The telehealth project seeks to build a new future for healthcare in Africa through African-led collaboration, for which ADN is known.

The Global Context: Sustainable Development Goals While the local and regional contexts in the United States and at a continental level display the “hidden in plain sight” opportunities and necessities to systematically embed the African diaspora as a key co-creator of Africa’s future, the global policy agenda has always evolved to a stronger realization of the importance of diaspora communities. Since the turn of the century with the millennium development goals (MDGs) to the recently adopted sustainable development goals (SDGs), the global development agenda is waking up to the potentialities of diaspora engagement for development. For example, while diaspora engagement can play a contributing role to many of the SDGs, the explicit inclusion of migration in Goal 10 of the SDGs marks a watershed moment for diaspora communities. Goal 10, specifically 10.7, aims to: Facilitate orderly, safe, regular and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through the implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies. (United Nations, 2015). 307

Almaz Negash

The targets to achieve such aims cut across key diaspora engagement terrain such as remittances and promotion of foreign direct investment. Diasporans then, formed as a consequence of migration, are a key enabler of achieving the SDGs. Even more interestingly, diaspora at a conceptual level is a much more positive vision than the politically and publicly sensitive topic of migration. Therefore, embedding diasporans into the development discourse is a smart and strategic move as we can unleash this positivity to create innovative solutions to help build a brighter future for the continent. However, such steps must also be led by the African diaspora community. During the MDGs for example, the African diaspora had not determined what role to play in the agenda. The diaspora community is now more confident, connected, and mature with the agency to design and offer proactive solutions that can ensure the African diaspora is a key co-creator of Africa’s future.

Conclusion African diasporans are a force for good, giving abundantly to the communities they live in and sending remittances back home to friends and family. Africans of the diaspora are by far the largest direct investors in Africa. Through remittances received, many families are able to sustain their lives. Remittances are not easily scalable, which is why African governments must create an ecosystem conducive for diasporans to invest. Government leaders in Africa have to create long-term, sustainable partnership programs with the diaspora. Engaging the diaspora is proven to strengthen the socioeconomic development of their home countries through capacity-building, skills transfer, and partnerships. With Africa’s growing population and high levels of youth unemployment, there is a need for sustainable investment, which is why diaspora engagement is critical. Diaspora investment in enterprises that can enhance food supply, healthcare services, and educational solutions within local communities can add greater value. The African diaspora is generous and committed to the well-being of their families and communities. When presented with an opportunity and a trusted platform, they are willing and able to give to social enterprises and mission-driven organizations.

Notes 1 Founded in 2010, African Diaspora Network (ADN) is a Silicon Valley-based nonprofit that promotes entrepreneurship and economic development on the African continent and that African diaspora communities live. 2 Ibid.

References African Development Bank (AfDB), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), & United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). (2017). African economic outlook 2017. Abidjan. Retrieved from www​.afdb​.org​/fileadmin​/uploads​/afdb​/Documents​/Publications​/ AEO​_2017​_Report​_Full​_English​.pdf. Batalova, J., & Echeverria-Estrada, C. (2019). Sub-Saharan African immigrants in the United States. Migration Policy Institute. Disrupt Africa. (2017). Finnovating for Africa: Exploring the African fintech startup ecosystem report 2017. Disrupt Africa. Retrieved from https://disrupt​-africa​.com​/tag​/finnovating​-for​-africa​-exploring​-the​-african​-fintech​-ecosystem​-report​-2017.

308

The Landscape of the African Diaspora Economy, N. A. (2020). Power of the purse: The contributions of Black immigrants in the United States. Retrieved from https://research​.newamericaneconomy​.org​/report​/black​-immigrants​-2020. Eisenmann, T. R. (2013). Entrepreneurship: A working definition. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr​.org​/2013​/01​/what​-is​-entrepreneurship. Gnimassoun, B., & Anyanwu, J. C. (2018). The diaspora and economic development in Africa. Bureau d’économie théorique et appliquée. Retrieved from www​.beta​-umr7522​.fr​/productions​/publications​/2018​/2018​-08​.pdf. Gwaambuka, T. (2019). Why Africa has the world’s highest entrepreneurship and discontinuance rates. The African Exponent, 11. IFC. (2016). Transforming African development: Partnerships and risk mitigation to mobilize private investment on a new Sca. IFC Retrieved from https://www​.ifc​.org​/wps​/wcm​/connect​/e95eedd6​ -94cf​-496f​-b70b​-61259d7c9711​/Transforming​+African​+Development​+English​+FINAL​.pdf​ ?MOD​=AJPERES​&CVID​=lqYZjsO. Madowo, L. (2020). Silicon Valley has deep pockets for African startups – If you’re not African. The Guardian. Retrieved from www​.theguardian​.com​/business​/2020​/jul​/17​/african​-businesses​-black​ -entrepreneurs​-us​-investors. Tamir, C. (2021). The growing diversity of Black America. Pew Research Center, Retrieved from https:// www​.pewresearch​.org​/social​-trends​/2021​/03​/25​/the​-growing​-diversity​-of​-black​-america/. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2017). World population prospects: The 2017 revision. United Nation. Retrieved from https://population​.un​.org​/wpp​/Publications​/Files​ /WPP2017​_KeyFindings​.pdf. United Nations. (n.d.). SDG indicator 10.7.2 on migration policies | population division. United Nations. https://www​.un​.org​/development​/desa​/pd​/data​/sdg​-indicator​-1072​-migration​-policies#:~​:text​=SDG​%20target​%2010​.7​%2C​%20which​%20calls​,all​%20the​%20targets​%20of​%20the. Word Bank. (2021). Defying predictions, remittance flows remain strong during COVID-19 crisis. Word Bank. Retrieved from www​.worldbank​.org​/en​/news​/press​-release​/2021​/05​/12​/defying​-predictions​-remittance​-flows​-remain​-strong​-during​-covid​-19​-crisis. World Bank Group. (2022, November 30). Remittances grow 5% in 2022, despite global headwinds. World Bank. https://www​.worldbank​.org​/en​/news​/press​-release​/2022​/11​/30​/remittances​ -grow​-5​-percent​-2022.

309

19 ENGENDERING MIGRATION IN AFRICA The Case of Ethiopian Migration to South Africa Meron Zekele

Introduction – Setting the Scene Migration is an all-pervasive phenomenon in Africa, a continent often perceived as a place of massive exodus. The South–South migration phenomenon, specifically the intra-African continental migration trend at best, displays misperceptions in the global migration flows. In 2017, 53.4 percent of all African migrants stayed in Africa, while 25.7 percent travelled to Europe and 12.2 percent to Asia.1 As the source indicates while almost 90 percent of North African migrants moved to Europe or Asia, over 70 percent of sub-Saharan African migrants moved within the continent. Although the aim here is not to provide an exhaustive list of the pre-existing studies, some of the main themes of prior studies on migration in/from the continent include discussions on the trends of intra-African migration and challenges of integration (e.g., Nyamnjoh, 2007); the migration of Africans to the West (e.g., Sahan & IGAD, 2016); African perspectives of migration and cultures of migration (e.g., Hahn & Klute, 2007); discussions on factors that shape and influence lives of Africans before, during, and after their migration (e.g.,Triulzi & McKenzie, 2013); the interplay between migration and development (e.g., de Hass & Fokkema, 2011); and more. The theme of South–South migration specifically the gender dynamics in intra-continental migration flows is one of the overlooked themes. In the 1990s, the discourse surrounding the feminization of migration has gained much attention from academics and policy-makers. This was a time when young girls and women increasingly migrate on their own to enhance their economic opportunities, a phenomenon commonly referred to as the feminization of migration (Donato & Gabaccia, 2015). In Africa, the migration of women has been happening both nationally (urban–rural circular migration) and internationally (Kaplan & Zaherra, 2018). According to the International Migration Report of UN DESA, 2016, the number of female migrants in Africa increased from 43 percent in 1960 to 48 percent in 2000. The same source indicates that the number of female migrants in South Africa constituted about 42.7 percent of the total migrants, a number which showed an increase from 37.3 percent back in the 1990s. Despite the increase in the number of female migrants in the continent, there is a dearth of literature on gen310

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-23

Engendering Migration in Africa

dered patterns of migration in Africa. The few existing works are often inclined towards a compartmentalized case study of different countries and regions within the continent (e.g., Dodson, 2008). Accordingly, studies indicated how South Africa has become the destination of female migrants seeking refugee from political instability and high levels of unemployment and poverty (Kaplan & Zaherra, 2018). Others focused on female transit migrants in Africa (Meron, 2017, 2019). The experiences of African women travelling to Europe by land have attracted the attention of a few scholars as well (e.g., Kastner, 2013). Most studies on gender and migration are inclined towards presenting sex-disaggregated data on the profile of migrants without adopting a detailed gender analytical lens that pays due attention to gendered socializations, gendered division of labour, and power dynamics underpinning the gendered migration patterns. Furthermore, the other main gap in discussions of the nexus between gender and migration is more emphasis given to male and female migrants on the move without paying due attention to those left behind. “Studies focusing more specifically on gender-based approaches to these processes, and documenting the consequences of emigration (including male emigration) on the women who stay behind are scarce and relatively recent” (Cortes, 2016, p. 3). By drawing on this gap, the chapter discusses the intricacies of gender and migration in the context of South–South migration with a specific focus on Ethiopian labour migration to South Africa. This chapter draws on extended ethnographic research conducted in Southern Ethiopia focusing on prospective and potential migrants destined to South Africa and their families left behind. The discussion in this chapter mainly draws on the ethnographic study conducted in one of the two hot spots of Ethiopian migrants to South Africa, the Hadiya Zone. Administratively, Hadiya Zone is divided into 11 districts of which six (Gombora, Limo, Misha, Shashogo Dombiya, and Soro) are areas known for the growing number of migrations to South Africa often described as emigrant localities. By going a step beyond the dominant trend of presenting feminization of labour migration in Ethiopia, this chapter presents how the phenomenon of labour migration is highly influenced by overarching gender norms and sociocultural landscape in Ethiopia. The chapter tries to answer the following general questions: How do gender beliefs and gendered arrangements affect the gendered migration patterns in Southern Ethiopia? What are the multifaceted factors accounting for the mobility and immobility of women and young girls in contemporary Ethiopia? By drawing on the case of intra-continental migration of Ethiopians to South Africa, this chapter locates the lived experiences of Ethiopian women within the mainstream discourses on gender and migrations. The aim is to add to the existing body of knowledge while addressing the lacuna of research on gender and migration in Africa.

Trends and Patterns of Migration in the Ethiopia–South Africa Corridor The history of Ethiopian international migration in general is marked by various types of migration waves. During the imperial time, 1930–1974, only a few privileged elites, predominantly male got the opportunity to leave the country to acquire higher education (Bariagaber, 1997). This was within the framework of the government-sponsored scheme whereby few elites were granted scholarships to gain knowledge overseas and contribute to the “modernization” mission of the time. The post-imperial regime and the time of the political transition was a period in which significant migration of male and female youth occurred from Ethiopia. This was the time when thousands escaped the severe political persecution by the military regime (Getachew, 1991). The time of the military regime in Ethiopia (1974– 311

Meron Zekele

1991) is however marked by higher restrictions on the mobility of Ethiopians internally and internationally (Asnake & Zerihun, 2015). The post-1991 period following the demise of the military regime set the landmark in improving national emigration regulations. The 1995 Constitution grants the freedom of mobility to Ethiopian citizens across the board as stipulated in Article 32(1) of the national constitution.2 As a result of such liberal opening, over million Ethiopians have left and are working abroad (Fernandez, 2011). The liberal opening of migration in post-1991 Ethiopia matched with the welcoming migration policy shift in South Africa following the end of apartheid in 1994, and the introduction of some liberal measures such as asylum laws that allowed temporary residence or asylum permits. Scholars argue that such liberal opening has resulted from the lived experiences of the exiled South African liberation movement leaders (Wehmhoerner, 2015). The rise in the number of Ethiopian migrants to South Africa dates back to the early 1990s when thousands left Ethiopia for South Africa. While the migration of Ethiopians to South Africa began in the mid-1990s, the flow has become more significant since the 2000s. Government estimate in Ethiopia indicates that about 120,000 Ethiopians work and live in South Africa. A study indicates that Ethiopians make up the majority of migrants from the Horn of Africa region smuggled into South Africa, suggesting that Ethiopians make up to 80 percent of migrants from the Horn of Africa followed by the Somalis who made up to 20 percent (Frows & Horwood, 2017). An estimated 95 percent of the Horn of African migrants that arrive in South Africa are undocumented and thus considered irregular (Horwood, 2009; Kanko et al., 2013). According to the 2015 South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs data, Ethiopia was ranked as the second country in the list of the top 15 migrant-sending African countries: Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Nigeria, DRC, Malawi, Somalia, Ghana, Burundi, Mozambique, Uganda, Congo-Brazzaville, Cameroon, Tanzania, Lesotho, and Senegal. The irregular nature of the migration makes the Ethiopian migrants in South Africa invisible, leading to a gap of knowledge on the exact number of migrants. According to the data gathered during the study, even though most migrants are described as being undocumented, most migrants are registered at Home Affairs and get a temporary permit which enables them to work. The sizeable presence of Ethiopians in South Africa has resulted in the first-ever Ethiopian head of state visit to South Africa in January 2020. This visit had twofold purposes of deepening bilateral relations between the two countries and consultation with Ethiopian migrants regarding their precarious existence in South Africa and investment opportunities at home. During this visit, the prime minister met thousands of Ethiopian migrants at the Wanderers Stadium. Prime Minster Abiy lobbied the South African political leadership to give greater recognition of Ethiopian migrants’ contribution to the South African economy framing the demand for recognition in the language of reciprocity: “As we contributed to the liberation of South Africa from Apartheid (including providing travel document and military training for Mandela) so is now the time for SA to pay back” (Dereje, 2022). The Southern Nations Nationalities and People’s region (SNNP region) in Ethiopia is a place of origin where most migrants destined to South Africa originate from. It constitutes one of the peripheral regions, unlike the central and northern highlands, which served as the historic core of the Ethiopian state (Dereje, 2022). While Ethiopia is a multiethnic country, with over 80 ethnic groups, members of two particular ethnic groups, notably Hadiya and Kembata, predominantly migrate to South Africa. The dominance of the two ethnic groups in the migration to South Africa starting the year 2000 is recounted to be associated with 312

Engendering Migration in Africa

the initiative of a former Ethiopian Ambassador to South Africa, who is from the Kembata community in Southern Ethiopia. Many informants recount how the Ambassador created job opportunities for some youth from the two localities in the early 2000s. Furthermore, some developments in Ethiopia and South Africa have contributed to the mass exodus of Ethiopians to South Africa. Some of these developments include the political instability in post-2005 election in Ethiopia, the World Cup hosted by South Africa in 2010, and the significant role played by smugglers.

Gendered Faces of Migration of Ethiopians to South Africa The chapter argues that discussion on the intricacies of gender and migration should incorporate both those on the move and the ones who are left behind. This is mainly due to the fact that gendered socialization patterns, gendered norms, and gendered roles highly affect the migration trends in defining who migrates, who stays behind, why and how, in the context of a patriarchal society like Ethiopia’s. The gendered patterns of migration in the southern corridor (Ethiopia–South Africa corridor) can be best viewed from two key elements, the gendered selection of destinations, and the dynamics surrounding migration and marriage as to be elaborated below.

Gendered Destinations One of the issues that best portrays the nexus between gender and migration in the study area is the gendered migration pattern, whereby male migrants from Southern Ethiopia are often destined to the Republic of South Africa while the young female migrants incline towards the Gulf states. Hence, the gendered migration pattern is best displayed in the preferred destinations of young male and female migrants, the routes they take, and the factor accounting for their migration. Female migrants from Southern Ethiopia are bound to internal destinations and into the Eastern route destined to the Gulf states. While explaining such gendered patterns, most informants consulted during the course of this research referred to a common saying in the area wend la debub set la Dubai, which literally means boys are meant for the South while girls are meant for Dubai. Such an everyday form of communication shows how gendered trends in defining destinations of migrants are highly ingrained in the everyday life of the study community. Initially, Hadiya elders actively discouraged female migration to the Gulf because of religious considerations. Hadiya and Kembata are predominantly (Protestant) Christians and female migration to Muslim countries was considered as a threat to religious identity, as some of the migrants might be converted. But pragmatism has ultimately prevailed over ideological identity. A pastor and a key informant mentioned about this phenomenon referring to the internal debate within the churches whether it is a good idea to let women and girls migrate to the Gulf. On the other hand, migration to South Africa was endorsed and encouraged because South Africa is perceived as a Christian country. The migration of female migrants from Southern Ethiopia to the Middle East and the Gulf is a common phenomenon fitting to the greater culture of migration in different parts of Ethiopia. The long history of Ethiopian labour migration to the Middle East is dominated by female migrants (De Regt, 2010). The late 1980s’ labour migration to Lebanon marks the first wave of Ethiopian female labour migration, whereby thousands of women have left the country on work contracts (Dessiye, 2011). The mass exodus of female migrants from the country to the Middle East and Gulf countries was on the rise since the 1990s. Data from 313

Meron Zekele

the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (MoLSA) indicates the rise in the number of female migrants whereby in the first nine months of 2011–2012 a total of 139,120 migrants were registered to migrate to the Middle East of which 132,176 or 95 percent were females. The major destinations for Ethiopian female labour migrants include Dubai, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia. Apart from the wealthy oil-rich Gulf countries, economically less developed countries like Djibouti, Yemen, and Sudan also became destinations for thousands of Ethiopian female labour migrants (Meron, 2017). Such gendered migration patterns to the Gulf and Middle East can also be tracked from the profile of hundreds of thousands of deportees of Ethiopian from Saudi Arabia from 2016 to 2021. Female migrants from Southern Ethiopia destined to the Middle East and the Gulf states use one of the three common channels of labour migration. The first mechanism is employment through legally registered Ethiopian Private Employment Agencies (PEA) which are agencies with a legal permit to recruit migrant workers. The second channel is the one whereby individual migrant secures work contract on their own and get registered with MoLSA. The third and widely used channel is irregular migration through brokerage services locally referred to as delelas. According to the IOM 2018, the largest majority of African migrants in South Africa are from the Horn of Africa specifically from Ethiopia and Somalia. The migration routes that male migrants from Hadiya take involve several stopovers of varying lengths in different places often referred to as transit places. These transit points involve both internal transit points in Ethiopia and international transits.

Marriage-Related Migration The other common trend in gendered migration patterns from Southern Ethiopia relates to the phenomenon of migration associated with marriage. The analysis of the data from the fieldwork shows three major trends.

Arranged Marriage The first phenomenon is migration through an arranged marriage. South Africa being the most favoured destination, under this arrangement, young girls are married to migrant men in South Africa through an arrangement that families make both at places of origin and at destination. Even though arranged marriage is often described as being dominant in rural parts of Ethiopia, the findings of the study conducted in Hadiya show the fact that it is a common phenomenon in both urban and rural parts of Hadiya. During the course of the study, a number of young girls married to migrants in South Africa waiting for the sponsorship from their prospective husbands whom they have met through the families we interviewed. The experience of the 16-year-old young bride married to a migrant captures the nuances of the arranged marriage process: Ever since my father left for South Africa some ten years ago, I live with my mother and my two siblings. I never dreamed of being in South Africa because of the horrific stories I heard about the crimes and violence in South Africa. Two years ago, my mother was approached by a family of a migrant man, my current husband who is working in South Africa. My mother consulted my father who did some background checks about my husband. My father found him to be an agreeable person; someone who is hard working, who is not married, and does not have children and with some 314

Engendering Migration in Africa

solid income. My parents agreed and accepted the proposal. I was not consulted but my mother informed me later when she introduced me to my husband through phone. He sent me a mobile phone and some gifts through his younger brother. We started communicating regularly. I have seen his pictures and we usually have video calls. He is older than me in his 40’s. As my mother says being married to an older person is better as that person has life experience and do not get to cheat around like younger boys who are often unfaithful. He is now paying for my school. The plan is for me to join him in Johannesburg next year after I finish my high school study. (Hewan, Interviewed in Hosanna, 22.08.2021) Several young girls interviewed during the course of the study share Hewan’s experience whereby hundreds of young girls get introduced to their husbands at a later stage after their families have decided and made all prior arrangements. Local elders, called Lommana, play a significant role in arranged marriages. The recent migration-related development indicates the broadening of the Lommana category which originally had a gerontocratic role associated with elders. The recent developments, on the other hand, on how various intermediaries who in most cases are mediators, friends, or acquaintees of the migrant and in some circumstances brokers or smugglers play the role of the Lommana in arranging marriages. Such arranged marriages often take place between adult male migrants and young girls who are under 18, i.e., those who are under the official marriage age. Furthermore, there is also a commodification of elderhood as community elders are highly paid for soliciting young girls for older migrant men. Arranged marriages of young girls to migrant men have brought a shift in local norms related to social class in the place of origin. Hadiya is a clan-stratified society, whereby some clans are considered to have a higher social standing. The social stratification goes to the extent that men and women are forced to be bound to marry within their castes. Marrying someone from the occupational minority groups often referred to as Fuga is believed to go against the rule of “purity” of hereditary lines and crossing the group boundaries. Migration undermines this local hierarchy and related social inequality as in some cases arranged marriage takes place between migrant men and local young girls. The clan hierarchy is now the least considered during mate selection. There are cases whereby migrant males from caste groups and occupational minorities marry girls from clans with higher social standing (Zenebe et al., 2016). During the consultation of local informants, informants also confirmed that arranged marriages in some circumstances go against local social hierarchies based on clan. As such, migration is playing the role of a social equalizer, as it has opened greater social options for people with lower social status.

Marriage through Social Media The second type of marriage of local girls to a migrant is related to a recent trend whereby young girls from places of origin get to meet their prospective husbands on different social media platforms. Even though Ethiopia is one of the African countries at the lower end of internet use, Facebook connectivity is on the rise among young Ethiopians. This is linking Ethiopian migrants to locals in urban settings like Hosana, the Hadiya administrative capital. The literature on long-distance relationships and marriage in pre-internet days has extensively paid attention to mail-order brides in migration research (Constable, 2003). The Ethiopian lived experience shows how the internet is becoming a powerful tool in the prolif315

Meron Zekele

eration of marriage in Southern Ethiopia. Young girls in Southern Ethiopia and migrant men in South Africa use a robust set of online tools like video chats, social media, and messaging apps for dating. Most teenage boys and girls interviewed during the course of the study have a Facebook account and are connected to relatives and friends based in South Africa. The use of the internet as informants mention has made communication cheaper and speedier. I joined Facebook three years ago while I was in grade eight. I have over 200 friends most of whom are based in South Africa. I met my husband on Facebook as we had a common Facebook friend, his cousin. In 2018 my husband saw his cousin’s comments on one of my profile pictures from the news feed. He sent me a friend request and once I realized that we have a common friend, I accepted his request. He is based in Durban and went there nine years ago. We started communicating regularly through messenger and telegram. We were in a relationship almost for three years and in June he sent elders to my family who accepted the proposal. So now I am officially engaged and we will soon have our wedding party in Hosana. (Maria, interviewed in Hosanna, August 25, 2021) Facebook and Instagram are the main platforms which local young female informants use often rather than dating sites and apps that are gaining prominence in other settings. The call apps often used by informants for communication with their partners in South Africa are WhatsApp and Imo.

The Role of Marriage Brokerage The third common trend relates to the phenomenon of commercially arranged marriages, namely matchmaking and marriage brokerage operation. The findings of the study pointed to an interesting trend in the gendered migration pattern, whereby Ethiopian female migrants based in the Gulf and the Middle East pay for such brokerage services and get married to Ethiopian migrant men in South Africa. This choice-making of female migrants indicates how much the female migrant workers value marriage and establishing a family after spending some years in the Gulf. For most of the female migrants paying for the brokerage yields a great return value as they believe living and working in South Africa offers them better life opportunities than returning home and getting married in Ethiopia. This development challenges the phenomenon of mail-order brides in migration research which is considered as an aspect of human trafficking. The mail-order bride industry prospers by exploiting the power disparities between men and women, the rich and the poor, those from developed economies and those from developing economies. Young women from poor families in economically struggling nations are transported from their homes, like products, to male citizens of economically advantaged nations under the supervision of for-profit companies known as “mail-order bride agencies” (Lloyd, 2000, p. 341). Hence, the use of the brokerage operation shows the agency of young girls and women challenging the mainstream narrative often portraying them as passive and victims. In some circumstances, male migrants also look for migrant wives from the Gulf and Middle East as they consider them to be experienced in terms of coping with hardship unlike the young girls directly sponsored from Ethiopia and having the exposure to modern life. Furthermore, the preference of Ethiopian wives from the Middle East is somewhat appealing 316

Engendering Migration in Africa

due to several encounters of failed marriage projects in the context where young brides run away from their husbands upon arriving in South Africa. A returnee migrant interviewed in Hosana articulated this as: I had many friends in South Africa who married migrant women from Dubai than marring someone from home (Ethiopia). The arranged marriage of sponsoring young wives from Ethiopia is causing a social crisis as most of the young girls feel pressured by their family and friends without their interest. Furthermore, the couple hardly know each other, in most cases the young girls get to see their husbands in person upon arrival in South Africa. The age gap between couples, the forced nature of the marriage is among the factors that make young girls file for divorce or run away upon arriving in South Africa. This is common and is making men to resort to the more reliable alternative of marriage brokerage whereby the couple enter to a relationship based on their consent and without any external pressure be it that of a family or friends. Furthermore, unlike the young girls from Ethiopia, the ones coming from Dubai are believed to have better exposure living overseas. (Biniyam, interviewed in Hosana, July 19, 2021) Negative experiences make male migrants to be attracted to those who already have the experience of living in a difficult situation as a migrant and whom they consider as trustworthy due to the informed consent involved upon entering the relationship. The brokers based in South Africa, in the Gulf, and in Ethiopia play an active role in encouraging and convincing potential brides/grooms to enter into marriages. Informants mentioned the involvement of both male and female marriage brokers whereby female brokers capitalize on local and transnational social networks like church prayer groups. One of the remarkable elements of Ethiopian migrants in South Africa is the excessive wedding ceremonies held upon the arrival of migrant wives. Such festivities are often recorded and the videotapes are sent back home. These videos are often used by marriage brokers to solicit couples for marriage.

Factors Accounting for Gendered Migration Patterns The push factors for the migration of Ethiopians from Southern Ethiopia to South Africa are quite diverse. The multitude of factors identified includes individual, household, community, and structural level factors. Furthermore, economic factors such as absolute and relative deprivation, culture of migration, devaluation of education, and natural disaster were also mentioned as the leading push factors. The household-level factors include large family size, low household income, migration histories of parents and family members, and family dynamics such as the divorce of parents were also mentioned by informants. Other contingent factors affecting the migration dynamics include the availability of smuggling services and the accessibility of information technologies. As this chapter is addressing the gendered faces of migration, it is essential to examine the different factors that account for the very existence of such gendered patterns of migration.

Labour Demand at Destinations One of the key factors shaping the gendered migration pattern is the nature of the labour market in places of destination. The labour demand in this context relates to the rising 317

Meron Zekele

demand for female labour in the Middle East and Gulf states which are often looking for cheaper sources of labour (Meron, 2018). This factor is best captured by the notion of global care chain. The care chain is a concept in migration studies emphasizing the gender segmentation of the global labour market, whereby women and young girls are often demanded for domestic tasks such as child care and house help. The global care chain notion alludes that, in developed nations with a large ageing population and in the context where there is a growing participation of women in the labour force, there is always a dire need for female domestic workers resulting in a phenomenon described as the global care chain. (Hochschild, 2002). Hiring a female migrant worker for domestic care-related tasks guarantees local female employers the leverage to negotiate their familial and reproductive responsibilities (Yeoh & Huang, 1999). A related structural factor that accounted for female migration to the Middle East and the Gulf states is the Khafala labour migrant sponsorship system common in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, whereby local employers contract labour migrants on short-term recruitment basis (De Regt, 2010). The informal nature of the job that migrant workers do in South Africa is another factor setting the gendered pattern. Given the irregular status of migrants in South Africa often lacking refugee status, the large majority of Ethiopian migrants lacks formal access to the employment market. The available labour demand in the informal sector and public space in South Africa hence plays a significant role in setting the gendered migration pattern. The migration of male migrant workers to South Africa in the 2000s within the labour arrangement scheme is another case in point.

Gendered Sociocultural Norms Gendered sociocultural norms related to places of origin are another structural factor accounting for gendered migration patterns. Despite the changing labour markets globally and the related increase in opportunities for migrant women, local gendered norms at places of origin often set the gendered migration patterns on who migrates out. The gendered norms in a particular household and society set the migration norms by allowing particular members of the household or the community to migrate while forcing others to stay. In a patriarchal setting like Ethiopia, the social norms define men as the ones who are expected to support the family economically, and hence migration of heads of a household is the rule than the exception, It is socially less acceptable for women to independently migrate and hence they tend to migrate in shorter distances than men. The impact of social norms on shaping the gendered migration patterns can also be seen from the dimension of gendered division of labour at places of origin. In our culture women are the ones who are in charge of all the domestic chores like cooking and caring for children while a man is responsible for all activities that have to do with farming, business etc. We cannot go against our culture and send young girls to places where they have to work as a daily labourer or a trader, the common type of job which men migrating to South Africa do. Female migrants going to Saudi Arabia or Dubai are often confined to house help. They either work as nannies or maids. These jobs are very feminine in their very nature. (Lachiso, interviewed in Hosanna, August 20, 2021) 318

Engendering Migration in Africa

In such sociocultural landscape, the women who overstep such gender boundaries are often perceived as less feminine. The account of the informant above at best displays how the migration process is highly impacted by gendered sociocultural norms in places of origin as much as it is affected by the structures of the labour market in destination countries.

Risks Shaping the Gendered Migration Pattern The third factor accounting for existing gendered labour migration pattern is the perceived and real risks encountered en route and at the respective destinations. The risks raised by informants relate to the risks encountered at two stages of the migration process: the risks faced en route/in transit and the risks faced at destinations. The first set of risks associated with the journey and transit is framed along the protection risks faced by migrants during their journey to South Africa. Comparing the journey to South Africa and destinations in the Gulf, the possibility of using a regular route for the migration journey to the Gulf is believed to reduce the protection risk that female migrants face en route, unlike the irregular migration to South Africa. This however does not mean that all female labour migrants destined to the Middle East and the Gulf use regular means. Returnees interviewed in the study area emphasized the perilous nature of the journey to South Africa, and the challenges faced at several transit points and multifaceted risks encountered along the way. The risks mentioned include travel through harsh climate/desert, the danger of kidnapping and torture for ransom, rape, detainment, hunger, and more. Thus, there is a gendered outlook that men and young boys are in a better social standing to shoulder and overcome such hardships and risks than young girls and women. According to the data obtained from the field, there were as many as 700 recorded migrant deaths that were from Hadiya in one year. In 2018/2019, about 280 migrants are reported to have died en route. The migration experience of migrants from the area involves internal transit migration phases, whereby migrants move to bigger cities such as Addis Ababa and Hawassa in order to earn an income. They often use the income they earn in transit to finance their international migration. Such a phased migration journey is believed to expose the migrants to protection risks both at internal and international transit points. One of the protection risks, rape is considered to have more repercussions on female migrants. Unlike male migrants from Ethiopia who often migrate using irregular means, female migrants travelling to South Africa often use regular means flying to South Africa or neighboring countries such as Mozambique and Swaziland. The second category of risk mentioned by informants relates to risks that migrants encounter at the destination, i.e., South Africa. The risks encountered at the destination country are mostly framed in relation to the type of jobs available for Ethiopians and other African migrants in South Africa. Most migrants engage in informal trade involving longdistance travels and long hours of work. Among the Ethiopian migrant community, these types of work are considered to be “more fit” for male migrants due to the associated risks. Some of the migrant males are engaged in the tuck-shop business in the townships while others are engaged in small-scale trades targeting the Ethiopian immigrant community. Upon joining the informal sectors, the migrants face competition from both other immigrants working in the same sector and from the locals. The resistance from the locals involves the ones they face from those running small-scale informal businesses and the ones they face from unemployed South Africans. The competition also happens between fellow countrymen (Ethiopians) resulting in physical assaults and at times death. Informants also reported the insecurity related to xenophobic attacks on foreign workers in South Africa. 319

Meron Zekele

According to accounts of two returnee informants, the common exploitative nature of Border–Boss relationship is another risk. New arrivals to South Africa are often commonly referred to as the borders. These new arrivals are often dependent on their hosts who are commonly referred to as “Boss”. The Bosses support the Borders in two different ways. The first is the case whereby the Boss offers the new migrant work and pays him for his service. The second arrangement is whereby the Boss provides (lends) the border a start-up capital which the latter pays backup on settling (Neway, interviewed in Hosana, September 05, 2021). The following excerpt from a father of migrants currently based in South Africa reflects such deep-seated fear of risks accounting for the gendered migration pattern: The reason why young girls and women are not leaving directly for South Africa is due to the risks they might encounter in South Africa. I have three children, two boys and a girl. Both my sons are currently in South Africa. One of them went when he was sixteen and the other one left three years ago after completing tenth grade. My boys are in a better position to face and cope with the challenges they face in South Africa unlike my daughter. The journey to South Africa is a long and dangerous one. We hear a lot about gang rape migrants face enroute and even in South Africa. Ethiopian migrants do not have much option when it gets to the kind of jobs they do in South Africa. Their jobs at times involve more risk than the ones they encounter enroute. We received bodies of young male migrants who got killed in South Africa by gangs and during the xenophobic attacks on migrant workers. South Africa is a land of opportunities and challenges which girls and women would hardly cope up with. (Negusse, Interviewed in Hosanna, 10 July 2021)

Effects of the Gendered Migration Pattern The gendered migration pattern has multifold effects on the lives of young girls and women in their place of origin. In such a context of male-dominated migration flows, women and children left behind are often overlooked (Nguyen et al., 2006). But recent studies conducted since 2000 have developed interest in migration-left-behind nexus (Toyota et al., 2007). There is a debate on the impact of migration on gender dynamics at migration-sending areas. Some argue that migration and remittances have none or limited impact on gender roles. For those arguing along this line, migration does not bring about a meaningful change in existing gender norms and values in the context of a predominant patriarchal family structure. This point is heightened in a study conducted in Burkina Faso (Hampshire, 2006) and Egypt (Tylor, 1984) shows. On the other hand, others contend by pointing out how migration impacts social remittances contributing to a gradual shift in gendered values and norms (King & Vulnettari, 2012). The effects of such gendered migration patterns on the overall sociocultural landscape and the family are a theme that went unnoticed in Ethiopia. The effect of gendered migration patterns in Southern Ethiopia can be addressed from three perspectives as to be presented in this section.

The Gendered Migration Pattern Reinforcing Gender Norms The ethnographic research conducted in the Hadiya Zone points to the more adverse cultural impact of migration in changing marriage practices and the setback in gender equality norms. The remittances being sent from South Africa have caused social inequality between migrants and non-migrants in mate selection. Parents often prefer migrant husbands for 320

Engendering Migration in Africa

their daughters. Accordingly, parents put pressure on their daughters to marry migrants regardless of their age differences and how unattractive they might be. More importantly, regardless of whether they want to marry and rather prefer to continue in their education. While parents might not be enthusiastic about sending boys to South Africa because of the associated cost, they often welcome a marriage proposal not only because it is cost-free (fully to be sponsored by the prospective husband) but also because of anticipated financial gains in the form of remittances and possibly enabling chain migration of other family members. The other dimension of harmful traditional practice that resurfaced as a result of such gendered migration patterns is early marriage. Informants reported the threefold values attached to such arranged marriage; firstly, it is believed to control potential premarital sex (ensuring the virginity of girls at the time of marriage). Secondly, such arranged marriage is believed to play a significant role in strengthening family ties between families of the couple. Moreover, for girls coming from poor families, marrying a migrant is believed to guarantee the girl and her family a lifetime support. The arranged marriage taking place between migrant men and non-migrant local girls is an aspect of revival of a harmful cultural practice. Furthermore, it is contributing to the resurfacing of marriage by abduction in a situation where non-migrant men fail to compete with migrants, the non-migrant men resort to abduction of girls (Zenebe et al., 2016). Hence, the gendered migration pattern reinforces repressive traditional gender norms in the area directly through the practice of arranged marriage and indirectly through the practice of abduction. In both the cases of arranged and early marriages, migration seems to have mediated the revival of conservative gender norms.

Increasing Workloads The other effect of the gendered migration pattern is related to the impact it has on gendered power dynamics. The study found out that in the context where male migration is predominant, women left behind often find themselves shouldering substantial responsibilities ranging from child care and property management to managing the household. Likewise, prior studies indicated how in the context of missing husbands, married women act as de facto heads of household (Archambault, 2010). Some of the duties women take up on and the resulting role reversals are remarkable in the context of a patriarchal society where male family members are believed to have a “natural authority” to make decisions and taking up the role of heading households. The strong patriarchal values that underpin the gendered discriminatory household duties often inscribe that. Fathers are in charge of managing the general well-being of the household. When my husband was around, we had a clear division of labour in the household. I was so much into cooking for the family, cleaning the backyard, fetching water, going to the market and caring for the younger children. My husband was in charge of disciplining the children, assisting them with their studies, earning and managing the household income. Since he migrated to South Africa, I had to shoulder all these responsibilities on my own without any prior experience. The toughest part of all is disciplining the children especially my two teenage boys. They often reject me undermining my authority; they hardly listen to me. I understand my children’s rejection as declining is a males prerogative power. (Tigist, Interviewed in Hosanna, August 26, 2021) 321

Meron Zekele

The respondents account above hints at a gendered role reversal considered as being “unnatural” and against the mainstream norm and shows how women left behind struggle hard to play the role of the household head. Even though the role of women at the household level gets to the defacto headship of a household, the gendered power relationship in the public sphere is least affected. Women from migrant households do not take over the roles of their husbands in the public domain such as in heading community associations. They are also not in a position to make independent choices that go against prevailing gender norms. Furthermore, women are expected to look for alternatives such as wage labourers than to take up their husbands’ particular tasks such as ploughing, sowing, and harvesting due to the gendered societal norms inscribing such tasks as being exclusive domains of male family members. The gender role reversal related to decision-making powers women get at the household level is quite limited and a temporary one as migrant husbands take over their position upon their return. Informants described their decision-making role as a short-lived one which they often consider a burden than a privilege. There are few cases in which husbands send remittances directly to their wives. The following excerpt is from a woman investing in Hosana: My husband left for South Africa in 2011 leaving me with our three children who were quite young by the time. We were living in a rural village in Lemo district. Unlike most migrant men from our area, my husband trusts me and sends money directly to me. I decided to buy small plot of land in Hosana, build a house and move to the town with my children. I did that in 2014 three years after he left for South Africa. After moving to Hosana, the first thing I did was sending our children to a private school where they can get better education. As my dream is to have him back here with us, I thought of how I can use the money he sends to realize my dream of reuniting with him. In 2015 I bought a small plot of land at the outskirt of the town which I sold back in 2015 for almost double of the price I got it for. This was the first business I did. Since 2015 I am in this business which is way profitable than I expected it to be. As we have stable source of income here, my husband will be moving back to Ethiopia for good by end of this year. (Tilaye, interviewed in Hosana, July 30, 2021)

Strained Family Ties One of the effects of gendered migration the study identified relates to the impact on the breakdown of family ties. The two major trends observed in the study include the breaking up of relationships of couples and strained relationships of migrants with those left behind. Many women emphasize how much the migration of their husbands impacted the intimacy of the couple. Even though men’s migration is considered locally as a household livelihood strategy meant to improve the social and economic status of the family, it is described as something that severely strained the familial ties between the married couple and their children. The improvement in socio-economic well-being of a household comes with trade-offs for men’s ties with their spouses. In addition to the effect on the equality of relationship between a migrant husband and his wife left in Ethiopia, informants also reported the dynamics surrounding strained relationships among other members of the family left behind. In some circumstances, migrant men delegate their male siblings or other male close kin members to help them with managing the household. 322

Engendering Migration in Africa

Women living as de facto female heads of households have better autonomy in making household-related decisions on their own. This group of informants mentioned less interference from their in-laws despite the challenges caused by the long-distance relationship. On the other hand, women who are compelled to live with relatives of their migrant husbands often find themselves in a constant state of negotiation and conflict. Female informants from this category of households have less autonomy, and self-esteem and often find themselves in a strained family relationship. The migration of my husband made me feel lonely, controlled and to doubt my adulthood. My husband’s family treat me as a young child. They consider that I am not mature enough to run the house by myself. My father-in-law is the one who receives the remittances my husband sends. I always have to explain to my in-laws about my needs and there are things which I might not want to disguise to him. For instance, I recently wanted to visit a gynecologist following a recurring pain I had. How can I explain that to my father-in-law and ask for money? My husband and my in-laws are investing in residential plots. I am not part of the planning as nobody consulted me about that. What makes it even more painful is the fact that I am misunderstood by my own family and friends who often approach me asking me for loans. (Asegedech, interviewed in Hosanna, July 03, 2021) The lived experience of women left behind shows how much the migration of husbands does not necessarily advance women’s process of socio-economic empowerment and well-being. The deep-rooted patriarchal structures and norms constrain women’s agency and choicemaking.

Conclusion The intricacies of gender and migration in the context of South–South migration are examined in this work at two levels. First, the discussion on the migration pattern of male migrants destined to South Africa and the young female migrant’s inclination towards the Gulf states called for a gendered analysis. The analysis of this pattern as elucidated in this work at best displays how the migration process is highly impacted by gendered sociocultural norms as much as it is affected by the structures of the labour market at destination countries and the expected risks/hardships en route. Gendered socialization patterns, norms, and roles also highly affect the migration trends in defining who migrates, to where, why, and how, in the context of deep-seated patriarchal norms. The role of families and community units at origin and destination contributes towards this gendered migration phenomenon. Secondly, the discussion on gendered migration patterns needs to interrogate the discourse of women left behind that often portrays victimization of spouses: a view that downgrades their creative capabilities. The contribution nuanced how the migration of male heads of households is experienced as an empowering and/or disempowering phenomenon with reference to the degree of economic autonomy and social well-being it affords to women left behind. The gendered role reversals resulting from the migration of male heads of households do not bring about a shift in gendered roles at a household level by challenging dominant patriarchal norms. Women are often forced to maintain the gendered expectations that patriarchy sets for them without gaining the opportunity to negotiate and bargain their position. Such a gendered 323

Meron Zekele

analysis goes beyond the undue emphasis on “left behind women”; a discussion that often focuses on the discourse of victimization making the agency of young girls and women invisible. This agency can best be referred from the case of marriage by a brokerage. The discussion on the gendered migration patterns from Ethiopia contributes to the discussions on the feminization of migration. While the migration of young women to South Africa is often associated with marriage and family reunion, migration to the Gulf is undertaken independently.

Notes 1 See 2019 Ibrahim Forum Report; “Most African migrants move within the continent”. 2 The article states “Any Ethiopian or foreign national lawfully in Ethiopia has, within the national territory, the right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose his residence, as well as the freedom to leave the country at any time he wishes to”.

References Archambault, C. (2010). Women Left Behind? Migration, Spousal Separation, and the Autonomy of Rural Women in Ugweno, Tanzania. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 35(4 Summer), 919–942. Bariagaber, A. (1997). Political Violence and the Uprooted in the Horn of Africa: A Study of Refugee Flows from Ethiopia. Journal of Black Studies, 28(1), 26–42. Candido, Z. Y., K. D. Mekonen, & M. B. Asfaw (2016). The “Migrant Hero”: Culture of Migration and Its Implication on Mate Selection among Hadiya Society, Southern Ethiopia. Global Journal of Human Social Science: Sociology & Culture, 16(4), 54–62. Constable, N. (2003). Romance on a Global Stage: Pen Pals, Virtual Ethnography, and “Mail Order” Marriages. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press. Cortes, G. (2016). Women and Migrations: Those Who Stay. IEcchoGeo.37/2016. Retrieved from https://journals​.openedition​.org​/echogeo​/14892. De Haas, H., & T. Fokkema (2011). ‘Pre- and Post-migration Determinants of Socio-cultural Integration of African Immigrants in Italy and Spain’. International Migration, 53(6). De Regt, M. (2010). Ways to Come, Ways to Leave: Gender, Mobility, and Il/Legality among Ethiopian Domestic Workers in Yemen. Gender and Society, 24(2), 237–260. Dessiye, M. (2011). The Challenges and Prospects of Female Labor Migration to the Arab MiddleEast: A Case Study of Women Returnees in the Town of Girana, North Wollo, Ethiopia. MA Thesis, University of Bergen. Dodson, B. (2008). Gender, Migration and Livelihoods: Migrant Women in Southern Africa. In: New Perspective on Gender and Migration, edited by N. Piper, 137–158. New York and London: Routledge. Donato, K. M., & D. Gabaccia (2015). Gender and International Migration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Eresso, M. Z. (2018). Social inequality and social mobility: The construed diversity of Ethiopian female labor migrants in Djibouti. African Human Mobility Review, 5(3), 1749–1773. Feyissa, D. (2022). Beyond Economics the Role of Socio-political Factors in Hadiya Migration to South Africa. Zanj: The Journal of Critical Global South Studies. Special Issue on South-South Migration, 6(1) (forthcoming). Fernandez, B. (2011). Household Help? Ethiopian Women Domestic Workers’ Labor Migration to the Gulf Countries. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 20(3–4), 433–457. Frouws, B., & C. Horwood (2017). Smuggled South an Updated Overview of Mixed Migration from the Horn of Africa to Southern Africa with Specific Focus on Protections Risks, Human Smuggling and Trafficking. Nairobi: RMMS. Getachew, M. (1991). The Ethiopian Revolution of 1974 and the Exodus of Ethiopia’s Trained Human Resources. New York: Edwin Mellen Press. Hahn, H., & G. Klute (2007). Cultures of Migration: Introduction. In: Cultures of Migration African Perspectives, edited by G. Klute, & H. Hahn, 1–10. Munster: Lit verlag.

324

Engendering Migration in Africa Hampshire, K. (2006). Flexibility in Domestic Organization and Seasonal Migration Among the Fulani of Northern Burkina Faso. Africa, 76(3), 402–426. Hochschild, A. R. (2002). Love and Gold. In: Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy, edited by B. Ehrenreich, & A. H. Russell, 15–30. New York: Metropolitan Books. Horwood, C. (2009). In Pursuit of the Southern Dream: Victims of Necessity. Assessment of the Irregular Movement of Men from East Africa and the Horn to South Africa. Geneva: International Organization for Migration. Retrieved from http://publications​.iom​.int​/system​/files​/pdf/ iom​rese​arch​asse​ ssmen​t​.pdf (last accessed 14/11/16). IOM. (2018). World Migration Report. Geneva. Kalpana, H., & J. Zaheera (2018). Gender and Mobility in Africa Borders, Bodies and Boundaries. Palgrave Macmillan. Kanko, T. D., & C. H. Teller (2013). Irregular Migration: Causes and Consequences of Young Adult Migration from Southern Ethiopia to South Africa. Paper presented at the XXVII IUSSP International Population Conference 26–31 August, 2013. Busan, South Korea. Kefale, A., & Z. Mohammed (2015). Ethiopian Labor Migration to the Gulf and South Africa. Addis Ababa: Forum of Social Studies FSS. Kristen, K. (2013). Nigerian Border Crossers: Women Travelling to Europe by Land. In: Long Journey African Migrants on Road, edited by A. Triulzi, & L. McKenzie, 25–44. Lieden: Bill. King, R., & J. Vulnnetari (2012). A Population on the Move: Migration and Gender Relations in Albania. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 5(2), 207–220. Lloyd, K. (2000). Wives for Sale: The Modern International Mail-Order Bride Industry. Northwestern Journal of International Law and Business, 20, 341–367. Meron, Z. (2019). Sisters on the Move: Ethiopia’s Gendered Labor Migration Milieu. Canadian Journal of African Studies, 53(3), 1–20. Meron, Z. (2017). Too Many Winds to Consider; Which Way and When to Sail: Ethiopian Female Transit Migrants in Djibouti and the Dynamics of Their Decision-Making. In: African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/17528631​.2017​.1412928. Nyamnjoh, F. (2007). From Bounded to Flexible Citizenship: Lessons from Africa. Citizenship Studies, 11(1), 73–82. Nguyen, L., B. S. A. Yeoh, & M. Toyota (2006). Migration and the Well-Being of the ‘Left Behind’ in Asia. Asian Population Studies, 2(1), 37–44. Sahan Foundation & IGAD Security Sector Program (ISSP). (2016). Human Trafficking and Smuggling on the Horn of Africa-Central Mediterranean Route. Nairobi: Sahan. Triulzi, A., & L. McKenzie (2013). Introduction - Listening to Migrant Voices. In: Long Journeys: African Migrants on the Road, edited by A. Triulzi and L. McKenzie, 1–8. Leiden: Brill. Toyota, M., B. S. A. Yeoh, & L. Nguyen (2007). Bringing ‘the Left Behind’ Back into View in Asia: A Framework for Understanding the ‘Migration-Left behind Nexuses. Population, Space and Place, 13(3), 157–161. Taylor, E. (1984). Egyptian Migration and Peasant Wives. MERIP Reports, 124, 3–10. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (UN DESA) (2016). International Migration Report 2015: Highlights (ST/ESA/SER.A/375). Wehmhoerner, A. (2015). Lampedusa Is Everywhere: Migrants in South Africa. FEPS Correspondent for Southern Africa Cape Town. Yeoh, B. S. A., S. Huang, & J. Gonzalez (1999). Migrant Female Domestic Workers: Debating the Economic, Social and Political Impacts in Singapore. International Migration Review, 33(1), 114–136.

325

PART V

Future Trajectories of African Migration

20 AFRICA WITHOUT BORDERS Jesper Bjarnesen and Amanda Bisong

The business of a border is, in fact, to be crossed. That is what borders are for. There is no conceivable border outside of that principle, the law of permeability. Achille Mbembe 2018

Introduction In the history of Africa’s relationship with other regions of the world, territorial borders, and movement across them, have been key sites of struggle and contestation; exploitation and oppression; negotiation and exchange. Although shaped significantly by war, conquest, and state-making for centuries, Africa’s political topography (cf. Boone 1993) was violently altered through the gradual imposition of European rule, beginning with the brutal incursion of the North-Atlantic slave trade in the 15th century and eventually by the invasions and transgressions of trading companies, missionaries, and explorers in the 18th century. Africa’s geo-political borders, however, were most consequentially impacted by the socalled “scramble for Africa”, which led European powers to gradually carve out their colonies; a detached and arbitrary imposition of new categorical and political borders often symbolised by the infamous Berlin Conference in 1884–1885. One of the enduring legacies of European colonialism, in other words, was the imposition of arbitrary borders that not only delimited colonial administrative territories but exerted immeasurable violence on African societies by disregarding their existing logics and delimitations and dividing linguistic and social collectives (see e.g. Mudimbe 1988; Sanni 2020; Ashcroft 2019; Michalopoulos & Papaioannou 2016; Adebajo 2020). Through this history, borders in Africa have been a key symbol of colonisation, contestation, and division; a symbolism that continues to influence African politics and intellectual debate to a significant degree. During the past decade, Euro-African relations have once more revolved around borders, now in relation to irregular African migration towards Europe, and the ensuing efforts by European powers to impose increasingly invasive policing of African state borders, in order to prevent aspiring migrants from reaching the North African coast and, eventually, European shores (Akkerman 2018, Akinola & Bjarnesen 2022). African leaders and activDOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-25

329

Jesper Bjarnesen and Amanda Bisong

ists, in response, have reemphasised the centrality of free movement and exchange as core values of African unity and regionalisation (Mehari 2019). These calls reflect an insistence, expressed by Achille Mbembe above, on normalising and depoliticising border-crossing within the continent, as an avenue for thinking differently about migration governance. In light of this renewed struggle over the role and significance of African borders, it is easy to become fixated on European political discourse or international debates around migration governance. In this chapter, we offer a reflection on the notion of an Africa without borders as an alternative perspective on some of these current debates. We approach the subject from a background in migration research and regional interest in West Africa, with particular attention to policies and practices relating to the free movement of persons. This chapter, therefore, presents a review of some of the key arguments in support of a borderless continent and analyses some of the present realities that have come furthest in achieving such conditions, as well as the circumstances that may hamper or dim this ambition. We take the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) as a main point of reference, given its historical commitment to the principles and implementation of free movement within the subregion. Our closing reflection suggests that, more than any political or epistemological differences, the discrepancies between principles and practice in the management of African borders should be a key field of investigation and analysis.

The Philosophy and Politics of Borders The notion of a borderless continent demands a more consequential reflection on what borders really are than the one offered so far. An obvious step in that regard is to acknowledge that the very understanding of what borders are, and do, is shifting, contextual, and contested – in academic as well as in public and political debate. More specifically, we would emphasise four features of borders that may help us reflect on the way African borders have been shaped, imposed, and contested over time. First, and most fundamentally, borders are relational. They rely on mutual recognition at various scales, ranging from international law to highly localised conventions. As political philosopher Alex Sager reflects in his recent argument Against Borders, “[a] border rejected by a significant number of people is at best unstable; at worst, it is not a border at all” (Sager 2020: 9).1 This observation is not just important for appreciating relations between neighbouring states with regard to border control, but to understand how political and administrative questions about borders are linked to broader issues of the global political economy, which effectively create an unequal distribution of sovereignty, and differentiates the ability to decide on the use and nature of borders among states. Second, borders are processual. They are expressed and enforced through complex administrative and symbolic mechanisms that cannot be reduced to simple lines on a map, let alone material borders such as fences, walls, signposts, or checkpoints. The current efforts of the European Union to externalise its border enforcement deep into the North African region by subsidising the Libyan coast guard and a range of other control measures in strategic African states are pressing examples of how borders are imposed far beyond the official boundaries of sovereign states.2 This understanding has inspired recent research to adopt the notion of bordering (e.g., de Genova 2010), which also highlights another fundamental characteristic of borders: thirdly, that borders are political in several ways. Most obviously, borders are political because they are integral to the way states signal and delimit their sovereignty. As part of their relational nature, borders are also political in the 330

Africa without Borders

sense that they are encoded differently by different stakeholders. Free movement advocates generally emphasise that borders are about permeability – like doors, their purpose is to let people through, as Achille Mbembe evoked in this chapter’s epigraph. While advocates against free movement would certainly acknowledge that borders should not be hermetically sealed, their emphasis is clearly more towards seeing borders as walls rather than doors; their purpose, in this view, is to seal off rather than to facilitate movement through. These different views imply that the very nature of what borders are and what they (should) do is highly contested, and not just among academics debating conceptual refinement. This contestation may be understood as relating to different bundles of rights. On the one hand, as stated by the Office of the High Commission for Human Rights,3 “Liberty of movement is an indispensable condition for the free development of a person” (Office of the High Commission for Human Rights 1999). In this line of reasoning, “Elaborating a right to mobility is not about adding one more right to a long list of rights; rather, it is about fostering respect for existing human rights” (Pécoud & de Guchteneire 2006: 76). On the other hand, free movement may be seen as infringing upon the sovereignty of independent nation-states. Fourth, borders are inconsistent. Much as state sovereignty itself is more fragmented than one might assume (see e.g., Blom Hansen & Stepputat 2005), borders are enforced much more incoherently in practice than stated policies and principles may suggest. While some states, and some borders, may be more efficiently policed than others, most borders are crossed in ways that go against the principles and policies of entry. This is true not just of undocumented border crossings, which receive a lot of attention in the Global North, but also of the incoherent application of screening procedures based on human error, unclear instructions, understaffing, or racial profiling.

From Borderlessness to Free Movement The remainder of this section briefly qualifies our conceptual delimitation by discussing the relationship between the notions of a borderless continent and free movement. One way to understand this relationship is that free movement is the most pragmatic expression of the overarching ideological, or perhaps utopian, vision of a borderless continent since free movement diminishes the significance of borders by making them highly permeable to human mobility. And as the American and Nigerian federal models and the European Union’s founding principle of free movement illustrate, free movement does not presuppose the absence of borders, nor does it presuppose the absence of state control or governance (Collyer 2020). In the African context, the notions of borderlessness and free movement are often intimately linked (Dick & Schraven 2019). First and foremost, proponents of free movement often invoke that Africa’s inherited borders are arbitrary, costly, and set up in a manner that disregards social, cultural, and linguistic continuities (Michalopoulos & Papaioannou 2016). However, most scholars are prompt to point out that achieving a borderless Africa would not be possible without regulations by African states that facilitate the movement of a population and keep out undesirable categories of migrants (Mehari 2019).4 In this view, state sovereignty in managing its borders remains uncontested, and free movement is seen as bestowed upon select groups of migrants, much as the restrictive visa regimes in Europe and other parts of the Global North. A more far-reaching notion of free movement evokes the idea that restrictions on movement represent a curbing of a fundamental human right. This view was emphatically articulated by Hannah Arendt: 331

Jesper Bjarnesen and Amanda Bisong

Of all the specific liberties which may come into our minds when we hear the word “freedom,” freedom of movement is historically the oldest and also the most elementary. Being able to depart for where we will is the prototypical gesture of being free, as limitation of freedom of movement has from time immemorial been the precondition for enslavement. Freedom of movement is also the indispensable precondition for action, and it is in action that men primarily experience freedom in the world. (Arendt 1959: 9, in De Genova 2010: 33) Much as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in which Article 13 recognises free movement within, away from, and back to one’s state of residence as a fundamental right, Arendt evoked free movement as a universal freedom. From an African perspective, these universalistic promises may ring false in many ears. For example, the freedom to leave one’s state of residence is more often than not curtailed by the denial of entry into destination states, and the unequal access to work and education imposes strict hierarchies between those who can afford mobility and those who cannot (Bauman 1998; Ferguson 2005). The impossibility of genuine universality in the access to these fundamental rights may be seen as one underlying reason why proponents of free movement emphasise the rejection of colonial borders in Africa and advocate a new world order in which free movement is attainable to all. Most arguments around free movement and borderlessness can be read as expressions of either pro-mobility or anti-mobility narratives. Some pro-mobility narratives are rooted in a political reading of mobility practices on the African continent prior to its encounter with colonialism (Achieng & Fadil 2020; Adu Boahen 1987; Asiwaju 2003). They evoke the flexibility of societal structures, as well as precolonial migration patterns, which allowed populations to use mobility as a means to adjust in size and composition in response to shifting circumstances, in contrast to the rigidity of colonial and postcolonial borders (cf. Kopytoff 1987). For example, Achille Mbembe has taken an increasingly vocal stance against African borders, arguing that If we want to conclude the work of decolonisation, we have to bring down colonial boundaries in our continent and turn Africa into a vast space of circulation for itself, for its descendants and for everyone who wants to tie his or her fate with our continent. (Mbembe 2018)5 Other advocates of free movement adopt a more utilitarian approach towards achieving free movement on the continent, which is linked to the need for economic development and growth (Akiwumi & Chiumya 2020; Adepoju, Fumagalli & Nyabola 2020; Aduloju & Opanike 2015). The newly ratified African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) may be seen as following such a logic, which also resonates with the EU’s principles of free movement, which are currently being challenged and undermined in the political aftermath of the so-called European refugee crisis in 2015–2016. Anti-mobility sentiments, on the other hand, are linked to concerns about the integrity of national sovereignty and the need for African states to control their borders and resources, especially the distribution of land and other scarce resources. As already mentioned, the current pressure from Europe to restrict further irregular migration from Africa may be seen as another anti-mobility current: one that has proven ruthlessly efficient on the back of promises of increased development assistance and pathways for regular migration (Castillejo 2019). 332

Africa without Borders

For most African states and policymakers, however, there is no clear line between adopting a pro-mobility or an anti-mobility stance. The detailed working of the state in its interactions with its citizens, and with its neighbours and third countries, warrant that state institutions adopt a blend of reasons which suits its purpose in promoting or restricting certain types of mobility. Into this picture falls the regional economic communities, under which African states have agreed to liberalise mobility.

A Brief History of African Borders Following the conceptual and contextual reflections in the previous section, and building on historical works on African politics and mobilities, this section considers the overall tendencies in the articulation and transformation of African borders over time. As already implied, Africa’s precolonial history claims a central place in pro-mobility arguments around free movement within the continent. In the centuries preceding the colonial invasions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the governance of social and political space was articulated in ways too differentiated to consider here, but often in a combination of localised and external influences. As Howard summarises, [h]istorians would probably agree that among the great space-shaping forces of that period were the spread of Islam; the external and internal slave trades; the growth of “legitimate” trade; and war, raiding, and state building by Africans, Europeans, Arabs, and Afro-Arabs. (Howard 2010: 15) He goes on to emphasise that while most people relied on connections to their immediate kin and other close social ties, the continent was interconnected through expansive networks of trade, conquest, and religious proselyting, which shaped different regional zones of exchange over time (see also Mbembe 2004, Kopytoff 1987). Exchange in this sense was, to a large extent, centred around what Jane Guyer has called “wealth in people” (Guyer 1995: 84), as opposed to a competition over access to land or capital. European merchants imposed themselves on this competition from the 16th century onwards, arguably making the initial assault one of depriving African societies of their human resources. To a certain extent, this exploitation continued into the colonial era: Frequently there was haggling between colonial powers, which turned on a desire to monopolize particular sets of Africans as much as it involved competition for ownership of territorial space. In that sense, the colonial state did not behave too differently from its pre-colonial forebears, for whom people were normally considered a more strategic resource than mere land. (Nugent & Asiwaju 1996: 2) At the same time, with the European desire to exploit Africa’s natural resources came a new mode of aggression, essentially centred around the desire to not only export African labour off the continent but to govern. According to Mbembe, “History tells us that the first thing you do to incapacitate people is to restrict their ability to move. Mobility allowed the stretching of societies; was determinant to trade and to building African civilizations” (AfDB 2017). The colonial quest to control, in other words, implied an enforced territorialisation, or root333

Jesper Bjarnesen and Amanda Bisong

ing, of societies for which mobility had been an essential resource. This tension between mobility and containment was, for example, evident in the French colonial administration’s obsession with combatting the so-called “population flottante”, or “floating population”, which signified African colonial subjects who resisted colonial governance by literally moving beyond its reach (Geschiere 2009: 104, see also Asiwaju 1978; Mbembe 2018). It is on this backdrop that the imposition of colonial borders must be understood. As Mbembe has argued emphatically, The scramble for Africa in the 19th century, and the carving of its boundaries along colonial lines, turned the continent into a massive carceral space and each one of us into a potential illegal migrant, unable to move except under increasingly punitive conditions. As a matter of fact, entrapment became the precondition for the exploitation of our labour, which is why the struggles for emancipation and racial upliftment were so intertwined with the struggles for the right to move freely. (Mbembe 2018) The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 is often presented as a symbol for the European “scramble for Africa”, but it was this gradual imposition of a system of governance premised on the territorialisation of African populations that constituted the most consequential shift towards the bordering of the continent (Katzenellenbogen 1996). As Nugent and Asiwaju summarise, The lines which were drawn (and sometimes redrawn) from the end of the nineteenth century to the twentieth were intended to demarcate competing spheres of colonial authority … The objective was to classify populations in order to govern them. The frontier mattered because it defined which peoples belonged to which colonial state. (Nugent and Asiwaju 1996: 2) Remembering our initial conceptualisation of borders, this act of classification, reinforced through territorialisation, was undeniably political, and highly contested. It was processual in the sense that its imposition required continuous and concerted acts of enforcement, and it acquired its efficiency by gradually coercing African populations into a relational bond of mutual recognition. Significantly, despite the impression left by the image of the European powers dividing the continent among themselves in Berlin, colonial borders were highly inconsistent; “Colonial space … was established unevenly over the land; the imprint varied greatly from colony to colony and within colonies” (Howard 2010: 22). By the mid-20th century, in this sense, newly independent African states faced a crisis with regard to the mobility of persons. On the one hand, they recognised that national boundaries were artificially drawn and that these arbitrary borders, inherited from colonial administrations, hindered economic interdependence and social relations between communities and tribes (McGranahan et al. 2009). Thus, there was a resistance to these borders through regional integration and a call by African intellectual and political elites to redraw the borders of African states (Asiwaju 1985; 2003; Mbembe 1999; 2000; Nyamnjoh 2007). On the other hand, contestations over limited domestic resources and national interests led to states adopting politics of exclusion, thereby alienating minority populations and migrants. Borders, though artificially drawn, now became the basis for articulating and consolidating the identity and belonging of people and communities within new national spaces. 334

Africa without Borders

This crisis has been referred to by Doornbos (1990) as the “problem of the African state” or by Ekeh in his seminal work – “Colonialism and the Two Publics in Africa” – as the contestation between the colonial and the emerging postcolonial state. According to Ekeh, the primordial public and the civic public are in contestation within the individual and society. In Ekeh’s thinking, there was no doubt about the values represented by either entity. He saw the primordial public as moral and associated with “a public entity which one works to preserve and benefit” (1975: 91) and the civic public as amoral and associated with the colonial administration. Briefly put, this contestation between two publics, or two ideological orientations in social organisation, created an irreconcilable dilemma in postcolonial statebuilding, which lead African leaders down a path of reproducing and accentuating exploitative colonial policies. Ekeh argued, African bourgeois ideologies were formed to achieve two interrelated goals. First, they were intended to serve as weapons to be used by the African bourgeois class for replacing the colonial rulers; second, they were intended to serve as mechanisms for legitimating their hold on their own people. (Ekeh 1975: 100) This moral dilemma at the heart of African statecraft influenced postcolonial policies on human mobility (see also Blom Hansen & Stepputat 2005). Under colonialism, people’s willingness to cross borders to evade taxes and escape forced conscriptions could be welcomed by African elites as aligned with the anti-colonial cause; what Asiwaju (1976) has described as the use of “migration as revolt”. After independence, however, itinerant or seasonal migrants crossing borders had implications for the limited economic infrastructure of states, now left in the hands of these very same elites. Many states created laws to restrict cross-border mobilities out of concern for national security and economic interest (Onwuka 1982), as well as growing concerns relating to identity, belonging, and the allocation of domestic resources. This latter concern reflected an emerging split between pan-Africanist and nationalist priorities, which in turn may be understood as a symptom of a more fundamental legacy of colonialism inherent in African state-building, namely the very idea of what a state is supposed to be. As Nugent and Asiwaju summarise, At the time of independence, Africans inherited a great deal of colonial baggage. Most obviously, they took over the boundaries whose legitimacy was upheld by a famous resolution of the Organization of African Unity in 1963 … Most important of all, African rulers inherited ideas about national space and the importance of properly regulating it. (Nugent & Asiwaju 1996: 6) This legacy arguably fuelled state animosity towards mobile individuals and groups, much as the colonial administrations had battled the “population flottante” (cf. Geschiere op. cit.), which in turn inspired a hardening of identity politics and the exclusion of minority populations and migrants. In 1983, for example, more than 2 million non-citizens, or “aliens”, were expelled from Nigeria (Gravil 1985). In many cases, this politicisation of autochthony (Geschiere 2009) resulted in state-induced violence between settler and migrant communities (Mamdani 2020). Such rifts continue to plague several African states, as seen in xenophobic attacks on perceived foreigners in South Africa (Hiropoulos 2020; Freemantle & Landau 2020) and across the continent (Akinola 2018), and in the persistence or re-emergence of 335

Jesper Bjarnesen and Amanda Bisong

ethnicised politics in Côte d’Ivoire (Bjarnesen & van Baalen 2020), Guinea, Zambia, or Mozambique. Beyond identity politics, national borders also carried economic limitations. Shortly after independence, African countries in the quest for accelerated economic growth and development looked beyond their national borders in their aspirations to build a stronger postcolonial continent, which would alter the political and economic structural imbalances. The political motivation for regional integration drew on the works of liberationists like Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah. In Africa Must Unite (1964), Nkrumah argued that African states would need to form a “super state” in order to properly compete with western countries and better harness the potential of the continent. One of the key elements to achieving this restructuring was the free movement of persons, which is aimed at promoting economic integration and interdependence of states. In West Africa, regional integration was strongly promoted by Kwame Nkrumah, who laid the foundation for integration with the initial association between Ghana, Mali, and Guinea (Oloruntoba 2016). After intense negotiations, other African states settled for a less dominant economic and politically independent Organisation of African Unity in July 1959 (ibid.). This integration was premised on economic integration and a vision for political integration enabled by the freedom of Africans to move themselves, goods, and services across national borders.6 Paradoxically, Nkrumah saw the formation of sub-regional organisations as a potential distraction and obstacle to the urgent task of realising a federal union of African states. These conflicting views on the shape and content of regional integration in Africa led to the emergence of several organisations on regional integration in West Africa (Gowon 1984). Nkrumah advised that only collective action through pan-African institutions would imbue African politicians with the necessary clout to resist foreign policy impositions and to diversify their economies away from colonial patterns of raw material production (Langan 2018). Consequently, emerging regionalism in the African context incorporated social, political, security, and environmental concerns in a process driven from below with the cooperation of non-state actors such as civil society and the private sector (Oloruntoba 2016). Despite the institutionalisation of regional economic communities and the consolidation of the principle of African continental unity through the evolution of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) into the African Union at the dawn of the new millennium (Malisa & Missedja 2020), there may have been some truth to Nkrumah’s concerns regarding the challenges to African continental integration. As Ali Mazui (1995) observed with considerable foresight, pan-Africanist mobilisation was possible under the banner of anti-colonial liberation but has proven much more difficult under the banner of economic integration in the postcolonial period (see also Adebajo 2020: 35).7 During the past decade, African states seem to be reliving Ekeh’s notion of contestation between a primordial and a civic public, reinforced by a global political economy increasingly geared towards the fortification of regional and national borders in the global North, from the European Union to Australia, and from the United Kingdom to the rise of Trumpism in the United States. At the continental level, these tensions can be seen in African policymaking through the current confrontation between the drive towards continental free trade and the opposing effects of the externalisation of European border control (D’Humières 2018). The African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement (AfCFTA), which was signed by 44 out of 55 AU member states in Kigali in 2018, represents the latest expression of the drive towards increased economic integration. Its emphasis on the free movement of labour, how336

Africa without Borders

ever, is nothing new. The Organisation of African Unity Council of Ministers already called for the definition of an African framework for migration policy in 2001, envisaging increased free movement of people and strengthened intra- and interregional cooperation in migration matters (AUC 2004). Alongside the AfCFTA, furthermore, the African Union adopted the Protocol to the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community Relating to Free Movement of Persons, Right to Residence and Right to Establishment in 2018, once more reconfirming the commitment, in principle, to the idea of continent-wide free movement. At the same time, however, the international political agenda has been dominated by an entirely different approach to migration and mobility governance, with the European Union redirecting its investments in Africa towards the prevention of irregular migration towards Europe. These interventions effectively work to externalise European border control far beyond EU territory, particularly in North Africa and the Sahel region. These externalisation policies have had severe impacts on intra-African regional migration dynamics (Tardis 2019), as African states are rewarded by the EU for reinforcing their national borders, actively undermining regional principles of free movement (Castillejo et al. 2019). More fundamentally, foreign powers have indulged in what Lee (2007) among others refer to as a “21st century scramble for Africa”, a re-intensified competition over access to the continent’s natural resources. While Lee emphasised the competition between the USA and China, more recent developments have seen the rising influence of Russia and Saudi Arabia, and also a broadening of the “scramble” to include claims to the political allegiance of African leaders and the strategic alignment (and distancing) of African and foreign states in the fight against jihadist terrorism in the Sahel. Such underlying geopolitical dynamics go some way in explaining foreign interests in African migration policies, and the disproportionate influence of foreign powers on national and regional politics across the continent. On the basis of this historical reading of the roles and effects of borders across the African continent, the following two sections explore how more recent experiments with the principles of free movement have played out in the West African context. The next section considers the translation of the overarching principles around free movement into regional policies, and the subsequent section reflects on how these regional policies have been implemented in practice. The overall intention of this West African example is to offer real lessons regarding free movement as a source of further elaboration on the notion of a borderless continent.

From Principle to Policy: Lessons from ECOWAS In May 1975, the joint efforts of Nigeria and Togo led to the formation of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The establishing treaty of ECOWAS included considerations for harmonising economic growth and development, peace and security, and the overall well-being of citizens in the region (Article 3 ECOWAS Treaty of 1975). The initial 16 member states of ECOWAS had various reasons for supporting the project (Zanker et al. 2020). Free movement of persons was to be achieved through a phased integration process: Phase 1 conferring the right of entry, Phase 2 the right of residence, and Phase 3 the right to establish a business or take up employment in another member state in the region. Through the establishment of the ECOWAS and its institutions, free movement of persons became one of the founding pillars of regional integration in West Africa. According to the then Nigerian Federal Commissioner for Economic Development and Reconstruction in 1975, “the major purpose of the formation of the Community was to remove centuries of division and artificial barriers imposed on West Africa from outside, and to recreate together 337

Jesper Bjarnesen and Amanda Bisong

the kind of homogeneous society which existed before the colonialists invaded our shores” (Onwuka 1980: 54). On a more pragmatic note, ECOWAS leaders believed that a West African economic community was needed as a bargaining tool in negotiations with the industrialised world (Brown 1989). After its creation, the Regional Economic Community (REC) proceeded to adopt several regulations to promote economic and industrial integration.8 Four years later, the first set of protocols on free movement of persons was adopted by the member states. These protocols along with their timeline for implementation had several objectives. The first was to contribute to the economic independence from the former colonial powers by establishing more conducive economic relations between states in the region. Secondly, the protocols were intended to remove limitations imposed by colonial borders, which had split precolonial states and communities along incoherent national boundaries. Thirdly, these regulations were to promote a sense of regionalism and limit the expulsion of ECOWAS citizens from other states, which had intensified as a result of the economic hardships faced by some member states.9 The ECOWAS Protocol on Free Movement of Persons, Right of Residence and Establishment was agreed upon in 1979 (Protocol A/P.1/5/79), with a number of supplementary protocols and regulations geared towards facilitating the flow of goods, services, and labour within the region adopted subsequently. The protocols provide overarching frameworks for institutionalising a single regional socio-economic space that allows community citizens to benefit from the opportunities available in member states (Adeniran 2012). All ECOWAS countries are destinations for migrants from other countries. Although all countries in the sub-region send and receive migrants, the wealthier economies along the coast including Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and Nigeria are the dominant migrant-receiving areas while countries in the Sahel zone such as Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso serve as migrant-sending regions (Adepoju 2018). Movement to and within preferred destinations are shaped by factors such as common official language, proximity, ethnic ties, and colonial legacy (Awumbila, Teye & Nikoi 2018). One of the underlying principles of free movement of persons in West Africa acknowledges that the borders in the region are arbitrary (Asiwaju 1985) and thus aims to reinstate precolonial mobility patterns in the region with a view to promoting the economic independence of the region and interdependence between the states. Some of these benefits included access to human resources across the region as well as promoting trade and development between ECOWAS member states (Gowon 1984, Flynn 1997). More so, the free movement of persons within the region was both a repudiation of colonial frontiers, in so far as they impeded the economic development of the new states, and an affirmation of the spirit of cooperation and mutual assistance (Opanike, Aduloju & Adenipekun 2015). Freedom of movement has been acknowledged as the ECOWAS community’s “greatest gift” (Asante 1986: 153) as it is widely accessible to all members, including ordinary citizens. However, this principle of freedom of movement has not been successfully realised due to a combination of internal and external influences on regional migration and mobility. In the next section, we reflect on the central factors shaping the implementation of the ECOWAS protocols in practice.

From Policy to Practice: The Impasse of National Sovereignty and Regionalisation In the ECOWAS principles of free movement, ideas of precolonial mobility patterns combine with notions of colonial territoriality and postcolonial sovereignty in complex ways. While 338

Africa without Borders

outlining an agenda for regional free movement, its application in member states is still subject to national legislations and interpretation, which has led to uneven and contradictory implementation, and affected the overall success of the protocols (Zanker et al 2020; Dick et al. 2018).10 For example, regional mobility has been strongly opposed by nationalists in some ECOWAS countries. These critical voices argue that sovereign states have the right to determine and regulate the entry and exit of foreigners, including ECOWAS citizens, in their territory, out of concern for national security and economic interests. Studies have equally drawn attention to the difficulties ECOWAS citizens face when crossing borders, indicating a disjuncture between the objectives of the protocols and experiences on the ground (Adepoju 2002; Okunade & Ogunnubi 2021; Yeboah et al. 2020). This disjuncture between policy and practice is not primarily a result of bad, overly ambitious, or simplistic policy, but rather a matter of implementation. The ECOWAS free movement protocols are quite nuanced and in tune with local realities. For example, they recognise different migration patterns of circularity, pastoralism, itinerant, and seasonal migration which are prevalent in the region and rooted in traditional migration patterns. In recognition of the arbitrariness of colonial borders, the protocols also make provisions for cross-border communities. In 2008, the member states adopted the ECOWAS Common Approach on Migration in order to address the challenges in the implementation of the free movement protocols. The Common Approach contained themes based on the realities of free movement in the region. The non-binding document draws the link between migration and development, and the potential benefits for member states. It is based on six principles: free movement of persons within the ECOWAS zone; promoting legal (regular) migration as an integral part of the development process; combating human trafficking; policy harmonisation; protection of the rights of migrants, asylum seekers, and refugees; and the recognition of the gender dimension of migration. In addition, the commission also passed the regulation adopting the common ECOWAS passport, which is being implemented by 14 out of 15 ECOWAS states.11 Examining the level of progress by ECOWAS states in the implementation of the free movement protocols reveals mixed results. In the implementation of Phase 1, all member states have granted visa-free access for 90 days to community citizens, although this openness has been fraught with challenges especially with reports of harassment at border crossings (Ibeanu 2007; Yeboah et al. 2020) in local communities and in major cities. Access to and recognition of travel documents is not implemented harmoniously by all member states. Dick and Schraven (2019) observe that Phase 3 of the ECOWAS protocols is yet to be implemented due to the lack of coherence between the member state national laws and the ECOWAS protocols. Awimbila et al. (2018) note that while all member states have ratified the 1979 protocol, the supplementary protocols have only been ratified by four out of the 15 member states, leaving room for varied interpretations of the protocols by national authorities. Monitoring mechanisms of the implementation of the protocol and the status of free movement of persons in the region also remain to be implemented by all member states. As of 2018, only 55% of the member states had established a national committee for monitoring the free movement of persons and goods (Adepoju et al. 2010; Butu 2013; Teye et al. 2015; Sule 2018). Despite these and other setbacks, ECOWAS member states do acknowledge that the free movement of persons in the region has yielded large economic benefits in terms of boosting intra-regional trade and supporting the livelihood of community citizens (Awumbila, Teye & Nikoi, 2018). Overall, it is important to acknowledge that the ECOWAS free movement protocol is caught in the tussles of postcolonial African states, as described by Ekeh (1975), Doornbos 339

Jesper Bjarnesen and Amanda Bisong

(1990), and others, which inhibits the proper implementation of its agreements. The contestation between domestic and regional interests has led to the simultaneous existence of national policies that are contrary to the free movement protocols. State representatives generally avoid addressing these contradictory national regulations. This silence, and the existence of such contradictory national regulations, is interpreted by some groups as an implicit approval to promote the expulsion of migrants or as a basis to instigate xenophobic attacks against migrant populations. For example, although the regulations make provisions for migrant workers, incompatibilities with national migration policies and discrimination against citizens from different member states in national legal and labour codes are prevalent in the community (Adaween 2017). National laws in Ghana and Togo, for instance, prevent nationals of other member states from joining their security agencies. In March 1999, the Ghanaian government issued directives for all foreign nationals in Ghana (including ECOWAS nationals and particularly Nigerians) to register and acquire identity cards and to comply with the laws governing the operation of foreign businesses and economic activities in Ghana. Apart from official fees, which are sometimes lower for ECOWAS members compared with other nationals, business set-up, visa extension, work permit processing requirements, and timelines are generally the same without any special considerations for ECOWAS nationals in member countries. More broadly, the implementation of the free movement protocol faces numerous challenges ranging from the lack of political will and commitment of heads of states; civil conflicts, and political instability in some ECOWAS countries to inter-state border disputes and war. There are also a range of more technical impediments, ranging from incompatibilities in immigration and customs policies and monetary zones; contradictions between national laws on employment and the ECOWAS free movement protocol; to low levels of knowledge about the ECOWAS protocols among migrants and immigration officials, and the multiplicity of economic groupings and different languages (Adepoju 2002; 2015; Adeniran 2012; Clark 2013; Awumbila, Teye, and, Nikoi 2018; Opanike et al. 2016). While many of these contradictions and impediments may seem specific to the context of the ECOWAS states, they serve as an apt illustration of the fundamental challenges facing the principle of free movement more generally, for example, in the current efforts to ratify the Free Movement Protocol within the African Continental Free Trade Area framework. In addition to the contradictory legal frameworks at national and regional levels, the shifting lines of political alliances and conflicts and the complex technical requirements enable policy streamlining, “[t]he interplay between official intentions and popular perceptions – between policy and the flow of everyday life – is part of what imparts a paradoxical quality to all boundaries” (Nugent & Asiwaju 1996: 1).

Conclusion It is not surprising that border control becomes so symbolically important to political ideas about nationalism or patriotism; it is, after all, one of the rare occasions where state sovereignty can be discussed and presented to voters in a seemingly unambiguous manner. But as research on statehood and sovereignty reminds us, the reality of what keeps a state together is much more messy: sovereignty of the state is an aspiration that seeks to create itself in the face of internally fragmented, unevenly distributed and unpredictable configurations of political authority that exercise more or less legitimate violence in a territory. (Blom Hansen & Stepputat 2005: 3)

340

Africa without Borders

In the face of such internal fragmentation, which occurs to different degrees in all states and not just the ones conveniently labelled “failed” or “weak”, claims that immigration or other forms of mobility place the cohesion of the state under attack gain salience, in part because they serve to remind voters about the boundary-making that sets them apart from other states, thereby reinforcing the idea of internal coherence. Such political visions of national belonging tend to challenge regional agendas for free movement, such as the one enshrined in the ECOWAS protocols (Landau & Bakewell 2018). As an additional line of policy tension, since the time of Kwame Nkrumah, regionalisation and content-wide agendas and visions have tended to pull in separate directions, while addressing seemingly common goals of economic integration and inter-state cooperation and solidarity. Furthermore, borders are inherently inconsistent in their reach and effect, leaving further fissures between idealised notions of sovereignty and statehood, on the one hand, and the subversive and contradictory enactment of these notions in everyday practice, on the other hand. As Nugent and Asiwaju have poetically put it, “At the border, […] Weber tends to make way for the more ambiguous figure of Ananse” (Nugent & Asiwaju 1996: 8). It remains to be seen whether the current steps towards continent-wide integration through the African Free Trade Area and the African Union passport will reproduce the historical tensions between pan-Africanism and regionalisation, or whether African RECs and the visions of continent-wide free movement may reinforce and mutually strengthen one another. In these deliberations over the future of African borders, scholars as well as policy-makers would do well to acknowledge the pockets of free movement that already exist within the continent (Meagher 1997; Söderbaum & Taylor 2008), including the – partially and inconsistently implemented – ECOWAS protocols. In this sense, free movement is not something to be achieved; what is needed is rather for policymaking and implementation to catch up with the established practices of Africans on the move, and of the state officials that facilitate these mobilities and transgressions.

Notes 1 The relational nature of borders, of course, is not limited to the kinds of national state borders that are the primary topic of this chapter. Borders are fundamental in the drawing of categorical boundaries between us and them, as Fredrik Barth suggested in his influential work, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (1969). He argued further that the primary role of these boundaries is to provide a given collective with a sense of social cohesion, in other words that boundary-making is first and foremost an inward-looking exercise, projecting a sense of unity onto the collective by distinguishing it in relation to another (assumed) collective. 2 For a recent overview regarding European externalisation policies, see Forced Migration Review 68, November 2021, https://www​.fmreview​.org​/sites​/fmr​/files​/FMRdownloads​/en​/externalisation​ /magazine​.pdf. 3 The statement is included in the opening paragraph of the Office of the High Commission for Human Rights’ general comments to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Chapter 12 on the freedom of movement. 4 Desirable migrants usually consist of skilled workers, business professionals and other occupational categories of migrants identified by the state. The undesirables mainly consist of people deemed to be incapable of contributing to the economic development of the state. Most immigration laws in African countries have a list of people they consider to fall within this category. 5 As a scholar of Africa’s precolonial history, Mbembe does not advocate an outright return to precolonial societal structures but rather a recognition of Africa’s past as a source of wisdom and inspiration for venturing more radical visions of the continent’s future. 6 The Organisation of African Unity was based on the Sanniquellie Agreement of July 1959 between Guinea-Ghana and Liberia promoted by William Tubman, the president of Liberia. This agreement

341

Jesper Bjarnesen and Amanda Bisong emphasized cultural and economic cooperation between African states as a first step towards further integration (Gowon 1984:70, see also Malisa & Missedja 2020). 7 We are grateful to the editors for reminding us of Mazrui’s concise reflections on pan-Africanism. 8 Some of these protocols included the 1981 elimination of trade restrictions on unprocessed goods and traditional handicrafts; protocol on Non-aggression in 1978; protocol for mutual assistance in matters of defence in 1981- a total of 8 protocols were adopted between 1975 – 1983 although these were not ratified or incorporated in national legislation (Brown 1989:261). 9 Before the establishment of ECOWAS, several expulsions of other nationals occurred in the region, especially from Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Mali. 10 There are multitudes of studies on the ECOWAS free movement protocols, its operationalisation and implementation challenges (see Adepoju, Boulton, & Levin, 2010, Okunade, & Ogunnubi 2021, Adepoju 2015, Clark 2014, Awumbila et al. 2018). 11 In 2000, the Authority of Heads of State and Government adopted at its meeting in Abuja a uniform ECOWAS passport. A five-year transitional period was foreseen during which national passports would be used in conjunction with ECOWAS passports while ECOWAS passports were phased in and became more widely available (ECOWAS, 2000a cited in Adepoju et al, 2010:6).

References Achieng, M., & Fadil, A. (2020). ‘What is wrong with the narrative on African migration?’ In: Adepoju, A., Fumagalli, C., & Nyabola, N. (eds.) Africa migration report: Challenging the narrative. Addis Ababa: International Organisation for Migration (IOM), pp. 1–14. Adaween, S. (2017). ‘The EU’s response to the refugee crisis: More support for ECOWAS migration management needed’. International Development Blog 31. Adebajo, A. (2020). ‘Pan-Africanism: From the twin plagues of European locusts to Africa’s triple quest for emancipation’. In: Adebajo, A. (ed.) The Pan-African Pantheon: Prophets, poets, and philosophers. Johannesburg: Jacana, pp. 3–57. Adeniran, A. (2012). ‘Regional integration in the ECOWAS region: Challenges and opportunities’. Africa Portal Backgrounder 19: pp. 1–8. Adepoju, A. (2002). ‘Fostering free movement of persons in West Africa: Achievements, constraints, and prospects for intraregional migration’. International Migration 40(2): 3–28. Adepoju, A. (2015). ‘Operationalizing the ECOWAS protocol on free movement of persons: Prospects for sub-regional trade and development’. In: Panizzon, M., Zürcher, G., & Fornalé, E. (eds.) The Palgrave handbook of international labour migration. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 441–462. Adepoju, A. (2018). ‘Migration in the context of regional economic communities and regional integration in Africa’. In: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility of Ecuador (ed.) Challenges of human mobility, LÍNEASUR 14: Foreign Policy Journal, pp. 95–110. Adepoju, A., Boulton, A., & Levin, M. (2010). ‘Promoting integration through mobility: Free movement under ECOWAS’. Refugee Survey Quarterly 29(3): 120–144. Adepoju, A., Fumagalli, C., & Nyabola, N. (eds.) (2020). Africa migration report: Challenging the narrative. Addis Ababa: International Organisation for Migration (IOM). Adu Boahen, A. (1987). African perspectives on colonialism. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Aduloju, A.A., & Opanike, A. (2015). ‘ECOWAS protocol on free movement and trans-border security in West Africa’. Journal of Civil and Legal Sciences 4(3): 1–3. AfDB. (2017). ‘Mbembe makes a strong case for African integration through open borders’. African Development Bank. https://www​.afdb​.org​/en​/news​-and​-events​/mbembe​-makes​-a​-strong​-case​-for​ -african​-integration​-through​-open​-borders​-17398. Akinola, A.O. (ed.) (2018). The political economy of xenophobia in Africa. New York: Springer. Akinola, A.O., & Bjarnesen, J. (eds.) (2022). Worlds apart? Perspectives on Africa-EU migration. Johannesburg: Jacana Press. Akiwumi, P., & Chiumya, C. (2020). ‘Migration and trade in Africa’. In: Adepoju, A., Fumagalli, C., & Nyabola, N. (eds.) Africa migration report: Challenging the narrative. Addis Ababa: IOM. Akkerman, M. (2018). ‘Expanding the Fortress: The policies, the profiteers and the people shaped by EU’s border externalisation programme’. Stop Wapenhandel,: 1–112. Arendt, H. (1959). Men in dark times. New York: Harcourt.

342

Africa without Borders Asante, K.B. (1986). The political economy of regionalism in Africa: A decade of the economic community of West African states. New York: Praeger. Ashcroft, B. (2019). ‘Global Africa’. In: Ferdinand, S., Villaescusa-Illán, I., & Peeren, E. (eds.) Other globes: Past and peripheral imaginations of globalization. Camden & New York: Palgrave, pp. 149–164. Asiwaju, A. (1976). ‘Migrations as revolt: The example of the Ivory Coast and the Upper Volta before 1945’. The Journal of African History 17(4): 577–594. Asiwaju, A.I. (ed.). (1985). Partitioned Africans: Ethnic relations across Africa’s international boundaries, 1884–1984. London: C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, p. 1. Asiwaju, A. (2003). Boundaries and African integration: Essays in comparative history and policy analysis. Lagos: PANAF Publishing INC. AUC – African Union Commission. (2004). ‘Draft strategic framework for a policy on migration in Africa’, Paper presented at the Experts Group Meeting on Policy Framework on Migration in Africa, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: African Union Commission. Awumbila, M., Teye, J., & Nikoi, E. (2018). ‘Assessment of the implementation of the ECOWAS free movement protocol in Ghana and Sierra Leone’. MADE Network. Accessed December 5 2018. Barth, F. (1969). Ethnic groups and boundaries: The social organisation of culture difference. Long Grove: Waveland Press. Bauman, Z. (1998). Globalization: The human consequences. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bjarnesen, J., & van Baalen, S. (2020). ‘Ouattara’s third-term bid raises old fears: Risk of violence in Côte d’Ivoire’s upcoming presidential elections’. NAI Policy Note/5. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute, pp. 1–8. Blom Hansen, T., & Stepputat, F. (eds.) (2005). Sovereign bodies: Citizens, migrants, and states in the postcolonial world. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Boone, C. (1993). Political topographies of the African state: Territorial authority and institutional choice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, M.L. (1989). ‘Nigeria and the ECOWAS protocol on free movement and residence’. The Journal of Modern African Studies 27(2): 251–273. Butu, A.W. (2013). ‘Impact of ECOWAS protocols on political and economic integration of the West African sub-region’. International Journal of Physical and Human Geography 1(2): 47–58. Castillejo, C. (2019). ‘The influence of EU migration policy on regional free movement in the IGAD and ECOWAS regions’. Discussion Paper No. 11/2019. Bonn: Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik. Castillejo, C., Dick, E., & Schraven, B. (2019). Supporting or Thwarting? The Influence of European Union Migration Policies on African Free Movement Regimes in West and North-Eastern Africa. Bonn: German Development Institute. Clark, E.V. (2013). ‘The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS): The challenges to the implementation of the protocol on the free movement of goods, persons and establishment’. Pakistan Journal of Social Sciences 10(1): 41–48. Clark, E.V. (2014). ‘The economic community of West African States (ECOWAS): The challenges to the implementation of the protocol on free movement of goods, persons and establishment’. Developing Country Studies 4(6): 124–131. Collyer, M. (2020). ‘Border work: Frames, barriers, and disingenuous development’. In: Bastia, T., & Skeldon, R. (eds.) Routledge handbook of migration and development. London & New York: Routledge, pp. 63–73. De Genova, N. (2010). ‘The deportation regime: Sovereignty, space and the freedom of movement’. In: De Genova, N., & Peutz, N.M. (eds.) The Deportation Regime: Sovereignty, Space and the Freedom of Movement. Durham: Duke University Press. D’Humières, V. (2018). ‘European Union/African cooperation: The externalisation of Europe’s migration policies’. European Issue 472. Brussels: Robert Schuman Foundation. Dick, E., Koch, A., Schraven, B., & Etzold, B. (2018). ‘Regional migration governance: Contributions for a sustainable international migration architecture’. DIE Briefing Paper 1/2018. Bonn: German Development Institute/Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE). Dick, E., & Schraven, B. (2019). ‘Towards a borderless Africa? Regional organisations and free movement of persons in West and North-East Africa’. DIE Briefing Paper 1/2019. Bonn: German Development Institute/Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE).

343

Jesper Bjarnesen and Amanda Bisong Doornbos, M. (1990). ‘The African State in academic debate: Retrospect and prospect’. The Journal of Modern African Studies 28(2): 179–198. doi:10.1017/S0022278X00054410. Ekeh, P. (1975). ‘Colonialism and the two publics in Africa: A theoretical statement’. Comparative Studies in Society and History 17(1): 91–112. Ferguson, J. (2005). Global shadows: Africa in the neoliberal world order. Durham & London: Duke University Press. Flynn, D. (1997). ‘We are the border: Identity, exchange, and the state along the Bénin-Nigeria border’. American Ethnologist 24(2): 311–330. Freemantle, I., & Landau, L.B. (2020). ‘Migration and the African timespace trap: More Europe for the world, less world for Europe’. Geopolitics 27(3): 791–810. DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2020.1859479. Geschiere, P. (2009). The perils of belonging: Autochthony, citizenship, and exclusion in Africa and Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gowon, Y. (1984). The economic community of West African States: A study in political and economic integration. Doctoral dissertation. University of Warwick. Gravil, R. (1985). ‘The Nigerian aliens’ expulsion order of 1983’. African Affairs 84(337): 523–537. Guyer, J.I. (1995). ‘Wealth in people, wealth in things – Introduction. Journal of African History 36(1): 83–90. Hiropoulos, A. (2020). ‘South Africa, migration and xenophobia: Deconstructing the perceived migration crisis and its influence on the xenophobic reception of migrants’. Contemporary Justice Review 23(1): 104–121. Howard, A. (2010). ‘Actors, places, regions, and global forces: An essay on the spatial history of Africa since 1970’. In: Engel, U., & Nugent, P. (eds.) Respacing Africa. Leiden: Brill: Leiden, pp. 11–44. Ibeanu, O. (2007). ‘Beyond declarations: Law enforcement officials and ECOWAS protocols free movement of persons and goods in West Africa’. CLEEN Foundation. Katzenellenbogen, S. (1996). ‘It didn’t happen at Berlin: Politics, economics and ignorance in the setting of Africa’s colonial boundaries’. In: Nugent, P., & Asiwaju, A. I. (eds.) African boundaries: Barriers, conduits and opportunities. London: Pinter, pp. 21–34. Kopytoff, I. (1987). ‘The internal African frontier’. In: Kopytoff, I. (ed.) The African frontier: The reproduction of traditional African societies. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 3–85. Landau, L.B., & Bakewell, O. (2018). ‘Introduction: Forging a study of mobility, integration and belonging in Africa’. In: Bakewell, O., & Landau, L. B. (eds.) Forging African communities: Mobility, integration and belonging. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 1–24. Langan, M. (2018). ‘Ghana’s first president accurately predicted what Africa’s former European colonizers would do’. Quartz Africa February 3. Lee, M.C. (2007). ‘The 21st Century Scramble for Africa’. Journal of Contemporary African Studies 24(3): 303–330. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/02589000600976570 Malisa, M., & Missedja, T.Q. (2020). The origins and evolution of Pan-Africanism. In: Rabaka, R. (ed.) Routledge handbook of pan-Africanism. London & New York: Routledge, pp. 35–47. Mamdani, M. (2020). Neither settler nor native: The making and unmaking of permanent minorities. Cambridge MA & London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Maru, M. (2019) ‘Barriers to free movement in Africa: How to remove them?’ https://meharitaddele​ .info​/2019​/08​/barriers​-to​-free​-movement​-in​-africa​-how​-to​-remove​-them/. Mazrui, A.A. (1995). Pan-Africanism: From poetry to power. Issue: A Journal of Opinion 23(1): 35–38. Mbembe, A. (1999). Migration of peoples, disintegration of states: Africa’s frontiers in flux. Le Monde Diplomatique. Mbembe, A. (2000). ‘At the edge of the world: Boundaries, territoriality, and sovereignty in Africa’. Public Culture 12(1): 259–284. doi:10.1215/08992363-12-1-259. Mbembe, A. (2004). On the postcolony. Oakland: University of California Press. Mbembe, A. (2018). ‘The idea of a borderless world’. The Chimurenga Chronic. https://chimurengachronic​.co​.za​/the​-idea​-of​-a​-borderless​-world/. McGranahan, G., Mitlin, D., Satterthwaite, D., Tacoli, C., & Turok, I. (2009). Africa’s urban transition and the role of regional collaboration. London: International Institute for Environment and Development(IIED). Meagher, K. (1997). ‘Informal integration or economic subversion? Parallel trade in West Africa’. In: Laverne, R. (ed.) Regional integration and cooperation in West Africa. Trenton: Africa World Press, pp. 165–188.

344

Africa without Borders Michalopoulos, S., & Papaioannou, E. (2016). ‘The long-run effects of the scramble for Africa’. American Economic Review 106(7): 1802–1848. Mudimbe, V.Y. (1988). The invention of Africa: Gnosis, philosophy, and the order of knowledge. Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Nkrumah, K. (1964). Africa must unite. New York: Frederick Praeger. Nugent, P., & Asiwaju, A. (eds.) (1996). African boundaries: Barriers, conduits and opportunities. London: Pinter. Nyamnjoh, F.B. (2007). ‘From bounded to flexible citizenship: Lessons from Africa’. Citizenship Studies 11(1): 73–82. Office of the High Commission for Human Rights. (1999). ‘CCPR general comment no. 27: Article 12 (freedom of movement)’. https://www​.refworld​.org​/pdfid​/45139c394​.pdf. Okunade, S.K., & Ogunnubi, O. (2021). ‘A “Schengen” agreement in Africa? African agency and the ECOWAS protocol on free movement’. Journal of Borderlands Studies 36(1): 119–137. Olurontuba, S.O. (2016). Regionalism and integration in Africa: EU-ACP economic partnership agreements and Euro-Nigeria relations. Camden & New York: Palgrave. Onwuka, R.I. (1980). ‘The ECOWAS treaty: Inching towards implementation’. The World Today 36(2): 52–59. Onwuka, R.I. (1982). ‘The ECOWAS protocol on the free movement of persons: A threat to Nigerian security?’ African Affairs 81(323): 193–206. Opanika, A., Aduloju, A.A., & Adenipekun, L.O. (2015). ‘ECOWAS protocol on free movement and trans-border security in West Africa’. Covenant University Journal of Politics and International Affairs (CUJPIA) 3(1): 41–47. Opanike, A., Aduloju, A.A., & Adenipekun, L.O. (2016). ‘ECOWAS protocol on free movement and trans-border security in West Africa’. Covenant University Journal of Politics and International Affairs, 3(2): 41–47. http://doi​.org​/10​.4172​/2169​-0170​.1000154 Pécoud, A., & de Guchteneire, P. (2006). ‘International migration, border controls and human rights: Assessing the relevance of a right to mobility’. Journal of Borderlands Studies 21(6): 69–86. Sager, A. (2020). Against borders: Why the world needs free movement of people. London & New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Sanni, J.S. (2020). ‘Decolonising borders. Re-imagining strangeness and spaces’. Theoria 67(163): 1–24. Söderbaum, F., & Taylor, I. (eds.) (2008). Afro-regions: The dynamics of cross-border micro-regionalism in Africa. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute. Sule, M.A. (2018). ‘Assessment of ECOWAS free movement protocol in promoting regional growth and development in West Africa’. Amity Global Business Review 13: 1–56. Tardis, M. (2018). ‘European Union partnerships with African countries on migration: A common issue with conflicting interests’. Notes d’Ifri. Paris: IFRI, pp. 1–30 Teye, J.K., Awumbila, M., & Benneh, Y. (2015). ‘Intra-regional migration in the ECOWAS region: Trends and emerging challenges’. In A.B. Akoutou, R. Sohn, M. Vogl, & D. Yeboah (Eds.), Migration and Civil Society as Development Drivers – A Regional Perspective. Zei Centre for European Integration Studies, pp. 97–124. Yeboah, T., Kandilige, L., Bisong, A., Garba, F., & Kofi Teye, J. (2020). ’The ECOWAS free movement protocol and diversity of experiences of different categories of migrants: A qualitative study’. International Migration 59(3): 228–244. Zanker, F., Arhin-Sam, K., Jegen, L., & Bisong, A. (2020). ‘Free movement in West Africa: Juxtapositions and divergent interests’. Policy Brief 2020/1. Mercator Dialogue on Asylum and Migration (MEDAM).

345

21 THE AFRICAN CONTINENTAL FREE TRADE AREA AND MIGRATION PATTERNS Daniel Osarfo, Peter Quartey, and Joshua Y. Abor

Introduction The intensifying cross-border movement of people, goods, and services remains a core feature of globalisation. Trade in Africa contributes hugely to gross domestic product (GDP) and foreign exchange inflows and has direct implications for many African countries’ local currencies. It is no surprise that the continent has a long history of trade agreements among its countries, with countries in other continents and among countries in common trade areas and regions within the continent. The much-anticipated African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) hit the grounds in early January 2021, with much expectations among its signatory countries. This chapter carries out a prospective analysis of the AfCFTA with a particular focus on the impact on migration patterns. With regard to trade, however, Africa is riddled with limitations in volumes of formal trade, unhealthy levels of fixation on natural resource exports, and a continuous decline in terms of trade. Africa has contributed to around 3 or 4% of world trade within the past decade with intra-African trade averaging about 15.2% between 2015 and 2017 (UNCTAD, 2019) relative to 61% and 67% for Asia and Europe, respectively. Notably, both intra-African trade and trade with the rest of the world are dominated by the countries like South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Algeria, and Angola/Morocco, as these countries accounted for 33–63% of all trade recorded between 2001 and 2011 (Mutambara, 2013). Although the volume of trade between Africa and Europe (Africa’s most dominant trade partner) has been declining, the trade volume between Asia and Africa is increasing (Sindzingre, 2016). Another major problem is the existence of non-tariff barriers such as travel restrictions, both within Africa and with the rest of the world. Africans find it more challenging to travel to other African countries while Europeans and Americans have a relatively easier route to Africa (Obeng-Odoom, 2020). For instance, countries within the southern parts of Africa, such as Lesotho, gave to obtain a visa to travel to South Africa while American and Australian nationals face no such visa requirement. These restrictions on movement hinder trade. More so. Africa’s trade is dominated by the exchange of natural resources; the natural resource export share of intra-Africa trade was 33%, while the share of natural resources in exports to 346

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-26

The African Continental Free Trade Area and Migration Patterns

the rest of the world was 50% (UNCTAD, 2019). The exportation of natural resources in their raw condition means that once they are processed, they are imported back as finished products with higher costs. The continent also loses the opportunity to undertake the processing or value addition, thus forfeiting a great avenue to promote self-reliance and enhance the productive capacity and quality of work in Africa. Many African countries subscribed to the South–South co-operation trade regime, which focused on Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS), with China being more dominant. China’s Belt and Roads Initiative (BRI), for instance, aimed to ameliorate the overconcentration on primary sector exports, but ended up prioritising Chinese labour while undervaluing African labour. Other unwanted results are that the implied infrastructural development comes at the cost of scarce resources as the deals are made in essentially barter agreements. They also often leave huge debt crises, rising land value dislocations and physical loss of land and severe dumping (about $100 billion worth of goods which have destroyed the textile manufacturing and other indigenously produced goods) in their wake. Over the years, trade agreements have been considered a measure for deepening trade between African countries and the world as well as among African countries. Most trade agreements ultimately aim to propel development by increasing market access, competition, efficiency, and productivity. These objectives have direct implications for migration and development. Trade agreements may either reduce (substitution effect) or boost (complementary effect) migration. On the one hand, when trade agreements cause wages to converge and spur growth, the motive to migrate may be reduced. On the other hand, income levels may increase as a result of trade. This may relax travel cost constraints. Also, the adjustment costs that result from trade agreements such as wage reduction and unemployment may propel an individual to migrate. When trade agreements explicitly allow the movement of persons, migration could increase. Trade may also spur migration in the short term due to relaxed travel cost constraints and reduce migration in the long term when a certain income threshold is attained, causing the “migration hump”. Trade also affects development in the long run due to a greater access to production inputs and cost reduction as a result of specialisation that may be prompted by exploiting comparative advantage. In the short run, however, trade liberalisation can have an ambiguous effect on development, depending on factors such as the skill level and flexibility of labour as well as the capacity of firms to withstand import competition. These factors have a direct effect on income levels and poverty. Africa’s history with regard to trade agreements has not been very radiant. This is majorly due to the import substitution and trade diversion that may result from regional trade agreements (Schiff, 2002). It is also true that high growth as a result of strong institutional frameworks and industrial policies can distinctively lead to increased trade as has been the case for China and India (Stiglitz, 2009). With a broader vision of having Africa as a single major trade bloc and propelling Africa’s structural transformation, economic diversification, and development, key steps that were taken began with the expression of this vision by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in 1963. This vision was activated in the form of common markets as per the Monrovia Declaration in 1979 and was also detailed in the Lagos Plan of Action in 1980. In 1991, customs unions all over the continent were captured in the Abuja Treaty. The OAU was transformed into African Union (AU) and the AfCFTA was hailed as the core vision of the transformation. The progress has been fast-tracked within the last decade, beginning with AU’s adoption of an intra-African trade action plan for solidly establishing the AfCFTA in 2012 and the formal beginning of AfCFTA negotiations at the AU assembly in 2015. 347

Daniel Osarfo et al.

This was followed by the AU Heads of State and Government’s appointment of President Mahamadou Issoufou (Niger) to direct the AfCFTA process and facilitate its launch in 2017. In 2018, the AU’s Assembly of Heads of State and Government, in Kigali, ratified the agreement that established the AfCFTA. The establishment of the AfCFTA gives rise to a lot of expectations as the anticipated benefits of the agreement are enormous, yet its hurdles cannot be overlooked. Considering that the population within the countries expected to sign up for the agreement exceeds 1.2 billion people and over two trillion dollars is projected to be realised annually in gross domestic product (GDP), the AfCFTA potentially represents the biggest trade agreement in the world since the formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The success or otherwise of the AfCFTA depends on several conditions such as how non-tariff barriers to trade are dealt with, how trade-related disputes are handled, and the ability to harmonise the AfCFTA with already-existing free trade areas, i.e., Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and the WTO in general. It is notable that the establishment of the RECs by the African Union to consolidate and facilitate trade both within the regions and with members of other regions or other countries provides a good foundation for the AfCFTA. The AfCFTA is also aligned with the WTO guidelines that discourage dumping and regulate the mode for treatment of goods and services between domestic and foreign providers, as the AfCFTA is a rightful member of the WTO.1 Furthermore, Africa, in more recent decades, has seen significant advancements in human capital development, developments in information and communications technology (ICT), and political stability, making the ground more fertile for the AfCFTA. The weight of non-tariff barriers such as geography, infrastructure, governance, and issues of security and bureaucracy in export and import clearance procedures appears to surpass that of tariff barriers (Carrère & de Melo, 2011). Countries that have raised tariffs have also experienced an increase in non-tariff barriers (Péridy & Ghoneim, 2013). This association between tariff reduction and the increase in non-tariff barriers has also been observed among COMESA member states, leading to stifled trade (Hanna et al., 2020). Another challenge is Africa’s low level of export complementarity with the rest of the world as well as among countries within the continent, while the continent’s import complementarity is close to the world average over time (Hanna et al., 2020). The level of trade complementarity among countries within Africa is half of what is recorded with the rest of the world, hinting at limited venues for transformative trade policy (Geda & Seid, 2015; Yang & Gupta, 2007). Amid these prospects and challenges, what would be the AfCFTA’s impact on trade and migration patterns? The AfCFTA is yet to be implemented and this poses a challenge in examining its effect on migration. We use data from the ECOWAS region to thus assess how migration relates to trade among members of the ECOWAS region. This is because of the similarities between ECOWAS and AfCFTA in terms of how markets and migration that are liberalised and regulated relative to trade with countries outside the region. More specifically, we examine the relationship between the value of Ghana’s trade with other ECOWAS member states, nonECOWAS African countries, and non-African countries. We employ scatterplots with fitted values of trade, immigration, and emigration from Ghana. This chapter sets out to elucidate how AfCFTA affects migration patterns in Africa. The chapter is structured into four sections: first, the section provides a comprehensive overview of trade agreements in Africa and migration patterns; second, the section looks at the linkages between trade agreements, migration, and development; third, the section presents 348

The African Continental Free Trade Area and Migration Patterns

the trend analysis of Ghana’s trade with other ECOWAS member states, non-ECOWAS members and non-African countries, drawing on the similarity of circumstances surrounding trade and migration among ECOWAS members and AfCFTA member states; and concluding comments are presented in the final section.

Overview of the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement The AfCFTA is a free trade area and a flagship project of the AU. In combination with Agenda 2063, the AU majorly aims to enable Africa’s transformation and development. The AU also has trade agreements that have established Regional Economic Communities (RECs) intending to facilitate trade among member states; they double up as building blocks for the AfCFTA. These initiatives play a complementary role in attracting foreign direct investment, reducing trade costs, and promoting the diversification and development of African economies. This section describes the various initiatives of the AU and how they may affect migration patterns.

African Agenda 2063 Agenda 2063 is Africa’s 50-year economic master plan and blueprint expected to transform Africa into a worldwide force to be reckoned with in the future. It is the continent’s strategic framework that intends to project the pan-African motivation for solidarity, self-reliance, opportunities, and collective consciousness towards achieving economic growth and development on the African continent to trickle to other parts of the world (Achieng, 2014). Towards this end, African countries on 25 May 2013 adopted Agenda 2063, the 50-year Transformative Agenda for Africa, and its First Ten-Year Implementation Plan (2013–2023). This is a set of 18 goals that have been identified based on the seven African aspirations, the AU Vision, and the solemn declaration. These goals take cognisance of the goals and priority areas contained in the post-2015 Africa Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) position and the post-2015 UN High Panel report (African Union Commission, 2015). Agenda 2063 is geared towards ensuring a high standard of living, quality of life, and well-being for all African citizens by dealing with global poverty and hunger, especially on the African continent, promoting sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth. Agenda 2063 seeks to promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all as well as build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation, and foster innovation deal with the same issue of transforming the economies and creating jobs on the African continent (Turner et al., 2015). It also contains strategies towards preventing, minimising, and addressing the dire human security consequences of climate change in Africa (DeGhetto et al., 2016). Similarly, Agenda 2063 seeks to promote democratic values and practices, respect for universal principles of human rights, and the entrenchment of the rule of law, as well as the building of capable and inclusive institutions (DeGhetto et al., 2016). Again, Agenda 2063 is dedicated to the promotion of peaceful and stable societies for sustainable development. Agenda 2063 was designed to promote education in Africa and pursue full gender equality and empowerment of women and girls at all levels (Ndzendze & Monyae, 2019). Agenda 2063 establishes several key advantages and prospects to Africans if the initiatives and programmes identified in the strategic development framework are initiated and implemented according to the Agenda Plan. Africa is expected to demonstrate improved standards of living; transformed, inclusive and sustained economies; increased levels of regional 349

Daniel Osarfo et al.

and continental integration; a population of empowered women and youth and a society in which children are cared for and protected; societies that are peaceful, demonstrate good democratic values and practice good governance principles and which preserve and enhance Africa’s cultural identity (African Union Commission, 2015). Agenda 2063 ultimately aims at promoting the ideas of regionalism and co-operation for the benefit of Africa and, thus, provides a good introit to the AfCFTA.

The African Continental Free Area and AU Protocol on Free Movement AfCFTA is an agreement that purposely creates a common African market which is expected to contribute to the bigger vision of deepening economic integration (facilitated by the movement of persons) to provide greater opportunities for Africa’s structural transformation, economic diversification, and development. The agreement also aims to create a liberalised market for goods and contribute to the movement of natural persons and capital. To achieve the broad objectives of the AfCFTA, specific objectives that must be achieved include the progressive liberalisation of trade-in services, the deepening of co-operation in all matters relating to customs and trade issues (competition policy, investment, etc.), and the gradual riddance of both tariffs and non-tariff barriers. The resulting free trade region that is created presents participating countries with the opportunity to take advantage of scale and overcome various challenges as they trade among themselves. The mission is to accelerate trade between African countries and also boost Africa’s trading capacity in the global marketplace by strengthening Africa’s common voice and policy space in global trade negotiations. On 21 March 2018, at the 10th extraordinary session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the African Union in Kigali, Rwanda, 44 out of the 45 member states of the Union signed the historic treaty instituting the AfCFTA. The free trade area is defined in the African Continental Free Trade Agreement among 54 of the 55 African Union nations and is the largest free trade area in the world in terms of participating countries since the formation of the World Trade Organization (WTO). This continent-wide free trade agreement is expected to enhance regional co-operation and integration. Even though it is called a “Free Trade Area”, the agreement will be more or less a comprehensive partnership agreement that extends beyond the concept of trade in goods, services, investment, competition, and intellectual property (Luke & MacLeod, 2019). The AfCFTA’s execution plan depends hugely on member states’ ability to undertake activities and programmes that are meant to improve the AU Action Plan’s seven priority action areas for boosting intra-African trade. These action areas include trade policy, trade facilitation, trade-related infrastructure, procedure capacity, trade information, trade finance, and factor market integration. The AfCFTA’s stipulated trade conditions go beyond trade in goods. The associated legal instruments deal with trade in services, investment, competition, and intellectual property rights (Regions Refocus & Third World Network-Africa, 2016). Thus, the AfCFTA implementation also depends on member states’ adherence to the stated legal provisions. The AfCFTA agreement specifies a two-phase implementation plan to ease negotiations on provisions and operationalise the agreement. The first phase considers trade in goods and services and involves tariff liberalisation, dealing with non-tariff barriers, trade remedies, trade facilitation via the harmonisation of documents and customs co-operation, rules of origin, issues relating to transit and transit facilities, technical barriers to trade, dispute settlement, standards, and institutional provisions. Trade in services is also concerned with air and maritime transportation, insurance coverage for 350

The African Continental Free Trade Area and Migration Patterns

tourism, and financial services and banking (African Union, 2018). The second phase deals with negotiations that relate to investment, competition, and intellectual property rights (African Union, 2018; Regions Refocus & Third World Network-Africa, 2016). It has been argued that even without the AfCFTA, trade within Africa is expected to grow massively, with exports and imports projected to reach 20-fold and 15-fold (relative to the levels attained in 2015) by 2063, respectively (Hanna et al., 2020). This view thus regards the agreement as a catalyst for ongoing transformations on the continent. The success of the AfCFTA agreement is therefore not limited to tariff elimination but also depends on the effect of non-tariff trade barriers such as infrastructure, governance, border crossings, and level and magnitude of informal trade. Other aspects of the conditions for success include efficiency in harmonising trade policies across the various national, continental, and global borders. Issues of trade disputes and management or resolution mechanisms are also crucial. Member states have consented to cut tariffs by 90% and have set an agreed timeframe of five years for non-least developed countries (non-LDCs) and ten years for least developed countries (LDCs) to achieve this ambition. Seven percent of the remaining 10% of tariff lines can be designated sensitive, while 3% of tariff lines may be excepted from liberalisation. LDCs will do away with tariffs on sensitive products for up to 13 years. They can also opt to maintain their current tariffs for up to five years following after the agreement is enforced. Non-LDCs have up to ten years to remove tariffs on sensitive products; they may also start tariff reductions in the sixth year. Both non-LDCs and LDCs may be exempt from 3% of tariff lines, but the excepted products should amount to, at most, 10% of the value of their total trade. One must also not lose sight of the possible heterogeneous effect the policy could have on different economies as this affects the political will that is required for the full implementation of the AfCFTA. For instance, some countries depend more on revenues from import tariffs than others, and this has implications for their production, supply, and demand patterns (Baunsgaard & Keen, 2010). As such, such economies may be affected by the huge tariff cuts brought about by the AfCFTA. However, the tariff cut is expected to propel more trade and yield more economic growth and development in the long run. Another favourable condition for the success of the AfCFTA is the availability of human capital resources. Africa’s Human Development Index (HDI) grew by about 24% between 1990 and 2019 and it has been predicted to grow by 30% within the next five decades. Over the next five decades, life expectancy and average educational attainment in Africa are projected to grow from about 65 years today to almost 78 years and from 5.6 years to 8.6 years, respectively, in 2063. There has also been a significant advancement in information and communications technology (ICT) which has improved connectivity with the rest of the world, increased access to goods and services, and fast-tracked the digitisation of some economies (Kabandula, 2019). Thus, although there may be challenges in the implementation of the AfCFTA, the possible good fruits of the agreement cannot be contested but require harmonisation, efficient institutional and regulatory frameworks, and a baseline level of human capital and infrastructural development. All these provisions would be difficult to achieve without a framework or agreement that secures and regulates the movement of persons. The African Union Protocol on Free Movement of People,2 therefore, complements the AfCFTA by securing visa-free travel rights, residency rights, and business or professional establishment rights for citizens between signa351

Daniel Osarfo et al.

tory countries. The AU Free Movement Protocol comprises 11 migration-mobility-related provisions to regulate the movement of labour between signatory states. The provisions seek to do away with discrimination in seeking and accepting employment in concordance with the right institutional provisions of the host state, as well as the right to take dependants or spouses along (Article 14). It also provides an essential element to the movement of persons, that is, to ensure that their qualifications, social security benefits, and remittances are recognised and facilitated on either bilaterally, multilaterally, or regionally agreed basis (Articles 18, 19, and 23).

The Role of Trade in Shaping Migration Patterns International trade has two broad variants, namely, imports and exports. Changes in trade can ultimately affect labour movement, wages, or both. In the case of exports, when a country becomes more accessible to foreign markets, it attracts firms and its demand for labour increases. This is likely to attract more workers from other countries. Increased market access would also directly affect migration since it leads to a higher number of vacancies and a resultant increase in the probability of employment. Also, better-quality jobs may be created in the wake of increased foreign demand (Hering & Paillacar, 2016). The effect of imports is not straightforward. On the one hand, when imports of locally produced merchandise increase, consumers may substitute the local produce for the imported merchandise. The resulting decrease in labour demand may encourage or propel workers to emigrate. On the other hand, the goods being imported likely come at a lower price as a result of better market conditions or the removal of trade restrictions. It may be cheaper to buy as opposed to producing them. In this scenario, the increase in imports would result in a reduced cost of living which is attractive for migrants. When trade is liberalised, a directly expected outcome is the creation of new firms which motivates the reallocation of labour; workers move to locations that experience market access increase. Two adjustments may occur, namely, wage adjustment or quantity adjustment. The wage adjustment occurs when the production of goods does not increase although transport costs are reduced. Lower transport costs translate into reduced consumer prices which in turn should lead to increased demand. But since the excess demand cannot be satisfied, prices will increase. Firms would pay workers higher wages and this could lead to wage disparities; this is termed the price version of market access adjustment by Head and Mayer (2006). Quantity adjustment occurs when the total output of the country increases, leading to increased labour demand. This attracts new workers to the region who also exert downward pressure on wages to, at least, partially counterbalance the upward pressure emanating from the increased market access. Both adjustment mechanisms may also occur concurrently, depending on the elasticity of labour. An industry with a higher demand for its merchandise may pay a higher nominal wage, even amidst an increase in the number of firms when labour is not perfectly elastic. Areas with high demand for manufactures tend to pay out a higher real wage to workers in the manufacturing sector (Fujita et al., 1999). As a result, a strong agglomeration force is created, and economic activity becomes highly concentrated in those areas. In summary, an increase in market access affects migration patterns via two channels. The direct channel is through higher labour demand and better career opportunities that result from new

352

The African Continental Free Trade Area and Migration Patterns

export avenues and activities. The indirect channel due to market access operates through the impact on wages.

Evidence from RECs’ Trade Agreements with Regard to Shaping Inter-Regional Migration Patterns The Regional Economic Communities (RECs) have been touted as the building blocks of the AfCFTA, indicating their crucial role in the build-up, negotiations, and anticipation coming into force of the AfCFTA. This section describes how various RECs have contributed to shaping migration patterns with its member states.

Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS) ECOWAS Protocol on Free Movement of Persons, Residence, and Establishment remains the principal strategic framework that regulates migration in West Africa. It was signed in 1983 after setting up the community in 1979 (ECOWAS, 1979). The Protocol spells out community citizens’ rights to enter, reside, and set up businesses in the member states. It was granted through three phases which spanned over 15 years. The first phase got rid of community citizens’ need for visas for a maximum of 90 days in ECOWAS member states. This phase came into force when all member states ratified the 1097 Protocol. For community citizens, the second phase governed the right of residence on community territory to seek and undertake paid employment. The second phase came into force in 1986. The third phase aspires to facilitate community citizens’ rights to carry out economic activities and set up businesses in other ECOWAS member states. The third phase is yet to be implemented. Other agreements that have helped to shape migration in the region are the “Decision on the Establishment of a Travel Certificate for ECOWAS Member States”, which was adopted in 1985, the “Decision on the Introduction of a Harmonized Immigration and Emigration Form in ECOWAS Member States” which was adopted in 1990 and the 2008 “ECOWAS Common Approach on Migration”. These decisions helped to harmonise the contents and requirements for ECOWAS Member States’ immigration and emigration forms and regulate how members of the community handle issues relating to migration.

The Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD) The Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD) is the first African REC to formulate a Regional Migration Policy Framework, called the IGAD’s Regional Migration Policy Framework (IGAD-RMPF) (Intergovernmental Authority on Development, 2012). Modelled after the 2006 Migration Policy Framework for Africa (MPFA), this regional policy arrangement was adopted in July 2012 at the 45th ordinary session of the IGAD Council of Ministers in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The framework spells out a lucid strategy to guide IGAD in ensuring that migration programmes are aligned with its priorities and mandate. Also, the IGAD-RMPF is a broad and integrated reference guide that is non-binding in content, scope, and nature. The IGADRMPF provides the necessary guidelines, principles, and recommendations on migration issues that the member states could adopt and implement to regulate their migration. It is flexible enough and accommodates member states’ policies and elements that they deem

353

Daniel Osarfo et al.

as fit, applicable, and appropriate to tackle their country-specific migration issues and challenges (African Union Commission, 2016). The migration issues and elements for which provisions are made in the IGAD-RMPF include border management, labour migration, irregular migration, internal migration, forced displacement, migration data, co-operation between regions and states, and migration and development. The IGAD-RMPF has provisions for many other social and economic issues that link migration to education and human resources, health, culture, trade, tourism, social protection, and human security. The IGAD-RMPF also presents measures to strengthen the institutional, legal, and policy frameworks for regulating migration in the region. The IGAD-RMPF also gives “a common strategy for implementing migration policy among the IGAD Member States that reflects harmonisation of laws, standards, procedures, information dissemination and sharing; compilation of statistics; production of documents, and efficient use of resources” (Intergovernmental Authority on Development, 2012: 55).

The Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) The Protocol on Free Movement as well as of citizens of member states’ rights of establishment is captured in Annex 7 of the treaty that established the ECCAS in 1983. The treaty details that member states should agree to ease the free movement and citizens’ right of establishment within the community. The protocol also seeks to eradicate obstacles to the free movement of people, capital, goods, and services as one of its aims (International Organisation for Migration, 2007). The protocol stipulates the requirements for entry into member states, including a passport, a sojourn card, an identity card, laissez-passer, and proof of health and safety via an international health record. The protocol details the establishment rights for self-employed nationals as allowed within each member state’s legislation and regulation. ECCAS adopted initiatives to speed up the free movement of persons between 1990 and 2000.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) The objectives of the SADC treaty (2001) aim to develop policies to progressively eliminate obstacles to the free movement of people, labour and capital, and goods and services within the member states.3 The SADC protocol has, however, been revised twice since its inception. It remains the most controversial, more so because it has changed complexion twice. Between 1995 and 2005, the thematic idea of the protocol was revised from a “free movement” of persons (FMOP) theme that had become largely stagnant to a draft protocol on “facilitation of movement” of persons (FMOP). SADC has encountered challenges in the various attempts to bring about free movement. An earlier Protocol on Free Movement (1997) was drawn back and revised many times (following objections from South Africa and other nations) before finally being ratified in 2005 by five states (South Africa, Mozambique, Botswana, Swaziland, and Lesotho). It permits and sanctions visa-free entry for a maximum of 90 days, authorising permanent and short-term or temporary residence. The protocol affirms states parties’ commitment to the agreed common actions for implementation, such as harmonising national and statutory regulations and institutions. Member states also granted permission to citizens of member states who have ambitions to engage in, establish, or manage economic activities and professions and businesses.

354

The African Continental Free Trade Area and Migration Patterns

The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) The Visa Protocol (1984) and the Protocol on the Free Movement of Persons, Services, Labour and the Right of Establishment and Residence (2001) are the main policies that regulate migration management in the COMESA region. These protocols are being revised and the revision is modelled after the MPFA, although the MPFA has not been integrated into the region’s development plan.4 Important strides have been made by member states in addressing the migration issues by setting up National Monitoring Committees (NMCs) in Zambia and Zimbabwe. The NMCs are charged to carry out the COMESA Protocol on Free Movement and guide the region to strategise and integrate the MPFA into the region’s framework.

The East African Community (EAC) In 2000, The EAC was established after the member states signed a treaty. Subsequently, the customs union and common market protocols were ratified by the member states in 2005 and 2009, respectively. With the introduction of a common monetary union and political federation in the pipeline, EAC aims to gear the above-mentioned agreements towards expanding migration opportunities and facilitating the free movement of persons, boosting legitimate labour migration, and thus increasing remittances. The common market protocol seeks to facilitate a more robust functional integration between member states by removing all trade barriers and liberalising the movement of the factors of production. As provided by Article 104 of the treaty, member states accept measures to accomplish the free movement of persons, workforce, and secure the right of residence and establishment for community citizens (Kanyangoga, 2010). To achieve this, there must be an easing of border crossing as well as harmonisation and maintenance of common employment or labour policies, legislation, and programmes by citizens of the partner states. Thus, the EAC has formulated legal mechanisms to regulate migration flows among the member states.

Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) The Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) is noted for being more interested in collaborating with the EU rather than other African states, although they are part of the AU. There has, thus, been little progress in their adoption of the MPFA as a key guiding document that addresses migration issues affecting the region. Existing collaborations on issues relating to migrationrelated security have majorly been between AMU and EU. This has been partly attributed to Morocco’s long-term absence from the AU which made it difficult for AU and AMU to collaborate. This is because Morocco hosts the AMU. As Morocco rejoined in February 2017, prospects are bright for the AMU and AU to consolidate relations and collaborate to develop a regional approach to migration. However, many migration soft law provisions on the continent also apply in the region. These policies, initiatives, and frameworks have a wider membership coverage, although they do not enjoin member states to become state parties per se (Abebe, 2017). They detail the modalities and pathways to implement the various treaties and their provisions, making them important for the movement of goods, services, and persons.

355

Daniel Osarfo et al.

Migration, Trade Agreements, and Development Interlinkages between Trade Agreements, Migration, and Development Trade, Trade Agreements, and Migration Labour migration has long been perceived to be driven by wage differentials between countries, as it creates an economic incentive for labour to move across geographical boundaries: the incentive to migrate varies directly with a greater wage gap. This explains the exodus of labour from less developed nations to developed ones. Trade agreements mediate this effect, as the Neoclassical International Trade Theory (established by David Ricardo at the beginning of the nineteenth century) posits that trade between countries minimises wage differentials (Krugman et al., 2015). According to the main proponent, David Ricardo, trade thrives on heterogeneity in national productivity. If countries specialise and produce commodities in which they have comparative cost advantages, differences in national productivity narrow, wage levels converge, and hence, wage differentials become reduced. In the mid-20th century, Heckscher (1919) and Ohlin (1933) offered an alternative explanation that considers countries’ endowments in factors of production to be the only source of international trade. They argued that countries with similar production functions, technology and other factors of production that have varied endowments would export huge amounts of goods that are produced with the abundant factor; labour-rich countries will export goods that use labour intensively and vice versa. Jones (1971) and Samuelson (1971) dwelt on the need to account for the relative strengths of the export and import sectors: sectors that are competing with imports tend to lose while strong exporting sectors benefit from trade. Earlier models, in sum, argued that international trade changes the distribution of factors of production, increases productivity, enables growth, and fosters wage convergence between the countries involved in trade. Increased trade improves competition, efficiency, cost reduction, and wage convergence. Wage convergence, in turn, reduces the incentive to emigrate in search of higher wages and better living standards. However, some assumptions of the neoclassical model do not apply in reality. For instance, the implied assumption of perfect markets and no transaction costs associated with the immediate adjustment processes that are necessitated by heightened competition are not realistic. Competition does not mean that a person who becomes unemployed finds a new job immediately. There is also no perfect information or perfect market transparency on all relevant factors in the market (costs, prices, among others). In other words, all economic actors are not always fully informed about all relevant factors. In reality, adjustment processes are associated with significant social and economic costs. Trade, therefore, requires efficient institutions to manage the associated transaction costs (North, 1994). The relationship between trade agreements and migration is not straightforward. Stolper and Samuelson (1941) and Mundell (1957) argued that when barriers to trade (import tariffs) are raised, the price of scarce production factors (such as wages for labour), compared to the prices of other production factors and goods, will be increased. If people are migrating because of differences in international wage rates, trade protectionism shall incite more migration as per the price equalisation theorem. In other words, factor (labour) mobility and trade in goods can be deemed substitutes for each other. As a result, reduced barriers to trade such as lower tariffs and other trade liberalisation policies will promote international trade and limit trade in factors of production such as labour. Thus, migration will be reduced.

356

The African Continental Free Trade Area and Migration Patterns

However, when more practical instances such as heterogeneity in technological advancement, the presence of imperfect markets, and different scale economies where a country may be producing with an increasing return to scale (and not constant returns to scale) are assumed as the basis for trading (as opposed to differences in factor endowments), the factor price equalisation theorem would not hold. The levels of external effects, economies of scale, institutional quality, and technological differences determine the net effect of trade liberalisation. In exploring complementarity between trade agreements and migration, four channels stand out. First, trade agreements make the involved economies more open to the exchange of products and services, create a bigger market for these exchanges, and increase per-capita GDP. This leads to more disposable incomes, which enable individuals to overcome the financial constraints associated with migration. Second, the adjustment costs associated with trade agreements (such as unemployment and wage reduction) motivate individuals with a high level of skill or higher qualification to migrate. Third, the adjustment costs emanating from trade agreements mostly affect labour-intensive sectors. Thus, labour with low qualifications can also migrate. Fourth, trade agreements may ease the mobility of personnel by strengthening the ties between states, and therefore, fostering migration. The relationship between trade agreements and migration may not be a linear one. Liberalising trade can spur migration in the short term, but this effect may be reversed in the long term. This phenomenon has been termed the “migration hump”. Trade agreements lead to larger and more accessible markets, resulting in increased demand and supply, higher per-capita incomes, and an upturn in economic activities in general. The initial rise in per-capita incomes makes migration more affordable. Hence, the rate of migration begins to rise. After a certain per-capita income threshold is attained, the propensity to migrate declines. The initial rise in migration may also be caused by child mortality rate reduction which increases population-related pressures, an increase in the levels of inequality (or the perception of this increase), structural change, and the opening up of legally sanctioned immigration opportunities in host countries (Clemens, 2014). The length of time before reaching the peak and the downturn in migration are determined by the difference in the level of technological advancement between the home country and the more industrialised country. Other determinants include the home country’s cost of adjusting to the changing circumstances that emanate from the trade agreement and the extent of income disparity between the home country and the industrialised country. Some authors have also argued that the migration hump occurs when labour is highly skilled as their skill set may be more valuable and adaptable in another country, making the level of human capital development crucial to the verdict on the effect of trade on migration (Panagariya, 1992).

Trade Agreements and Economic Development Trade agreements or liberalism, in general, can also facilitate development in the long term, although they may worsen unemployment and may lead to the collapse of certain sectors in the short term. In the long term, trade agreements may allow some firms that may take advantage of the larger access to production inputs and reduce cost by specialising in areas where they have a comparative advantage. Free trade may also be less likely to yield to lobbying and rent-seeking. In other words, the rush for privileges such as protective tariffs and tax breaks may be contained. Liberalisation of trade also makes technology more readily available. 357

Daniel Osarfo et al.

The negative effect of trade in the short term can be explained by the non-flexibility of workers, mostly low-skilled workers, which affects their ability to shift from weakened industries to more vibrant and dynamic ones. Workers are not infinitely flexible, and for most, it is not an option to shift seamlessly from dying industries to new dynamic sectors. Firms with low capacity may choose to respond to increased import competition by limiting their output rather than improving their efficiency. Trade agreements and globalisation can thus have ambiguous effects on earnings and poverty.

Migration and development Migration affects development via three main channels. First, emigrants can remit to their home countries, and this has been touted as a very strong contributor to development both as a source of livelihood and as a source of foreign exchange. Second, Africans in the diaspora provide unique opportunities and ties to their home countries, and this could be harnessed for development. Third, the rate at which skilled labour migrates can also affect the productivity and development of the home country. MIGRANT REMITTANCES

Remittances contribute to development on many levels and via diverse channels. At the macroeconomic level, remittances act as insurance for the origin countries against shocks. They are less affected by profit-seeking firm behaviours and changes in the fiscal situation, preferences, or priorities of donors since most remittances are transactions among household members (World Bank, 2006). Unlike other sources of resource flows to Africa, such as private debt and equity flows and FDI, remittances have demonstrated immense stability (Gupta et al., 2009; Singh et al., 2011). Due to its share of foreign exchange and its stability thereof, the inflow of remittances is capable of improving the sovereign creditworthiness of the origin countries (Ratha, 2007). Remittances also provide some stability to the current account by reducing the level of volatility in overall capital flows (Chami et al., 2008). As with other receivables, African countries can leverage future remittances as collateral to raise funds from international capital markets to finance development projects (Ketkar & Ratha, 2009). Since remittances are a hard-currency asset for banks, credible banks in a remittance-receiving nation can use remittances as collateral if it does not curtail the banks’ ability to pay intended recipients in the local currency. Banks in many African countries, with the help of the African Export–Import Bank (Afreximbank), have employed remittance securitisation, enabling them to raise low-cost and long-maturity international financing. In 1996, with support from Western Union remittance receivables, the Afreximbank co-arranged a novel future-flow securitisation in sub-Saharan Africa in the form of a $40 million medium-term loan that was advanced to a bank in Ghana in 1996 (Rutten & Oramah, 2006). Following Afreximbank’s launch of its Financial Future-Flow Prefinancing Programme in 2001, it has arranged remittance-backed syndicated note issuance and loan facilities in Nigeria and Ethiopia (Ratha et al., 2011). With the backing of future remittances (10–20% of their annual inflow of remittances), African countries can also issue bonds. Remittances can boost economic growth directly by increasing consumption and investment expenditures such as expenditures on education, health, and nutrition; (all of which add to long-term productivity). Remittances can also improve the stability of output and consumption (Hakura et al., 2009; Mohapatra et al., 2012). All these benefits contribute to 358

The African Continental Free Trade Area and Migration Patterns

increased levels of both domestic and foreign investment via increased financial intermediation, culminating in higher growth (Akinlo & Egbetunde, 2010; Ghirmay, 2004; Gupta et al., 2009; Mohapatra et al., 2012)). In economies in which the financial system is underdeveloped, remittances could alleviate credit and liquidity constraints and provide funds for small business investments in countries with underdeveloped financial systems (Ratha et al., 2011). Via the positive effect on consumption and investment expenditures as well as the stability and resilience to household financial shocks, remittances can reduce the rate and severity of poverty (Quartey & Blankson, 2004). The effect on inequality, however, is quite uncertain as the ability to migrate depends on one’s initial position in the distribution of wealth (Ratha, 2007; World Bank, 2006). That is, more wealthy individuals may be more likely to afford the cost of migration compared to individuals in lower wealth quintiles. Adverse development effects of remittances can also be realised. In some small countries such as Cape Verde (with the inflow of remittances having about a tenth share in GDP), there has been evidence that the enormity of inflows can lead to real exchange rate appreciation and the impairment of growth due to external benefits (learning effects and economies of scale) imparted by tradeable sectors. (Acosta et al., 2009; Gupta et al., 2009; World Bank, 2006). A second instance is the potential of large remittances to discourage labour supply, although this has not been backed by empirical studies in Africa (Azam & Gubert, 2006; Chami et al., 2008). Third, it has been argued that when people depend directly on incomes from remittances and not on the benefits from good governance (Abdih et al., 2008), they tend not to hold governments accountable for the quality of institutions and policies. Coupled with the fact that remittances increase available foreign exchange, governments will have fewer concerns over structural rigidities (Catrinescu et al., 2009) MOVEMENT OF HIGHLY SKILLED INDIVIDUALS

Migration involves the movement of human capital, which is key in spurring growth and thus can be beneficial to the economies involved via the transfer of skilled or highly educated individuals. The migration of highly skilled individuals presents many benefits for their countries of origin. Migrants remit to their families and forge economic and social ties and linkages between their home countries and the host countries. The ability to earn income and remit to the home country is not absolute, as high-skilled migrants from different African economies exhibit pronounced differences in performance in the host countries’ labour markets. The differences in performance reflect their ability to increase their earnings, make remittances, and build networks that foster diaspora externalities. These differences may be attributable to the quality of education in their countries of origin, language ability, and the pace with which they can be integrated into the destination-country labour markets. Due to their higher propensity to earn more, highly skilled individuals also contribute hugely to the development of the host country through their taxes and consumption. Migrants have been estimated to spend about 85% of their earnings in the destination countries and contribute to productivity and the inter-generational labour quality of the destination countries (UNCTAD, 2018). Adverse effects of highly skilled labour may also be experienced when there is a movement of skilled labour from economies with scarcity in skilled and educated labour to areas where such resources are abundant may also occur. It should be noted that the adverse exodus of skilled labour is usually a signal of many development challenges (healthcare, labour issues, financial markets, education, among others.). This issue needs prudent policy design 359

Daniel Osarfo et al.

and response to minimise the cost and harness the benefits of skilled labour migration. The migration of highly skilled individuals may be either beneficial or harmful, but it is underlined by the development status of the home country. DIASPORAS AS A SOURCE OF RESOURCES FOR DEVELOPMENT

The diasporas may also be counted on as a source of financing as they are more likely to grant loans with more favourable service terms than other foreign investors. They have better information which encourages them to discount investment risks premium at a higher rate, compared to foreign investors. Diasporas may have better information on their countries of origin as well as greater tolerance towards the devaluation of the home country’s currency. These reasons encourage them to patronise diaspora bonds. It is also very probable that the diasporas would have local currency liabilities, which make them less apprehensive about the chances of experiencing currency devaluation or having their assets forcefully converted or denominated from foreign currencies to home country currencies. Governments can target diaspora bonds to nationals residing abroad, which can create opportunities and facilitate investment in the countries of origin. Diasporas can also provide home countries access to modern and advanced technology and scarce skills, all of which are indispensable for development.

Impact of Migration on Trade The strong links forged between immigrants and their home country could facilitate bilateral trade flows between the host and home countries. There are two main channels or mechanisms via which migration can foster trade: immigrant preference and transaction cost. Immigrants can facilitate bilateral trade by demanding their native economy’s products in the host country (Light et al., 2002). The immigrant preference effect has the potential to boost only exports from the country of origin to the host country since they only arise when immigrants demand products from their home countries (that is, via the consumption channel). In the medium to long term, there is the potential for the demand for such goods to increase, even among the host country’s population, via a demonstration effect that can influence the preferences of the host country’s native-born residents. It is also plausible that tastes and preferences may be developed and perpetuated in migrants during their stay in the host country. If they return to their countries of origin or migrate to other countries, these persistent preferences may also stimulate demand for the host country products, and this could be beneficial for trade. The transaction cost effect, on the other hand, occurs when migrants facilitate information flow between native country and host country to reduce information asymmetry and other forms of market imperfections and, in turn, increase trade and investment (Rauch & Trindade, 1999). Such information may include laws, market characteristics and standards, language, customs, government requirements, and business practices. The transaction cost effect is likely to make a stronger impact when there are stark differences between the host and native countries in terms of languages, cultures, and institutions. In other words, the transaction cost effect helps to overcome informal trade barriers that are caused by the non-availability of alternative sources of information. Transaction cost effects influence both exports and imports.

360

The African Continental Free Trade Area and Migration Patterns

Review of Trade Agreements within the ECOWAS Region over the Past Decade ECOWAS is considered a major pillar of the African Economic Community with a mandate to foster the ultimate standard of collective self-sufficiency for all member states. The community is also charged to create a unified large trading bloc by ensuring economic co-operation. To achieve this, a centralised portal has been developed by the ECOWAS Commission called the ECOWAS Trade Information System (ECOTIS) to make timely, accessible, and relevant trade-related intelligence available for improved business decisions and policy formulation. ECOTIS also helps to coordinate the numerous, fragmented, and often underutilised sources of trade-related information. It is key to note that information on areas such as trade policy, statistics, promotion, capacity building, agreements, and resources are all under the mandate of the ECOTIS. Within the last decade, the community has been involved in some trade agreements. A bilateral trade agreement was signed between the USA and ECOWAS on 5 August 2014. It was dubbed the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement. The agreement aims to promote an attractive investment climate and provide diversity in trade products and services between the parties involved. A US–ECOWAS Council on Trade and Investment5 was set up to regulate its modalities. The main task of this council was to deliberate and review investment and trade relations between parties, identify institutions that promote transparency and reduce corruption, protect the environment, intellectual property rights, and worker rights. The council also work to remove barriers to investment and trade between the parties. Also, the council consults with civil society and the private sector as and when required on issues that pertain to its core mandate. Another agreement by the ECOWAS was the ECOWAS Common External Tariff (CET). The CET establishes the ECOWAS Customs Union and remains an instrument to harmonise and strengthen the community’s common market and foster co-operation and integration. The agreement establishes a common external tariff with a unified nomenclature to ensure that delays at borders are decreased, and customs’ processes are transparent and readily followed. The ECOWAS-CET draws on the basic West African Monetary and Economic Union’s Common External Tariff (UEMOA CET) made up of four tariff bands or rates of customs duty as follows: category 0 (0% for essential social goods); category 1 (5% for necessary primary goods, specific inputs, and raw materials); category 2 (10% for intermediate goods); and category 3 (20% for final consumption goods). The Heads of State Summit adopted a Supplementary Act that created a fifth band of the ECOWAS-CET at 35%  for particular goods meant for economic development. They also adopted a common eligibility criterion among member states of which products can be submitted to this fifth band. The ECOWAS-CET entered into force in 2015. ECOWAS, and member states therein, are part of the target population (comprising 1.2 billion people from 55 African countries) to partake in the AfCFTA, which was signed on 21 March 2018, at the Tenth Extraordinary Summit in Kigali, Rwanda. Though individual states did the negotiations for the AfCFTA, the ECOWAS-CET has provided a good basis for the ECOWAS member states’ negotiations on tariffs under the AfCFTA. The ECOWAS Commission has also been pivotal in coordinating the positions of member states in the negotiations. The ECOWAS Commission has been able to draw from various technical and capacity-building programmes aimed at creating a unified position for the region on international trade issues.

361

Daniel Osarfo et al.

The ECOWAS Commission has championed a broad range of regional deliberations on the AfCFTA, including engaging with civil society organisations and the private sector. These efforts to engage with the regional private sector have played a fundamental role in consolidating private sector interests and facilitating the firming-up of “regional positions” on the AfCFTA. The Commission has also drawn on the regional services policy reviews that it conducted, highlighting priority service sectors and areas of common interest in the ECOWAS region.

Key Lessons from Trade Agreements and Movements of Persons Coherence in Trade, Migration, and Technology Policies Can Spur Structural Transformation Movement in Africa has been primarily motivated by the search for better economic opportunities. Africa can take advantage of its endowments and improve workforce skill levels, infrastructure, policy, and regulatory environment to become a global leader in industrial value chains based on commodity trade. Public and private sector actors should be brought together to conduct skill-mapping tasks that could serve as the foundation for planning of human capital development (with instruments such as vocational training and tertiary education). The assessments and the results thereof can also be factored into the operational migration plans at both the regional and continental levels. Lack of cohesiveness across trade, investment, technology, and macroeconomic policies underlies the continent’s retarded progress on transformation. Migration should be well managed to serve as an impetus for structural transformation.

Regulate and Streamline the Implementation of Free Movement of Person Framework The African Union’s main aims include the management of the free movement of persons (labour migration) within a united and integrated Africa. Protocols such as the Poverty Eradication and Inclusive Development (adopted in 2015), Strategic Plan 2014‒2017 of the African Union Commission, and the Declaration and Plan of Action on Employment place labour migration as an important priority area. The Labour Migration Governance for Development and Integration was adopted by the 24th Assembly of the African Union in January 2015. Also, the African Union Revised Migration Policy Framework for Africa and Plan of Action (2018–2027) was adopted in 2017. These were efforts to operationalise the African Union Migration Policy Framework for Africa (2006) and to boost the effective regulation and governance of labour migration and mobility in the continent. The implementation of the various continental-level migration frameworks should be supported with solutions to help ensure optimal adjustment to skills shortages between labour in various subregions of Africa. Specifically, the qualifications of labour should be harmonised at the continental level. Additional measures should be established to empower private investors to circumvent the differences in labour mobility protocols across African RECs, which reflect the various dynamics and interests of their member states.

Develop Mechanisms for Harnessing the Benefits of Migration RECs would benefit from integrating co-development principles and migration into their policy frameworks. The co-development principle considers migrants to be pivotal part362

The African Continental Free Trade Area and Migration Patterns

ners in development co-operation programmes and projects to optimise the benefits of migration for stakeholders in both the origin and host countries. Co-development efforts include capacity-building targeted at migrant associations and motivation for skills transfer and investment in productive sectors in countries of origin. Backed by several development partners, the regional migration framework called the Intergovernmental Authority on Development extends many preferable practices that could be emulated and practised elsewhere. Notwithstanding its non-binding status, the framework aims to offer member countries a comprehensive and common approach to migration management. The framework offers guidelines and principles to help governments formulate and implement their national migration policies aligned with their national resources and priorities. The Intergovernmental Authority on Development has a regional consultative process and a Regional Migration Coordination Committee which are dialogue platforms or for the exchange of ideas. All these instruments, notwithstanding, have not aided the translation of the Migration Action Plan (2015–2020) into pertinent national-level results. Increased resource investment should be devoted to establishing the capability or capacity of migration-related institutions and policy-makers in member states. RECs and the AU should promote the available platforms for private–public sector information sharing and dialogue. The inefficiencies in information flow lead to sub-optimal decision-making processes. Strengthening links between public- and private-sector stakeholders in the migration industry can crucially promote effective migration policy formulation and facilitate the continent’s structural transformation. Uniting the two sets of stakeholders could enhance job creation schemes and promote migration. A more active recognition and regularisation of working migrants and diaspora groups or associations in destination countries should also be prioritised. Migrants’ contributions in the form of remittances are important to the economies of migrant’s home countries, often incorporated into a country’s GDP. Regularisation efforts can highlight missed opportunities in contributions to the real economy and offer improved security in the payment of taxes and national insurance contributions. The weight of the contributions of the African diaspora is now duly and widely acknowledged, leading to the enthusiastic approval of diaspora policies at the continental, regional, and national levels. Efforts must focus on moving towards the establishment of stronger coordination. Moreover, many donors are supporting diasporarelated initiatives as well as investment funds. In all these initiatives, the diaspora could be engaged, as a matter of priority, for development; many donors are backing up diasporarelated initiatives as well as diaspora-related investment funds and this can be harnessed for structural transformation.

Trends in Trade and Migration: The Case of Ghana In an attempt to predict how the AfCFTA will affect trade patterns, we are presented with some challenges related to data availability. This is primarily due to the prospective nature of such analysis since the AfCFTA is yet to be operationalised. When available, data on Africa’s trade and migration is riddled with missing observations and is very sparse. However, data on Ghana’s trade with other member states of ECOWAS, nonECOWAS African countries, and non-African countries provide a way of examining the relationship between Ghana and ECOWAS member states, non-member (non-ECOWAS) African countries, and non-African countries. This section provides a graphical depiction of the relationship between Ghana’s migration patterns and trade with ECOWAS members (where trade and movement between member states are liberalised per ECOWAS’ pref363

Daniel Osarfo et al.

erential tariff for intra-ECOWAS trade and common external tariffs for extra-ECOWAS imports and Protocol on Free Movement of Persons, Residence and Establishment, respectively), Ghana’s migration patterns and trade with African countries who are non-members of ECOWAS (where no apparent general trade and movement agreement exists) and that with non-African countries.

Data Migration: The migration data employed for this analysis is obtained from the United Nations’ International Migrant Stock Database 2019. This database has global, regional, and country-level data on migration by origin and destination countries at five-year intervals between 2000 and 2019. The destination areas are classified into three broad classes, namely other ECOWAS countries, non-ECOWAS African countries, and non-African countries. Data on Trade: Data on trade is taken from the World Bank’s World Integrated Trade Solution database. We utilise broad economic categories of exports from 2000 to 2018 for this analysis. This database has data on Ghana’s exports to other countries. The limitation in using this database is missing observations for 2014 and 2015, where Ghana’s exports for the mentioned periods were not found. The countries are grouped into other ECOWAS countries, non-ECOWAS African countries, and non-African countries for our analysis.

Trend Analysis We employ scatterplots of the total number of emigrants and the value of exports with fitted values (lines of best fit) to the three-broad class of countries as mentioned above. The main idea is to investigate whether trends in Ghana’s trade with other ECOWAS states mimic or is closely related to trends in the number of emigrants from Ghana to other ECOWAS member states and whether the association differs from that recorded between Ghana and non-member African countries or non-African countries. From Figure 21.1, we can observe a strong association between the value of Ghana’s average exports to ECOWAS member states and the number of emigrants to ECOWAS member states. Although a positive relationship is observed for non-ECOWAS African countries in Figure 21.2a stronger positive association can be observed in Figure 21.1. Furthermore, when the values of Ghana’s exports and total emigration are compared for the three broad classes of trade partners (namely ECOWAS member states, non-ECOWAS African countries, and non-African countries), the strongest positive association is observed for Ghana’s trade with other ECOWAS countries.​ To compare the total value of exports and the number of immigrants entering Ghana from other ECOWAS member states, non-ECOWAS African countries and non-African countries, Figures 21.4–​21.6 are employed. In a very conspicuous manner, we can observe a positive association between the average value of exports from Ghana and the total number of immigrants that enter the country. An even stronger positive association is observed when the total value of exports is compared with the number of immigrants (see Figure 21.4). This association is not observed when Ghana’s exports and immigration records with non-ECOWAS African countries and non-African countries (see Figures 21.5 and Figure 21.6). 364

The African Continental Free Trade Area and Migration Patterns 500000 450000 400000 350000 300000

250000 200000 150000 100000 50000 0 2000

2002

2004

2006

2008

2010

2012

2014

2016

Average Trade Value (Exp)

Total Emigrants

Linear (Average Trade Value (Exp))

Linear (Total Emigrants)

2018

2020

2018

2020

2000000 1800000 1600000 1400000 1200000 1000000 800000 600000

400000 200000 0 2000

2002

2004

2006

2008

2010

2012

2014

2016

Total Trade Value (Exp)

Total Emigrants

Linear (Total Trade Value (Exp))

Linear (Total Emigrants)

Figure 21.1  Ghana’s exports and emigration to ECOWAS member states

Indeed, Ghana’s trade with ECOWAS member states and migration to and from other ECOWAS member states are more closely related than whatever observed when non-ECOWAS African countries and non-African countries are considered. This is mainly attributable to the institutional framework that governs trade relations among ECOWAS member states, notable among these institutions are the Protocol on Free Movement of Persons, Residence and Establishment and ECOWAS’ preferential tariff for intra-ECOWAS trade and common external tariffs for extra-ECOWAS. We draw on this finding to say that the AfCFTA, which aims to cut tariffs by 90% and ensure the free movement of persons within the continent (among the countries that have ratified the agreement), will not only enhance trade but also facilitate, encourage, and safeguard the movement of persons within member states. It is, thus, imperative for institutions to be strengthened to regulate and manage the movement of persons as this goes hand in hand with trade liberalisation within the African continent. 365

Daniel Osarfo et al. 500000 450000 400000 350000 300000 250000 200000 150000 100000 50000 0 2000

2002

2004

2006

2008

2010

2012

2014

2016

Total Trade Value (Exp)

Total Emigrants

Linear (Total Trade Value (Exp))

Linear (Total Emigrants)

2018

2020

2018

2020

500000 450000 400000 350000 300000 250000 200000 150000 100000 50000 0 2000

2002

2004

2006

2008

2010

2012

2014

2016

Total Trade Value (Exp)

Total Emigrants

Linear (Total Trade Value (Exp))

Linear (Total Emigrants)

Figure 21.2  Ghana’s exports and emigration to non-ECOWAS African member states

Summary and Conclusion The vision to form a single continental market to liberalise the movement of goods, people, and investments is about to be achieved. Indeed, many African leaders have recognised that it is of crucial importance to deepen economic integration due to the numerous trade-related challenges faced by the continent. The AfCFTA promises lots of significant benefits and, thus, expectations are very high. The broad aim of the AfCFTA is to create a single liberalised market for goods, services, capital, and persons for more meaningful integration. Despite its promise, the agreement faces many trade-related challenges, including limitations in volumes of formal trade, the over-dependence on natural resource exports, and the continuous decline in terms of trade. Only a few countries also drive the limited volumes 366

The African Continental Free Trade Area and Migration Patterns 60000 50000 40000 30000 20000 10000 0 2000 -10000

2002

2004

2006

2008

2010

2012

2014

2016

Average Trade Value (Exp)

Total Emigrants

Linear (Average Trade Value (Exp))

Linear (Total Emigrants)

2018

2020

2018

2020

160000 140000

120000 100000 80000 60000 40000 20000 0 2000 -20000 -40000

2002

2004

2006

2008

2010

2012

2014

2016

Total Trade Value (Exp)

Total Emigrants

Linear (Total Trade Value (Exp))

Linear (Total Emigrants)

Figure 21.3  Ghana’s exports and emigration to non-African countries

of trade and trade with Europe, and lately, Asia accounts for a large portion of all recorded trade. Contrariwise, intra-African trade has been limited over the years, accounting for less than a quarter of trade recorded with Europe and Asia. The agreement is quintessential in boosting economic activity and trade within the continent; thus, it has direct implications for development, economic transformation, and livelihood enhancement. This chapter investigated the effect of the AfCFTA on migration patterns. It is worth mentioning that the grounds are fertile for the AfCFTA as existing agreements and protocols such as the Agenda 2063, the AU’s Protocol on Free Movement of Persons, and the establishment of RECs have set the tone for its success. In safeguarding visa-free travel rights, residency rights and business or professional establishment rights for citizens 367

Daniel Osarfo et al. 45000 40000 35000 30000 25000 20000

15000 10000 5000 0 2000

2002

2004

2006

2008

2010

2012

2014

2016

Average Trade Value (Exp)

Total Immigrants

Linear (Average Trade Value (Exp))

Linear (Total Immigrants)

2018

2020

2000000 1800000 1600000 1400000

1200000 1000000 800000 600000 400000 200000 0 2000

2002

2004

2006

2008

2010

2012

2014

2016

Total Trade Value (Exp)

Total Immigrants

Linear (Total Trade Value (Exp))

Linear (Total Immigrants)

2018

2020

Figure 21.4  Ghana’s exports (to) and immigration from other ECOWAS member states.

between signatory countries, discrimination in seeking, and accepting employment will be controlled. As well, social security benefits, qualifications, and remittances are recognised and facilitated. The RECs also provide the foundation for the AfCFTA as many valuable lessons can be drawn from their experience of trade liberalisation. Furthermore, RECs have solid frameworks that govern the movement of member states within the regions. Trade and migration go hand in hand. When trade liberalisation makes a country’s products more accessible to foreign markets (increase in exports), demand levels increase, new firms are attracted to the market, and labour demand increases. Workers are thus drawn to places where there is higher market access. Trade agreements reduce the transport cost associated with trade. When the reduction in transport cost reflects in reduced consumer prices and the excess demand cannot be met, firms may decide to way higher wages, which is termed the wage adjustment. When labour demand increases as output rises to clear the 368

The African Continental Free Trade Area and Migration Patterns 18000 16000 14000 12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0 2000

2002

2004

2006

2008

2010

2012

2014

2016

Average Trade Value (Exp)

Total Immigrants

Linear (Average Trade Value (Exp))

Linear (Total Immigrants)

2018

2020

2018

2020

50000 45000 40000

35000 30000 25000 20000 15000 10000

5000 0 2000

2002

2004

2006

2008

2010

2012

2014

2016

Total Trade Value (Exp)

Total Immigrants

Linear (Total Trade Value (Exp))

Linear (Total Immigrants)

Figure 21.5  Ghana’s exports (to) and immigration from non-ECOWAS African countries

excess consumer demand, new workers enter the market, exerting downward pressure on wages. The net effect depends on the elasticity of labour. Imports usually come in at lower prices compared to domestic products. On the one hand, this may increase emigration when people are forced out of work and look for opportunities elsewhere. On the other hand, the lower-priced goods may also ease the economic pressures of workers, discouraging them from emigrating. Thus, the effect of an increase in imports cannot be determined a priori. Migration can foster trade via the immigrant preference effect – where immigrants facilitate bilateral trade by demanding their native economy’s products in the host country and transaction cost effect – where migrants facilitate information flow between native country and host country to reduce information asymmetry and transaction costs and, in turn, 369

Daniel Osarfo et al. 16000 14000 12000 10000 8000

6000 4000 2000 0 2000 -2000

2002

2004

2006

2008

2010

2012

2014

2016

Average Trade Value (Exp)

Total Immigrants

Linear (Average Trade Value (Exp))

Linear (Total Immigrants)

2018

2020

2018

2020

160000 140000

120000 100000 80000 60000 40000 20000 0 2000 -20000

2002

2004

2006

2008

2010

2012

2014

2016

-40000 Total Trade Value (Exp)

Total Immigrants

Linear (Total Trade Value (Exp))

Linear (Total Immigrants)

Figure 21.6  Ghana’s exports (to) and immigration from non-African countries

increase trade and investment. Certainly, trade and migration patterns are strongly linked. Given that the AfCFTA, the Agenda 2063, and the Protocol on Free Movement of Persons offer Africa the opportunity of attaining a continent-wide free market which guarantees the movement of merchandise and people, this chapter examined whether data bears out a strong association between the yet to be enforced AfCFTA and migration patterns. The AfCFTA has not yet become operational and this poses a challenge in analysing its effect on migration. However, data on trade within the ECOWAS region offers a way of assessing how migration relates to trade among members of the ECOWAS region (which is similar to the AfCFTA in terms of liberalised markets and migration), compared to trade with countries outside the region. We, therefore, examine the association between the value of Ghana’s trade with other ECOWAS member states, non-ECOWAS African countries, and non-Afri-

370

The African Continental Free Trade Area and Migration Patterns

can countries using scatterplots (with fitted values) of trade, immigration, and emigration from Ghana. Our trend analysis shows that the value of Ghana’s average and total exports to ECOWAS member states and the number of emigrants to ECOWAS member states are strongly related, compared to non-ECOWAS states and non-African states. Similarly, Ghana’s trade with ECOWAS member states and migration to and from other ECOWAS member states are more closely related than what is observed for non-ECOWAS African countries and nonAfrican countries. Drawing on these findings, we conclude the AfCFTA which aims to cut tariffs by up to 97% (including an initial 90% cut) and ensure the free movement of persons within the continent (among the countries that have ratified the agreement), will not only enhance trade but also facilitate, encourage and safeguard the movement of persons within member states. Both the resultant increase in intra-African trade volume and the increase in migration have positive implications for Africa’s development and transformation.

Notes 1 https://www​.wto​.org​/english​/docs​_e​/legal​_e​/legal​_e​.htm Accessed on 26th October, 2020. 2 https://au​.int​/sites​/default​/files​/treaties​/36403​-treaty​-protocol​_on​_free​_movement​_of​_persons​_in​_africa​_e​.pdf Accesses on 19th October 2020. 3 SADC Website: http://www​.sadc​.int​/about​-sadc​/overview​/sadc​-commonagenda. 4 This is a report from a key informant interview conducted by the (African Union Commission, 2016). 5 http://ecotipa​.ecowas​.int​/wp​-content​/uploads​/2017​/07​/document​-on​-TIFA​.pdf Accessed on 19th October, 2020.

References Abdih, Y., Dagher, C., & Montel, P. (2008). Remittances and institutions: Are remittances a curse? International Monetary Fund. Working Paper No. 08/29. Abebe, T. T. (2017). Migration policy frameworks in Africa. Africa Report, 2(December), 1–24. Achieng, R. M. (2014). Can we speak of African agency?: APRM and Africa’s agenda 2063. African Sociological Review, 18(1), 49–64. Acosta, P. A., Lartey, E. K. K., & Mandelman, F. S. (2009). Remittances and the Dutch disease. Journal of International Economics, 79(1), 102–116. https://doi​.org​/10​.1016​/j​.jinteco​.2009​.06​.007. African Union. (2018). Agreement establishing the African Continental free trade area. https://au​.int​ /en​/treaties​/agreement​-establishing​-african​-continental​-free​-trade​-area. African Union Commission. (2015). Agenda 2063. Final Edition, April, 1–24. http://www​.un​.org​/en​ /africa​/osaa​/pdf​/au​/agenda2063​.pdf. African Union Commission. (2016). Evaluation of the African union migration policy framework for Africa (Issue December). Akinlo, A. E., & Egbetunde, T. (2010). Financial development and economic growth: The experience of 10 sub-Saharan African countries revisited. Review of Finance and Banking, 2(1), 017–028. Azam, J. P., & Gubert, F. (2006). Migrants’ remittances and the household in Africa: A review of evidence. Journal of African Economies, 15(Suppl. 2), 426–462. https://doi​.org​/10​.1093​/jae​/ ejl030. Baunsgaard, T., & Keen, M. (2010). Tax revenue and (or?) trade liberalisation. Journal of Public Economics, 94(9–10), 563–577. https://doi​.org​/10​.1016​/j​.jpubeco​.2009​.11​.007. Carrère, C., & de Melo, J. (2011). Notes on detecting the effects of non tariff measures. Journal of Economic Integration, 26(1), 136–168. https://doi​.org​/10​.11130​/jei​.2011​.26​.1​.136. Catrinescu, N., Leon-Ledesma, M., Piracha, M., & Quillin, B. (2009). Remittances, institutions, and economic growth. World Development, 37(1), 81–92. https://doi​.org​/10​.1016​/j​.worlddev​.2008​ .02​.004.

371

Daniel Osarfo et al. Chami, R., Barajas, A., Cosimano, T., Fullenkamp, C., Gapen, M., & Montiel, P. (2008). The macroeconomic consequences of remittances. IMF Occasional Paper, 259(17), 1076–1089. https://doi​ .org​/10​.1016​/j​.jinteco​.2018​.01​.010. Clemens, M. A. (2014). Does development reduce migration? In International Handbook on Migration and Economic Development (Discussion Paper No. 8592, 152–185). https://doi​.org​/10​.4337​ /9781782548072​.00010. DeGhetto, K., Gray, J. R., & Kiggundu, M. N. (2016). The African Union’s agenda 2063: Aspirations, challenges, and opportunities for management research. Africa Journal of Management, 2(1), 93–116. ECOWAS. (1979). Protocol on free movement of persons, residence and establishment. Protocol A/P. 1/5/79, Dakar: ECOWAS Fujita, M., Krugman, P. R., & Venables, A. (1999). The spatial economy: Cities, regions, and international trade. MIT press. Geda, A., & Seid, E. H. (2015). The potential for internal trade and regional integration in Africa. Journal of African Trade, 2(1–2), 19. https://doi​.org​/10​.1016​/j​.joat​.2015​.04​.001. Ghirmay, T. (2004). Financial development and economic growth in sub-Saharan African countries: Evidence from time series analysis. African Development Review, 16(3), 415–432. https://doi​.org​ /10​.1111​/j​.1017​-6772​.2004​.00098​.x. Gupta, S., Pattillo, C. A., & Wagh, S. (2009). Effect of remittances on poverty and financial development in sub-Saharan Africa. World Development, 37(1), 104–115. https://doi​.org​/10​.1016​/j​ .worlddev​.2008​.05​.007. Hakura, D., Chami, R., & Montiel, P. (2009). Remittances: An automatic output stabiliser? In IMF Working Papers (WP/09/91). https://doi​.org​/10​.5089​/9781451872385​.001. Hanna, T., Bohl, D. K., Kabandula, D. A., Moyer, D. J. D., Bwalya, M., & Mayaki, D. I. (2020). Conditions for success continental free trade agreement. https://www​.nepad​.org​/file​-download​/ download​/public​/122093. Head, K., & Mayer, T. (2006). Regional wage and employment responses to market potential in the EU. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 36(5), 573–594. https://doi​.org​/10​.1016​/j​.regsciurbeco​.2006​.06​.002. Heckscher, E. (1919). The effect of foreign trade on the distribution of income. Ekonomisk Tidskrift, 497–512. Reprinted as Chapter 13 in A.E.A. (1949). Readings in the Theory of International Trade, 272–300 (Philadelphia: Blakiston) with a Translation in H. Flam and M. J. Flanders (Eds.). 1991. Heckscher-Ohlin Trade Theory 43–69. Cambridge: MIT Press. Hering, L., & Paillacar, R. (2016). Does access to foreign markets shape internal migration? Evidence from Brazil. World Bank Economic Review, 30(1), 78–103. https://doi​.org​/10​.1093​/wber​/ lhv028. Intergovernmental Authority on Development. (2012). IGAD regional migration policy framework. Adopted by the 45th Ordinary Session of the IGAD Council of Ministers July 11th, 2012, Addis Ababa. International Organisation for Migration. (2007). Free movement of persons in regional integration processes. Informal Consultations of the International Dialogue on Migration Council Steering Group (IC/2007/7), Geneva. Jones, W. R. (1971). A three factor model in theory, trade, and history. In: J. N. Bhagwati et al., eds. Trade, Balance of Payments and Growth: Papers in Honor of Charles P. Kindleberger. North-Holland, Trade, Balance of Payments and Growth, 3–21. Kabandula, A. (2019). The governance of transnational security threats in fragile states: The case of the African union mission in Somalia (Amisom) 2007–2017. University of Massachusetts Boston. Kanyangoga, J. B. (2010). Integrating migration with development in EAC: Policy challenges and recommendations. Geneva, Switzerland: CUTS Geneva Resource Centre. Ketkar, S., & Ratha, D. (2009). Financing for development innovative. In The international bank for reconstruction and development. Washington DC: The World Bank. Krugman, P. R., Obstfeld, M., & Melitz, M. J. (2015). International economics. In International economics: Theory and policy. Pearson Education. https://doi​.org​/10​.2307​/2976834. Light, I., Zhou, M., & Kim, R. (2002). Transnationalism and American exports in an English-speaking World. International Migration Review, 36(3), 702–725. Luke, D., & MacLeod, J. (2019). Introduction: Bringing about inclusive trade in Africa with the African continental free trade area 1. In Inclusive trade in Africa. Routledge, 1–4.

372

The African Continental Free Trade Area and Migration Patterns Mohapatra, S., Joseph, G., & Ratha, D. (2012). Remittances and natural disasters: Ex-post response and contribution to ex-ante preparedness. Environment, Development and Sustainability, 14(3), 365–387. https://doi​.org​/10​.1007​/s10668​-011​-9330​-8. Mundell, R. A. (1957). International trade and factor mobility. The American Economic Review, 47(3), 321–335. Mutambara, T. E. (2013). Africa-Asia trade versus Africa’s trade with the North : Trends and trajectories. African Review of Economics and Finance, 4(2), 273–299. Ndzendze, B., & Monyae, D. (2019). China’s belt and road initiative: Linkages with the African Union’s Agenda 2063 in historical perspective. Transnational Corporations Review, 11(1), 38–49. https://doi​.org​/10​.1080​/19186444​.2019​.1578160. North, D. C. (1994). Economic performance through time. The American Economic Review, 84(3), 359–368. Obeng-Odoom, F. (2020). The African Continental free trade area. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 79(1), 167–197. https://doi​.org​/10​.1111​/ajes​.12317. Ohlin, B. (1933). Interregional and international trade. Harvard University Press. Panagariya, A. (1992). Factor mobility, trade and welfare: A North-South analysis with economies of scale. Journal of Development Economics, 39(2), 229–245. Péridy, N., & Ghoneim, A. (2013). Middle East and North African integration: Through the lens of Non-Tariff Measures. Journal of Economic Integration, 28(4), 580–609. Quartey, P., & Blankson, T. (2004). Do migrant remittances minimise the impact of macro-volatility on the poor in Ghana? Final Report Submitted to the the Global Development Network, January 2004, 1–32. Ratha, D. (2007). The relationship between international migration, trade, and development: Some paradoxes and findings. In Leveraging remittances for development. https://www​.dallasfed​.org​/ assets​/documents​/research​/pubs​/migration​/migration​.pdf​#page​=195. Ratha, D., Mohapatra, S., Özden, C., Plaza, S., Shaw, W., & Shimeles, A. (2011). Leveraging migration for Africa: Remittances, skills, and investments. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, The World Bank. Rauch, J. E., & Trindade, V. (1999). Ethnic Chinese networks in international trade (Working Paper 7189; National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series). Regions Refocus, & Third World Network-Africa. (2016). The continental free trade area (CFTA): Process and political significance. Regions Refocus, April 2016, 1–6. Rutten, L., & Oramah, O. (2006). Using commoditized revenue flows to leverage access to international finance; with a special focus on migrant remittances and payment flows. Study Prepared for the UNCTAD Secretariat, Geneva. Samuelson, P. A. (1971). Ohlin was right. The Swedish Journal of Economics, 73(4), 365. https://doi​ .org​/10​.2307​/3439219. Schiff, M. (2002). Regional integration and development in small states (No. 2797). 1–34. Sindzingre, A. N. (2016). Fostering structural change? China’s divergence and convergence with Africa’s other trade and investment partners. African Review of Economics and Finance, 8(1), 12–44. Singh, R. J., Haacker, M., Lee, K. W., & Le Goff, M. (2011). Determinants and macroeconomic impact of remittances in sub-Saharan Africa. Journal of African Economies, 20(2), 312–340. https://doi​ .org​/10​.1093​/jae​/ejq039. Stiglitz, J. E. (2009). Trade agreements and health in developing countries. The Lancet, 373(9661), 363–365. https://doi​.org​/10​.1016​/S0140​-6736(08)61772-9. Stolper, W. F., & Samuelson, P. A. (1941). Protection and real wages. The Review of Economic Studies, 9(1), 58–73. https://doi​.org​/10​.2307​/2967638. Turner, S., Cilliers, J., & Hughes, B. (2015). Reducing Poverty in Africa: Realistic targets for the post2015 MDGs and Agenda 2063. Institute for Security Studies Papers, 2014(10), 28. UNCTAD. (2018). Economic development in Africa: Migration and structural transformation. EDA Report 2018, New York. UNCTAD. (2019). Economic development in Africa report 2019: Made in Africa – Rules of origin for enhanced intra-African trade. Economic Development in Africa Report, 2019, 40. World Bank. (2006). Economic implications of remittances and migration. The World Bank. Yang, Y., & Gupta, S. (2007). Regional trade arrangements in Africa: Past performance and the way forward. African Development Review, 19(3), 399–431. https://doi​.org​/10​.1111​/j​.1467​-8268​ .2007​.00169​.x.

373

22 CLIMATE VARIABILITY AND NEW FISH ELDORADOS IN AFRICA Papa Sow

Introduction In West Africa, marine or continental ecosystem fisheries are considered as socio-system constituents and spaces that involve the exploitation of resources by communities of people. The interactions and interdependencies around fisheries result from the resources’ transformation into food products and means of stability and socio-economic subsistence. This chapter organized into four subsections, with mixed methods and a review of the literature, examines first the various linkages between migration and environment in Africa and in the rest of the world. Then secondly, it opens a breach on the climate variability and mobility linkages in Africa, before ending with the economies of fish eldorados in West Africa, with Senegal as a case study. In the case of Senegal, it specifically sought to establish how dynamics of mobility/migration in new fish eldorado areas in West Africa are often influenced by ecological change, overfishing, and fisheries depletion. By disentangling the impacts linked to natural climatic variability from anthropogenic actions, the chapter attempts to show the extent of the fishers’ migratory phenomena in West Africa, some of which are caused by the multiple environmental degradations which go back in time. Illegal fishing practiced by large European and Asian trawlers has also contributed to the depletion of the fish resource, which has, consequently, made it possible to multiply the migratory routes of Senegalese fishers to countries such as Mauritania and Guinea Bissau. Migration to these neighboring countries, often creating situations of tension between communities, provides information on two fundamental aspects: (1) overfishing and the scarcity of fishery resources are becoming a socioenvironmental reality which now impacts the lives of numerous fishers and their families; (2) by becoming “victims” of the climate crisis, migrant fishers are able to adapt to new living conditions that often push them to move across regions between their country of origin and other neighboring countries.

Concepts Review on Environment–Migration Nexuses The history of natural (climate-related) disasters does not date from today. Many scientists agree that climate change originates from two things: (i) Anthropogenic (conceptualized

374

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-27

Climate Variability and New Fish Eldorados In Africa

by Stoermer and Crutzen): (e.g., by human beings, for example, “external forcing” to the climate system, changes in the composition of the atmosphere, changes in land use, etc.); (ii) Natural variability: systemic changes due to natural internal processes; “natural external forcing”; volcanic eruptions; modification of solar radiation, etc. With the help of religion and recorded history, gleaned stories and literature, and social facts, it is vital to identify the specific ways in which climate change and disasters (floods, dust, cyclones, earthquake, droughts, etc.) are affecting community members. The Deluge Flooding, described in the Bible [Chapters 6–9: Book of Genesis], is the oldest known catastrophic flood in human history along with the story of Noah’s Bow. In 1755, the Lisbon earthquake killed 70,000 people and had great repercussions in the North and South Mediterranean (Gutscher, 2006). Added to that there are recurrent droughts in the African Sahel since 1900 (Masih, Maskey, Mussá & Trambauer, 2014). The Dust Bowl, in the USA between 1930 and 1940, contributed to developing one of the biggest internal migration of almost 3.5 million people from “poor regions” to “wealthy areas” (Gutmann, Brown, Cunningham & Dykes, 2016). The acceleration in the frequency of cyclones (Katrina in New Orleans in 2005, Idai and Kenneth in 2019 and 2020 in Tanzania, Comoros Islands, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Madagascar, and Mozambique to name but a few) leads to devastating and impressive atmospheric phenomena with deadly consequences (PERC, 2020). The debate on climate change is thus launched with the environmental conditions that are radically changing the Earth from one area of the Globe to another. In the Himalayas, for example, as well as in other parts of the Globe, the glaciers are melting (Maurer, Schaefer, Rupper & Corley, 2019). In terms of recent fatal flooding, the Ganges Delta in Bangladesh, Thailand 2010, and Northern and Southern States of Nigeria in 2020 are witnessing major damages while with sea level rising phenomena, Tuvalu Islands in the Pacific, Maldives Islands in the Indian Ocean, and Halligen Islands in northern Germany are the scenes of recent natural disasters. The forest fires (Portugal 2017 and 2019, Australia, 2019, California, 2020) have enormous consequences, not only on ecology and biodiversity (rare plants and the last animal species are threatened with extinction), but also on public health with incalculable economic costs with huge impacts on agriculture, tourism, and environment. The volcanic eruptions’ side effects, (e.g., Nyiragongo volcano in Congo in 2021 which displaced more than 24,000 people) have destroyed entire villages, killed people and animals, with the long-term major climatic changes that will take place in the coming decades (UNICEF-DRC, 2021). There has been a gradual disappearance of resources, and the more illustrative examples are nowadays: Aral Sea in Kazakhstan, oases and wadis in the Sahara, fish depletion in the Atlantic seas, etc. The relationships between migration and environmental factors are complex. Climate change is sometimes just one factor among several others (Adaawen, Dreier & Sow, 2015; Sow, 2018; Bukari, Sow & Scheffran, 2018) in explaining migration dynamics, and even if it influences it is always difficult to identify at first sight. The diversity in migration and mobility patterns is important also to underline as different kinds of mobility may be connected to environmental factors (Okumu, Kaderi, Sow & Onyiego, 2017; Kaderi, Sow & Scheffran, 2020). In terms of methodology, data that are deriving from the environmental and migration dynamics rarely come from the same sources and are therefore difficult to combine; hence, different methodological orientations as the researchers (biologists, socio-anthropologists, geographers) are coming from different disciplinary backgrounds and empirical traditions (Natural sciences, Social sciences, Humanities). Since the Ravenstein Law of migration theories (1886) on “unattractive climate … producing currents of migration”, passing by 375

Papa Sow

Zelinksky’s hypothesis on “mobility transition” (1971) to the so-called “ecological models” (Sly & Tayman, 1977), there is an increasing interest on studying human impact on natural and environmental spaces. In the mid-1980s, the impact of climate change on human mobility moved again to the center of interest; so that made the use of concepts also too confusing in the current debates on the climate change–migration nexus. Through the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), the expert El-Hinnawi (1983, 1985) brought the terms environmental refugees that evolved later into environmental migrants or climate migrants after several conceptualization tentatives. Environmental refugees or climate migrants lack either recognition as a legal category or protection under the Geneva Convention’s definition of a refugee: “owing to the well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion”. The terms “environmental refugees” or “environmental migrants” are much criticized. Castles (2002, p. 5) says, “it implies a monocausality which rarely exits in practice”. There is a complex pattern of multiple causality, in which environmental and natural factors are closely linked to economic, social, and political ones (Castles, 2002). Most accepted and neutral solutions/ terms/concepts are EIPM – “Environmentally Induced Population Movements” or EDPs – or even Climate-induced displaced/migrants or simply “Environmentally Displaced Persons” (see Warner et al., 2011 for EACH-FOR Research Project). Notwithstanding, there includes a great divide that separates the Global South vs Global Northern countries in terms of Nature and Culture, Environment and Society, and so on, when it comes to polishing ecological concepts related to human actions. It is, for example, in this tailored-made discourse (full of condescending exoticism) that the concept “Anthropocene”, created by the American biologist Eugene Filmore Stoermer in 1980 and later popularized by the Dutch, Paul Josef Crutzen, Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1995, is now overused all over the world as a panacea. It thus attests to which side the tools of ecological propaganda related to human damages (degradations, migrations, displacements) are designed. The declining “Anthropocene” concept is built upon the seeds of domination of one world (the 1789 Industrial Revolution, and later its greenhouse effects) over another world, which according to Crutzen, had to compromise the situation of the Planet. With the “Anthropocene”, colonial oikos continues and its model is more than ever preserved. This way of thinking could be called “environmentalism”, which is just a technicist approach to ecological issues that reinforce social inequalities which have as derivatives political ecology, social ecology, environmental migrations, etc. Environmentalism, with all the good intentions it conveys, fails nowadays to challenge socio-ecological injustices. Most of the time, the concepts are shipped in a kind of suitcase for the ex-colonized countries. This is in fact how the conservation of seas (oceanography), biodiversity, forests, botany and so many other disciplines were born out of the ashes of the economic and material dimensions of the so-discussed ecological crisis along with its long list of concepts on World-ecology, Eco-Marxists of political ecology, World-system Environmental History, etc. This sort of horizontal homogenization of ecological science thus hides the internal hierarchies and conflicts (racial and colonial questions) in various nature conservation movements; therefore, the plurality of humans in their perceptions of social facts, the diversity of ecosystems, the forced migrations, the geographical locations, and the non-humans that constitute them are all silenced. The First Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) helped to set up the terms environmental migrants and Climate Change in the public debate and in the high political spheres. The IPCC report of 1990 underlined that climate change could strongly affect human migration; the Report clearly states: “the gravest effects of cli376

Climate Variability and New Fish Eldorados In Africa

mate change may be those on human migration as millions will be displaced” (IPCC-1, 1990, p. 20). Throughout the 1990s, predictions (according to several studies) of hundreds of millions of environmental migrants/refugees because of climate change boosted the interest in studying these topics (Jacobson, 1988; Myers and Kent, 1995; Piguet et al., 2011; Scheffran et al., 2012; Land, 2018). From 2000 and beyond, the disciplinary divide (between alarmist predictions vs empirical analysis and/or natural scientists vs social scientists) is gradually being overcome. Migration specialists are recognizing the vital role of the environment in migration dynamics while natural scientists tend to be more cautious.

Methods The context and objectives of this chapter determine the implementation of a mixed approach. The latter is entirely based on a complementary dual approach: a sparse review of the available literature (desk review) and an analysis of one specific country case (Senegal) to support our argument and better understand the links between migration, environment, and climate change in Africa. Why the choice of Senegal? This choice obeys various objective criteria that we discuss in the following three points: i) First, being a Sahelian country, Senegal (with 16,705,608 people in 2020 according to ANSD-Agence Nationale de la Statistique et de la Demographie) “symbolizes” a sub-regional geographic area with different climate zones, social, environmental, demographic, and cultural realities. The country chosen as a whole may even differ from the closer neighboring countries (Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Mauritania), and studying this country is for us far from making reductionism on the other countries of the western, southern, and eastern sub-regions of Africa. Common characteristics can be found in migration dynamics and large-scale environmental degradation. These two phenomena often do not affect a single country in isolation; they follow one another over a long period on atmospheric observations and their immediate consequences. It is therefore very plausible that the same phenomena observed in this country are also noticed in the other countries of the sub-region (or even far in East, South, or North Africa) with variances in migration and environmental changes. What makes the people of Senegal move is not necessarily what makes Kenyans, South African, and Moroccans move, and vice versa. Environmental degradation can also have different angles of analysis. We are therefore very aware that the single case of Senegal is far from being representative of the whole of Africa, which remains a universe with different realities and contexts from one country to another. However, Senegal as a country (like others) has had recurrent droughts, floods, seasonal increases in temperatures, resource depletion, etc., (Faye et al., 2020) in the past. Like most African countries, Senegal has experienced internal and external migrations, some of which are due to the harmful impacts of environmental changes. ii) The many survey experiences in Senegal and even the West African sub-region, on themes relating to climate change, migration, and people resilience make it possible to highlight this capital of experience in order to derive maximum benefit from it through the interviews we had with many participants in Senegal (since 2012). Over the years, with these research experiences, we have been able to create and consolidate a database that allows us to draw on the various interviews we have with the participants on various themes (Sow, 2012). This knowledge experience is also a methodological, selec377

Papa Sow

tivity, and approximation stake of environmental realities at a lower level of the social scale. iii) The contribution for which we want to provide, modestly, to the scientific debate and to the renewal of the literature on climatic variations and their negative impacts on migration is finally the last criterion of choice. This contribution will certainly only be valid through the quality of the data collected and produced, the interpretations they allow and the knowledge acquired during the literature search, and reinterpretation of survey data. Interpretation is therefore free. Several data sources are consulted (e.g., searches in several specialized databases such as the SRFC – Sub-regional Fisheries Commission, the Agence Nationale de la Statistique et de la Demographie – ANSD, the ISS – Institut d Etudes de Securite, the Centre de Suivi Ecologique in Senegal, AfDB, FAO, Greenpeace Office in Senegal, etc.). We also reconsidered semi-structured individual interviews and focus groups with local populations and institutional actors, in the case of Senegal, which we had done in the past in the context of other research projects. This allowed us to obtain exploitable data and to understand better the importance of the environmental factor as a trigger and/or accelerator of migration.

Results and Discussion Evidence from Literature: Climate Variability and Migrations in West Africa In West Africa, depending on the areas, the main key climate challenges are the intensity of droughts, reduced rainy seasons, water scarcity, and increasing flood in low-lying coastal regions, salinization, and desertification advance. In addition, the disruption of food supply is one of the main problems in the African Sahel region, and that situation often leads to various trends of migration (Sow, Adaawen & Scheffran, 2014). In the Republic of Guinea, and especially in rural areas, the dimensions presented as being symptomatic of environmental and climatic changes are closely linked to the disruption of the rainfall cycle, the recurrence of droughts, the accentuation of heat episodes, the frequency of devastating floods (IOM, 2021). Sectors such as agriculture, livestock, fishing, and forestry are the most affected and the immediate consequences are an increased precariousness of living conditions for rural households. Faced with such a situation, migration has emerged as a means of adaptation to environmental degradation and climate change. The IOM – International Organization for Migration study (2021) in Guinea showed above all that the populations most affected are women, who see their costs increase further in the face of environmental degradation and climate change. In Mali, people predominantly perceive negative changes in the quantity and variability of rainfall over the last 20–30 years (droughts of 1973–1974, 2004, 2008, and 2011). The country witnessed heavy floods in 2010 that had negative effects on yields and pasture causing food shortages. The rainfall deficits as well as the increase in temperatures seem to be the two hazards that have the most influence on internal or inter-regional migration. The agricultural sector is particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events. Environmental degradation in Mali has changed migratory habits. Migration is now a strategy helping to improve livelihoods and reduce risks in a country like Mali, especially in view of uncertain agricultural yields and current jihadism threats. The migrations of Malians are circular either within the country or to neighboring countries. Bandjagara to Abidjan (towards Cote d`Ivoire) for the Fulani Diawambe traders and the Bamako-Thies (towards Senegal) for the Bambara ethnic group are the much-transited migration routes for Malian migrants (Cissé & Daum, 2010; 378

Climate Variability and New Fish Eldorados In Africa

Sougane, 2014). Malians – the rural population – are particularly threatened by food insecurity and jihadism, and most of them undertake forced displacement and migration in search of income (UNICEF, OCDE & OCHA, 2019). Similar fluxes occur in Nigeria where internal migrations are very developed. A large concentration of migrants are noticed in the states of Abia, Port-Harcourt, Anambra, Lagos, Ebonyi, Enugu, Oyo; Delta, Bayelsa, and Abuja being the federal capitals (Igbolo & Simeon, 2017). According to Ikwuyatum (2016, p. 119), the net migration values for migrants, in descending order of importance are, respectively, for migrants from South–South, NorthCentral, South-East, North-East, South-West, and North-West. The increasing importance of South–South and North-Central (Middle belt) zones is essentially due to the presence of natural resources (Petroleum) and administrative function (the presence of FCT-Federal Capital Territory-Abuja). One of the most important migration corridors in the sub-region is the one in Benin – Nigeria with 362,000 (UNCTAD, 2018). Most of the migration dynamics in Nigeria are responses to negative environmental factors. Severe drought occurrences in Northern Nigeria from 1903 to 2011 (studies on Yobe state) have led to various internal migratory movements. Heavy floods, in 2020, caused food shortages, killed 150 persons, impacted 129,000 individuals, and displaced 25,000 people in Jigawa, Kebbi, Kwara, Bayelsa, Rivers, and Delta, mostly in the northern and southern states (see: https:// floodlist​.com​/tag​/nigeria). Intense migration flows to coastal areas (see the study of Yusuf, 2019). Spates of violence unleashed on farmers by herdsmen in the northern, eastern, and southwestern parts of Nigeria are often the bed of many forms of violence. In addition to that, the rainfall deficits and increasing temperature influence internal and inter-regional migrations as the agricultural sector (mostly in the north of country) is becoming more and more vulnerable to extreme weather. The tensions linked to the Boko Haram conflict have also put thousands of Nigerians on the routes of exile, not to mention the kidnappings of young girls and the repression of the legal army on armed groups, which also scares away many local populations and force them to emigrate. In the Borno State, “traditional hunters” are even recruited and hired by the government authorities to stop the abuses of the Boko Haram armed group on the population. Important population migrants from the neighboring countries (Benin, Togo) are also arriving in the different parts of Nigeria in search of diverse resources (Dreier & Sow, 2015) such as fertile land, water, pastures, and jobs. These gloomy and scattered data on several West African countries suggest that the climate is racing even if one has to proceed with caution with the various exceptional climatic events which follow one another and which are becoming more and more numerous on the continent. These “climate anomalies” do not always have to be automatically linked to climate change. Other elements such as social, political, environmental, cultural, and demographic factors are always also to be taken into account. This is why the paragraphs that come will lead us to brief a case example of West Africa as a whole and particularly Senegal as a specific case study that will attempt to analyze climatic realities (ocean ecosystems and fisheries depletion) and their linkages with migration. Beyond this exercise, the objective is to facilitate an overview of the relevant, significant, and important approaches to the relations between climate threats on ocean ecosystems, biodiversity, and fisheries and migratory movements in Africa, but also to highlight the main contributions of these case studies while establishing the contexts of the issue. One of the objectives, and not the least, is also to draw the meaning of the problems and to identify the relationships between climate variability and migratory dynamics. 379

Papa Sow

Climate Variability and Illegal Fishing Are Affecting Ocean Ecosystems in West Africa A fishery is defined by the FAO Glossary as “people involved, species or type of fish, area of water or seabed, method of fishing, class of boats, and purpose of the activities or a combination of the foregoing features”. The definition can include a combination of fish and fishers in a region, the latter fishing for similar species with similar gear types. In West Africa fisheries are: (i) mainly situated in tropical ecosystems with variable productivity; (ii) either underexploited to moderately exploited, or fully exploited to depleted. The interaction with other sectors is very limited. In West Africa, there is less “modern scientific technology” to develop fisheries above all those practiced inland. In the field of fisheries, data are scarce and sporadic. No national data are available on the assessment of regularly collected impacts. The official data, very scattered, come mostly from international organizations (FAO, 2020; OECD, 2020; AfDB, 2020, etc.). There is a big concern which is currently undergoing to make visible sea and inland fisheries in the international agenda debates on climate variability (FAO, OECD, AfDB). As most of the fisheries are in crisis, there is a need to set up an opportunity to capture learning. Since 2006, Worm et al. predicted that the world will run out of commercial fish stocks in 2048. The data that Worm et al. exploited highlighted the societal consequences of an ongoing erosion of diversity that appears to be accelerating on a global scale. This collapse will be exacerbated by climate variability/climate change (changing fish migration, habitat destruction, and ocean acidification). Sea level rise, flooding, and storms will contribute to an increase in the vulnerability of coastal and inland fisheries. It is known that oceanic ecosystems are responsible for sequestering carbon in the deep ocean due to their major role in atmospheric CO2 and climate (Harley et al., 2006). Within ocean ecosystems, there is a rich biodiversity with large predatory fish, the exploitation of which constitutes a source of income and/or protein for many people across the Globe (FAO, 2007, 2008; Cochrane, 2009). Nevertheless, climate change threatens these ecosystems and the valuable services they provide while altering the temperature of the ocean, its stratification and circulation, and the uptake of anthropogenic carbon that causes water acidification. This leads to negative changes in the primary production on which the various ecosystems and biodiversity are based upon. The West African states are being aware of the situation reason why they have created since 1984 an SRFC (Sub-regional Fisheries Commission-SRFC; in French: CSRP – Commission sous-régionale des Pêches) and its members are Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Sierra Leone, The Gambia, and Cabo-Verde. In terms of fishery governance, the SRFC has three consultative bodies: (i) the Conference of Ministers; (ii) the Coordination Committee, and (iii) the Permanent Secretariat. In these six countries, fishing contributes between 2% and 6% of the GNP.1 Sea fishing provides around 1 million jobs in the subregion, nearly half of which are occupied by fishermen. In 2011, exports of fishery products were valued at USD 983 million per year (CSRP, 2021). Geographically there are two large marine ecosystems (the Canary Islands and the Gulf of Guinea Currents). These marine ecosystems cover an area of 1.6 million km² with a population of over 40 million. More than 65% of which are in the coastal zone and a seafront of 3,500 km. Fish catches in West Africa are estimated at 2 million tons per year with 70% of small pelagic (sardinellas, ethmaloses, etc.), and they remain vital for food security. With regard to the fishing fleet, catches are made by nearly 41,000 canoes/boats and more than 1,000 industrial fishing vessels,

380

Climate Variability and New Fish Eldorados In Africa

including 600 foreign vessels (European Union, China, etc.) navigate in the West African waters. These figures do not take into account the catches of illegal fishing; a real plague for the sub-region and whose eradication is a priority for the SRFC. The Gulf of Guinea is the most depleted area by illegal fishing boats coming from China, Taiwan, Russia, South Korea, Spain, France, and Thailand. China expanded its West Africa fishing operations from 13 vessels in 1985 to 462 in 2013 (BBC, 2015). Illegal fishing is part of highly organized transnational criminal operations involved in a range of criminal activities such as environmental crimes, money laundering, and piracy. Besides, the marine environment is destroyed through damaging fishing methods.

Senegal: Fisheries Depletion and Overfishing Are Engendering “Ecological Migrants” In Senegal, where fishing is a vital sector, the USAID/COMFISH (2018) project and other political (ME-MP, 2016) and research institutions have shown the high vulnerability of marine and coastal ecosystems. These depend a lot on climatic parameters such as upwelling, precipitation, temperature, salinity, winds, etc. Apart from the Autonomous Port of Dakar dedicated to shipping and industrial fishing, the maritime artisanal fishing ports are all located along the coast 750 km long. Most fishermen practice artisanal fishing and the main fishing regions are Dakar, Thiès, Louga, Fatick, Kaolack, and Ziguinchor. The main ethnic groups of fishers are Wolof and Lébu (West and North of Senegal), Serer Niominka (Center West), and Diola (South: mainly Casamance). The small pelagic fish provides work to more than 15,000 canoes, totalizing 80% of the catches. More than 600,000 people directly or indirectly are employed in the sector of fisheries. Sea fishing accounted for 1.4% of real GDP in 2011 and fish products summed up to nearly 136 million euros (Cofrepêche, 2013). About 40,000 tons are annually exported, mainly towards the EU, contributing about 12% to the total exports of Senegal (Mpam, 2013). In most Senegalese fishing areas (e.g., Kayar, Saint-Louis, Joal, Fass Boye), climate change affects phytoplanktons, fish (species biogeography and phenology) while modifying the dominance and distribution of many species (example of small pelagics), as well as the structure, functioning, and diversity of marine ecosystems (USAID/COMFISH, 2018). However, Senegalese coastal systems are considered to be immense reserves of material and energy exchanges, which play a major role in biogeochemical cycles, but are subject to natural forcing such as climatic influence. Coastal erosion, loss of biodiversity (disappearance of species), and sea level rise also contribute to climate variability. Added to this are anthropogenic actions (overfishing), which contribute to influencing marine and coastal biological systems. One of the greatest threats generated by climate change and human actions on fishing also concerns the impact of the latter on the fishery resource. Therefore, there is a fear that in the long run, the food security of the populations will no longer be able to be ensured. According to the USAID/COMFISH report (USAID, 2018), recent prospects for 2035 (with the National Fisheries/Aquaculture Adaptation Plan, ME-MP, 2016) on changes in natural fish production are sharply declining. This is due to the reduction in upwelling (upwelling of cold water rich in mineral salts). From November to June, the cold Canary Current, linked to the alizé maritime winds, causes cold, mineral-rich deep waters to rise (upwelling). In addition, from June, the Equatorial Counter Current (also known as the Guinea Current) causes an accumulation of warm water (piling-up) along the coasts, especially to the South of Cape Verde. 381

Papa Sow

Consequences are the rich and varied marine fauna/large amount of alluvium carried by the Senegal and Gambia rivers. The Senegalese coasts from Mauritania to Guinea Bissau are considered the richest in fish in the world. This situation forces the fish to migrate from warm areas to cooler areas and causes their size to decrease. This warming phenomenon also acts on the quantity of fish stocks, their migratory flow, their mortality rate, and the decline in catches (FAO, 2018, 2020). We must also add that the overexploitation of the fishery resources caused by anthropogenic actions and uncontrolled international fish piracy. With regard to the Senegalese Exclusive Economic Zone, there is a loss of 170 billion XOF (Francophone Africa currency) in terms of monitoring and surveillance against piracy and non-legal exploitation, trawling, dredging rocky bottoms, marine pollution, and the use of explosives (Greenpeace, 2012). More than 500 boats from Russia, China, and the Eastern and Western European countries are fishing into the West African waters and are contributing also to depleting fisheries resources. The lack of fishes is causing serious food problems in terms of falling incomes (fishers earn with difficulty), more expenses on Health and Education, etc. A kind of “Fish War” is being currently observed between the countries stealing the fishes in coastal West countries and the countries of West Africa (Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea Bissau, etc.). The decline in fishery resources, for example, has resulted in some African countries in the rise of piracy (Somalia) and/or transforming fishers into smugglers (Senegal). This situation has generated the vulnerability of populations, and it has been accompanied often by severe social unrests in the case of Senegal. The overexploitation of fishery resources has repercussions on the populations who live from fishing and causes employment problems and food insecurity. For example, the boom in the fish meal and oil industry, with factories (mostly with external capital) that process these products indeed use fresh fish (1.5 tons per year) intended to feed local populations in order to make a product for fish food in aquaculture in Europe or Asia. The flour also feeds livestock, poultry, and pets but also is used in the pharmaceutical industry in the wealthiest countries. Industrials need 4–5 kg of fresh fish to make 1 kg of flour and oil. The latter is used in particular to manufacture omega-3 capsules or for various products from the pharmaceutical industry. The transformation targets in particular Sardinella and Bonga, which are, in Senegal, the most accessible to the populations. In West Africa, females usually process them by salting and drying them to produce smoked fish for local consumption. The depleted fish stock makes it harder for small-scale fishers to support their families. Senegalese authorities argue that, every year, they are losing 230 million euros which causes a great loss in the fishery/fishing sector. Perry and Sumaila (2007) have studied marine ecosystem variability on human community responses in the case of West Africa. Other studies (Binet et al., 2010; Deme, Bailleux & Ndiaye, 2012; Katikiro & Macusi, 2012; Binet et al., 2013; Failler et al., 2020) have also shown that the decline of fisheries production as well as the disappearance of some marine species have been caused by climate variability in a country like Senegal. Earlier, Lehodey et al. (2006) argued that environmental variability determines the distribution, migration, and abundance of fish. The abundance of fish has been, for long time, an ecological factor by excellence. However, this abundance is now relegated behind because what drives the fishers rather is the scarcity of resources. These phenomena have caused different types of fish migrations and of migrant fishers. This rarefaction of fishes makes them flee their usual zones of fishing and puts them in search of new zones where they can find fish and marine products. At the beginning of the 1990s, countries such as Guinea Bissau and Mauritania were considered “new coastal pioneer fronts” with inexhaustible and almost underexploited 382

Climate Variability and New Fish Eldorados In Africa

fisheries resources. Today these two countries host a large workforce of Senegalese migrants working in the fisheries sector or fishing in their maritime waters. Therefore, it represents a forced migration, which we are witnessing nowadays. Bioenvironmental conditions continue to play an important role in the movement of those fishers. A part of the marine ecosystem variability, overfishing, represents also the main driver of emigration (Sow, Marmer & Scheffran, 2015, 2016). Migrant fishers, in Senegal, mostly seasonal migrants are becoming highly dependent on climate variation. The fishing zones have gradually moved away from the places of residence of the fishers. Current migrations obey a continuity and a permanent presence in fishing areas whose boundaries are increasingly receding. In the process of artisanal fisheries migration throughout Senegal and from Senegal to West Africa, several trends emerge. The environment (the migration of species such as round Sardinella, decrease in fish stocks such as demersals and pelagics) and politico-economic situations (social tensions, depreciation of market prices, overfishing, etc.) influence the various migratory processes which are also very diverse. Variations in marine environmental conditions, climate change, and the scarcity of fishery resources are the main reasons that push Senegalese working in the fishing sector to migrate (Binet, Failler & Agossah, 2010). In Senegal, the fisheries’ political economy plays an important role in migration; and as such, it creates many rents for different groups in the economy along with several competing interests interacting within legislative and several other public arenas to influence the flow of the migrant fishers. The fishing sector, in Senegal, is one of the pillars of socio-economic stability of the country. It is of strategic importance because it occupies approximately 15% of the active population according to CRODT (2000), thus contributing to the sustainability of food security and to supporting thousands of people. Fisheries-related migrations are likely to considerably improve the situation of Senegalese fishers, thus reducing inequalities at the national level, but also shed light on the links between mobility and inequalities within the migrant places of origin. Migrant fishers in Senegal belong to the following ethnic groups: Lebu and Wolof from the West and North coasts, the Diola in the South, and the Serer Nyominka from the center. With regard to inland fishing, the Tukulor Thiubalo are the best known and operate between Senegal and Mauritania, along the Senegal River, but also towards the Saloum River (center of the country) where they specialize in shrimp fishing. From the mid-1980s until today (2021), migration has evolved, especially in the diversification of routes. Each group of fishers has its own strategy and technique which has rules in the different stages. Fishers from the North Coast (Lebu, Wolof, and Thiubalo) migrate to Mauritania and the South (Casamance, Guinee Bissau). They settle in permanent camps, either in Lompoul, Kayar, or between Mbour and Joal Fadiouth, but also in Casamance and in neighboring countries such as Gambia, Guinea Bissau (in the Bijagos Islands), and even as far as Guinea Conakry. While most are self-employed, others are employed by Portuguese, Spanish, Chinese, or French shipowners. The biggest foreign markets, apart from West Africa (Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana), remain Japan, South Korea, and China, countries that demand lots of shark fins. As for the Nyominga and Diola ethnic groups, they are specialized in fishing for small pelagics, barracuda and sharks, and emigrate to Dakar (in Hann), in the various islands of Saloum and Casamance (especially the Nyominka), towards Gambia and as far as Guinea Bissau (Binet, Failler, Agossah & Bailleux, 2010; but also our own interviews in the field). There is a large colony of Nyominka in Mediterranean Europe, especially with the Spanish and French fishing fleets. In France, most of the Nyominka are settled in the port city of Sète and around 383

Papa Sow

Montpellier (Southeast France). In Senegal, Diola and Nyominka fish during the dry season and return to their homes to practice agriculture during the rainy season, while, for example, the Lebu who live off fishing 12 out of 12 months. Senegalese migrant fishers have thus gradually become “ecological refugees” in search of new fish eldorados in the West African sub-region. Many Senegalese fishers (the “Boat captains”), because of resource depletion, have emigrated and/or became passeurs (conveyors of clandestine migrants) towards Spain and the Mediterranean Sea (Sow et al., 2016). One of the most prominent consequences is that Senegalese fishers are migrating to the West African sub-region (Agreements for letting them in the foreign waters are being passed between Senegal and Mauritania, Senegal and Guinea Bissau, etc.). Their number, difficult to estimate because of the data dearth, is constantly increasing both in the West African sub-region and towards Europe. Many of them now take advantage of the abundance of fish in the waters of neighboring countries or in exclusively protected waters (rivers and fragile ecosystems). Despite the existence of a network of marine protected areas in West Africa (RAMPAO), it remains difficult to curb the permanent intrusions of migrant fishers into these protected areas. In their migrations, development programs initiated by public authorities and international organizations as well as the opening of export markets often help them.

Conclusion The dynamics of fisheries exploitation, development, and management are highly dependent on the physical environment, the variability of the resources exploited, and the adaptation strategies of fishers to seasonal variations (new complementary activities and migrations). These different elements also involve natural fluctuations and the capacity of fishing communities and fishing equipment to adapt in new environments. This chapter tries to demonstrate that the communities, and above all fishers, which are often regarded as future victims of the climate crisis, based on their geographical locations and access to resources, are capable of adapting to even tremendous change through short-distance mobility/migration or behavioral changes. Ecological factors which are often the main motives for migration can force migrant fishers to migrate from Senegal to other more lenient places. Seasonal movements are therefore always conditioned by the availability of a particular resource in one specific place in another (Binet, Failler & Agossah, 2010). However, the availability of this resource obeys to the bioenvironmental conditions that deteriorate from year to year. Economically, fishing activity is intrinsically linked to the maximization of finance, the accumulation of capital in a difficult social situation. The search for profit, therefore, contributes to the dynamics of migration. Thanks to the migrations that Senegalese fishers develop, they manage to feed their families, pay for the education and health of the children, but also save money to later invest in other lucrative activities (small businesses, urban taxis). In terms of organization and techniques, thanks to the income obtained and the funding received from the Senegalese state, migrant fishers have almost all converted to pursue seine fishing. In the value chain, there is also a good mastery of the processing of fishery products not only in Senegal but also in the countries where these Senegalese migrants emigrate. The new fishing grounds, made available to fishers, have also increased their mobility in the subregion, which has enabled them to expand prospecting and fishing areas with larger boats equipped with new engines. The technical nature of the catches and the means of processing have also led to a dynamic migration of the fishers’ spouses who are active first in the sale of fresh fish, but also in the drying of small pelagics in The Gambia and Mauritania especially. 384

Climate Variability and New Fish Eldorados In Africa

But, the overexploitation and growing transformation of fishery resources, monopolized by the big industries, have repercussions on the populations who live from fishing. This causes employment problems and food insecurity. For example, the boom in the fish meal and oil industry, with factories that process these products indeed use fresh fish (1.5 tons per year) intended to feed local populations in order to make a product for fish food in aquaculture in Europe or Asia (Greenpeace, 2021). The flour also feeds livestock, poultry, and pets but is also used in the pharmaceutical industry. Industrials need 4–5 kg of fresh fish to make 1 kg of flour and oil. The latter is used in particular to manufacture omega-3 capsules or for various products from the pharmaceutical industry. The transformation targets in particular Sardinella and Bonga, which are the most accessible to the populations. In West Africa, women usually process them by salting and drying them to produce smoked fish. Since the early 1990s, new policies have been added to the above factors. Indeed, the fisheries policies that have taken place are encouraging the arrival of migrations, in particular through access to credit and the development of new markets. Countries like Mauritania and Guinea Bissau are attracting more migrant fishers because of the fishing potential offered, but also the massive investments in fisheries. The rush towards these fish eldorados has led to the implementation of sectoral policies which today aim to limit fishing activities. New management measures such as quotas for migrant canoes, the development of areas of regulated fishing reserves, the introduction of licenses, etc., now tend to slow down migratory dynamics. Mauritania, for example, has had to pursue restrictive and repressive policies against Senegalese migrants whom the Mauritanian navy often accuses of violating their territorial waters. Several fishing agreements have been signed with Mauritania and fishing restrictions from Mauritania have often led to violent clashes between Mauritanian fishers and sailors, sometimes with losses of life according to the press. Finally, it is important that future studies open up new avenues of research on how the new financing funds, the generalization of fishing technologies, the remittances, the creation of fishers’ associations, the ethnic recomposition, the management of the fisheries conflicts, and the politics and governance of sub-regional fishing have an impact on current migratory dynamics.

Note 1 All figures listed in this paragraph are taken from CRSP data.

Bibliography Adaawen, S. A., V. Dreier & P. Sow. (2015). Migration and natural resource scarcity within the context of climate change in West Africa. OIM Policy Brief Series, Report number: Issue 3; Vol. 1. [Policy Brief]. AfDB. (2020). The Covid-19 pandemic and the fishery sector in Africa. African Natural Resource Centre, Abidjan, AfDB. BBC NEWS. (2015). China illegally fishing off W Africa – Greenpeace. Retrieved May 20, 2015, from https://www​.bbc​.com​/news​/world​-africa​-32817193. Binet, T., P. Failler & M. Agossah. (2010). Migrations contemporaines des pêcheurs artisans en Afrique de l’Ouest : Synthèse et axes de recherche. Rapport n° 3 de l’étude relative à l’état des lieux et l’évolution récente des migrations de pêcheurs artisans dans les pays de la CSRP. Programme IUCN/ RECARGAO « Renforcement des capacités régionales de gestion de la pêche en Afrique de l'Ouest ». IUCN, Dakar, Sénégal, 22 p.

385

Papa Sow Binet, T., P. Failler, M. Agossah & R. Bailleux. (2010). Evolution des migrations de pêcheurs artisans en Afrique de l’Ouest depuis la fin des années 1980. Rapport n° 2 de l’étude relative à l’état des lieux et l’évolution récente des migrations de pêcheurs artisans dans les pays de la CSRP. Programme IUCN/ RECARGAO « Renforcement des capacités régionales de gestion de la pêche en Afrique de l'Ouest ». IUCN, Dakar, Sénégal, 54 p. Binet, T. A., B. de Battisti, P. Failler & J. P. Maréchal. (2013). Valeur économique totale des écosystèmes marins et côtiers de la future aire marine protégée régionale du Prêcheur (Martinique). Etudes Caribéennes. Retrieved from http://etudescaribeennes​.revues​.org​/6620. doi: 10.4000/ etudescaribeennes.6620. Bukari, K. N., P. Sow & J. Scheffran. (2018). Cooperation and co-existence between farmers and herders in the midst of violent farmer-herder conflicts in Ghana. African Studies Review, 124, 1–25. Bukari, K. N., P. Sow & J. Scheffran. (2020). Diversity and multiple drivers of pastoral Fulani migration to Ghana. Nomadic Peoples, 24, 4–31. Castles, S. (2002). Migration and community formation under conditions of globalization. The International Migration Review, 36(4), 1143–1168. Retrieved August 24, 2021, from http:// www​.jstor​.org​/stable​/4149495. Cissé, P. & C. Daum. (2010). Migrations internationales maliennes, Recomposition des territoires migratoires et impacts sur les sociétés d’origine. ISFRA, Bamako. Cochrane, K., C. DeYoung, D. Soto & T. Bahri. (2009). Climate change implications for fisheries and aquaculture: Overview of current scientific knowledge. FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Technical Paper No. 530. Cofrepêche, Nfds, Poseidon et Mrag. (2013). Évaluation prospective de l’opportunité d'un accord de partenariat dans le secteur de la pêche entre l'Union européenne et la République du Sénégal (sous le Contrat cadre MARE/2011/01 - Lot 3, contrat spécifique 5). Bruxelles, 114 p. CRODT. (2000). Revue sectorielle de la pêche au Sénégal : Aspects socio-economiques. Centre de recherche oceanographique de Dakar-Thiaroye. CSRP-Commission Sous Régionale sur la Pêche, 2021. See their website: http://spcsrp​.org​/en. Deme, M., R. Bailleux & K. Ndiaye. (2012). Migrations des pêcheurs artisans sénégalais : État des lieux. Crodt, Uicn, Prcm, Srfc, Wwf. Dreier, V. & P. Sow. (2015). Bialaba migrants from Northern Republic of Benin to Nigeria in search of productive land: Insights on living with climate change. Sustainability, 7(3), 3175–3203. El-Hinnawi, E. (1983). New and renewable sources of energy (natural resources and the environment series), Tycooly International Publisher; 1st edition, 144 pages. El-Hinnawi, E. (1985). Environmental refugees. UNEP, Nairobi, 41p. Failler, P., T. Binet, E. H. B. Deme, & M. Deme. (2020). Importance de la pêche migrante ouest- africaine au début du XXIe siècle. Revue Africaine des Migrations Internationales, n°1/Juin. FAO. (2007). Renforcer la capacité d’adaptation aux changements climatiques. Politiques de soutien des moyens d’existence et des pêches. Nouvelles orientations dans les pêches. Séries de notes de synthèse sur les questions de développement Nº 08. FAO. (2008). Report of the FAO expert workshop on climate change implications for fisheries and aquaculture. Rome, Italy, 7–9 April 2008. FAO Fisheries Report No. 870. FAO. (2018). Impacts du changement climatique sur les pêches et l’aquaculture: Synthèse des connaissances actuelles, options d’adaptation et d’atténuation. Résumé du Document technique de la FAO sur les pêches et l’aquaculture no 627. 48 pp. FAO. (2020). The state of world fisheries and aquaculture (2020). Sustainability in action. Rome. https://doi​.org​/10​.4060​/ca9229en. Faye, M., D. Tine, A. Fall, C. S. Faye, G. Niang, M. Mbaye & M. Diouf. (2020). Analysis of the recurrence of floods in the city of Tambacounda, Senegal, in the context of climate change. Nippon Journal of Environmental Science, 1(6), 1016. Greenpeace. (2012). Main basse sur la sardinelle. Le scandale des autorisations de pêche au Sénégal : Un frame en cinq actes. Enquête sur le Pillage Organise des Ressources Pélagiques du Sénégal Entre mars, 2010 et avril 2012. Greenpeace Africa, Johannesburg. Greenpeace. Greenpeace. (2021). Feeding a monster: How European aquaculture and Animalfeed industries are stealing food from west African communities. Greenpeace. Gutmann, M., D. Brown, A. Cunningham & J. Dykes. (2016). Migration in the 1930s: Beyond the dust bowl. Social Science History, 40(4), 707–740.

386

Climate Variability and New Fish Eldorados In Africa Gutscher, M. A. (2006). The great Lisbon earthquake and tsunami of 1755: Lessons from the recent Sumatra earthquakes and possible link to Plato’s Atlantis. European Review, 14(2), 181–191. Harley, C. D. G., R. A. Hughes, K. M. Hultgren, B. G. Miner, C. J. B. Sorte, C. S. Thornber, L. F. Rodriguez, L. Tomanek & S. L. Williams. (2006). The impacts of climate change in coastal marine systems. Ecology Letters, 9(2), 228–241. Igbolo, M. A. & A. S. Simeon. (2017). Labour migration in the Federal Capital Territory: Examining its impact on the socio-economic development of Gwagwalada area council, Abuja. IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science (IOSR-JHSS), 22(2), Ver. II, 4–19. Ikwuyatum, G. O. (2016). The pattern and characteristics of inter and intra regional migration in Nigeria. International Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 6(7), 114–124. IOM. (2021). Étude de base d’analyse du nexus Migration, Environnement et Changement Climatique (MECC) dans les communautés les plus touchées en République de Guinée. Rapport Final OIM. IPCC. 1990. Climate change. The IPCC First Assessment Scientific Report, IPCC, Cambridge, New York, Port Chester, Sydney, Cambridge University Press. Jacobson, J. L. (1988). Environmental refugees: A yardstick of habitability. Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society, 8(3), 257–258. doi:10.1177/027046768800800304. Katikiro, R. E. & E. D. Macusi. (2012). Impacts of climate change in West African fisheries and its implications on food production. Journal of Environmental Science and Management, 15(2), 83–95. Lehodey, P. et al. (2006). Climate variability, fish and fisheries. American Meteorological Society. Masih, I., S. Maskey, F. E. F. Mussá & P. Trambauer. (2014). A review of droughts in the African continent: A geospatial and long-term perspective. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussion, 11, 2679–2718. Maurer, J. M., J. M. Schaefer, S. Rupper & A. Corley. (2019). Acceleration of ice loss across the Himalayas over the past 40 years. Science Advances, 5(6), eaav7266. ME-MP-Ministère de l’environnement et Ministère de la pêche. (2016). Plan National d’Adaptation de la pêche et de l’Aquaculture face au changement climatique Horizon, 2035, ME-MP, 2016, 143. Mpam. (2013). Conseil Interministériel sur la Pêche au Sénégal. Document introductive. Mpam, Dakar. Myers, N. & J. Kent. (1995). Environmental exodus: An emergent crisis in the global arena. The Climate Institute, Washington, DC. OECD. (2020). OECD review of fisheries 2020. OECD Publishing, Paris. doi: 10.1787/7946bc8a-en. Okumu, W., B. N. Kaderi, P. Sow & E. Onyiego. (2017). The role of Elite Rivalry and Ethnic Politics in Livestock raids in Northern Kenya. Journal of Modern African Studies-Cambridge University, 55(3), 479–509. PERC. (2020). Learning from Cyclone Idai and Cyclone Kenneth to inform long-term disaster risk reduction programming in Mozambique. Post Event Review Capability-PERC, Ifrc, Embassy of Switzerland in Mozambique, Iset International. Perry, R. I. & R. U. Sumaila. (2007). Marine ecosystem variability and human community responses: The example of Ghana, West Africa. Marine Policy, 31(2), 125–134. Piguet, É., A. Pécoud & P. de Guchteneire (eds.). (2011). Migration and climate change. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge and NewYork, 442 pp. Ravenstein, E. (1889). The laws of migration. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 52(2), 241–305. doi: 10.2307/2979333. Scheffran, J., E. Marmer & P. Sow. (2012). Migration as a contribution to resilience and innovation in climate adaptation: Social networks and co-development in northwest Africa. Applied Geography, 33(1), 119–127. Sougane, A. (2014). Migrations et transferts: Un état des lieux. In: J. Brunet-Jailly, J. Charmes, & D. Konaté (eds.), Le Mali Contemporain. IRD Éditions. doi: :10.4000/books.irdeditions.21263. Sly, D. F. & D. Tayman. (1977). The ecological approach to migration reexamined. American Sociological Review, 42(October), 783–795. Sow, P. (2012). Uncertainties and conflicting environmental adaptation strategies in the region of the Pink Lake, Senegal. ZEF Working Paper Series n. 101. University of Bonn [Working Paper]. Sow, P. (2018). Marriage migrations and distributive justice of morals and environmental resources in northwestern Benin. In: B. Engels & K. Dietz (eds.), Climate change in Africa: Social and political impacts, conflicts and strategies. Berlin, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien, Peter Lang & OSI-Club, pp. 69–88.

387

Papa Sow Sow, P., S. Adaawen & J. Scheffran. (2014). Migration, social demands and environmental change amongst the Frafra of Northern Ghana and the Biali in Northern Benin. Sustainability, 6(1), 375–398. Sow, P., E. Marmer & J. Scheffran. (2015). Between the heat and the hardships: Climate Change and mixed migration flows in Morocco. Migration and Development, 5(2), 293–313–. Sow, P., E. Marmer & J. Scheffran. (2016). En route to Hell: Dreams of adventure and traumatic experiences among West African “boat people” to Europe. In: L. Mannik (ed.), Migration by boat: Discourses of trauma, exclusion and survival, Volume 35, Forced Migration, Berghahn, New York and Oxford. Mpandeli, S., L. Nhamo, S. Hlahla, D. Naidoo, S. Liphadzi, A. T. Modi & T. Mabhaudhi. (2020). Migration under climate change in Southern Africa: A nexus planning perspective. Sustainability, 12, 4722. UNCTAD. (2018). Economic development in Africa: Migration for structural transformation. UNCTAD. Retrieved from https://unctad​.org​/news​/economic​-development​-africa​-migration​ -structural​-transformation. UNICEF-DRC. (2021). Volcano Eruption Goma 2021. Situation Report #2, Unicef-Drc. UNICEF, OCDE & OCHA. (2019). Analyse Préliminaire des risques, des vulnérabilités et des actifs de résilience dans la Région du Liptako-Gourma. R-CAP Resilience Common Analysis and Prioritization, UNICEF-OCDE-OCHA. USAID COMFISH Plus. (2018). Changement climatique et pêche: expériences des projets USAID/ COMFISH et USAID COMFISH plus. USAID. van der Land, V. (2018). Migration and environmental change in the West African Sahel. Why capabilities and aspirations matter. Routledge Studies in Environmental Migration, Displacement and Resettlement. Routledge, London. Warner, K. (2011). Environmental change and migration: Methodological considerations from groundbreaking global survey. Population and Environment, 33, 3–27. Worm, B. et al. (2006). Impacts of biodiversity loss on ocean ecosystem services. Interface Science, 314, 787–790. Yusuf, A. M. (2019). Climate-induced migration in coastal areas of Nigeria and its economic effects on coastal ecosystem livelihoods. Lafia Journal of Economics and Management Sciences (LAJEMS), 4(1). 128-142. Zelinsky, W. (1971). The hypothesis of the mobility transition. Geographical Review, 61(2), 219–249. doi: 10.2307/213996.

388

23 MIGRATION DATA MANAGEMENT IN AFRICA Daniel Makina and John Atwebembeire Mushomi

Introduction Data, information, and knowledge are viewed as distinct kinds of economic commodities in which each possesses a specific type of utility (Boisot & Canals, 2004; Tiwana, 2002). Boisot and Canals (2004, p. 47) aptly summarize the relationship as: “information is an extraction from data that by modifying the relevant probability distributions, has a capacity to perform useful work on an agent’s knowledge base”. In other words, information evolves from data that is formalized in databases, books and documents, while knowledge is actionable information that evolves with experience, successes, failures and learning over time which are shared among collective minds. In the context of migration data, its utility is the ability to provide information for mainstreaming migration into policy, planning frameworks and development initiatives. Thus, migration data enables migration policies and programmes to be evidence based. Traditionally, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs’ (UNDESA’s) population division has collected and collated migration data from censuses and surveys of member states to assist in this regard. Other related international organizations that are involved in collecting and collating migration data include, among others: the International Labour Organization (ILO), the World Bank, the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Pew Research Centre, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) (student mobility), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) (child migration), the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) (human trafficking and migrant smuggling) and the World Bank. Through coordination with data providers across agencies, the IOM’s Global Migration Data Portal provides a one-stop shop for migration data.

Rationale for Migration Data Management in Africa Producing reliable migration statistics is necessary for the implementation and monitoring of migration and development initiatives. Despite the progress made on Migration Statistics

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-28

389

Daniel Makina and John Atwebembeire Mushomi

in Africa over the past decades, there are persistent gaps in the quantity and quality of the data collected by national and international actors. Data are often not disaggregated by basis characteristics such as sex and age; the data may well be collected but not properly and effectively analysed or disseminated; data sharing within and between countries may be limited. Issues of capacity and limited human or financial resources, lack of harmonization of common migration concepts and definitions, insufficient integration of different data sources and limited systematic collection, management, analysis and disaggregation continue to be some of the common challenges faced by many countries in Africa and beyond. In order to enhance states’ capacity to effectively and sustainably improve migration governance, there is a need to strengthen the collection, management, analysis and dissemination of migration data that will inform policy formulation and implementation. This aspiration is well reflected in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as well as in the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM), which underscores the need for strengthening “the global evidence base on international migration by improving and investing in the collection, analysis and dissemination of accurate, reliable, comparable data”. The need to strengthen migration data collection, exchange and analysis is also in line with the main African Union (AU) initiatives, including Agenda 2063 and the Migration Policy Framework for Africa (MPFA) Plan of Action (2018–2030), which identify migration data and statistics as a key pillar in improving migration governance in the continent. Keeping the above in view, a strong collaborative effort needs to be established among all relevant institutions working on migration data at the continental level. At the national level, countries collect and collate migration data specific to their needs using a variety of methods that could be broadly classified into four categories, namely (1) National Censuses (2), statistical surveys, (3) population registers and (4) administrative procedures. While the UN has long sought standardization in collecting data and has issued international guidelines on such standardization, this has not been widely implemented by some member states especially developing countries due to lack of resources and technical capacity. The IOM (2018, p. 52) reports that not all countries collect data on the same core census questions: country of birth, citizenship and year or period of arrival, as recommended by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD). For instance, it is reported that while more than 87% of the 149 countries with available data asked a census question on country of birth, only 7% asked for citizenship, and 50.3% asked for the year or period of arrival during the 2010 round of censuses.

Global Migration Trends and Highlights According to the UNDESA (2020), globally, there are 280.6 million migrants. The percentage of international migrant stock is estimated to be 3.6%. Females constitute 48.1% of the total stock of international migrants while 12.2% and 14.6% constitute international migrants who are above 65 years and below 19 years, respectively. Figure 23.1 shows a steady increase in international stock of migrants over the years. It shows that by 2020, the international migrants were slightly over 280 million people and this figure was expected to continue growing. Figure 23.2 shows that since 1990, international migration has been on the rise and no part of the world has recorded a reduction in international migrants. However, different parts have received different shares of international migrants. For example, Figure 23.2 shows that compared to the rest of the world, Europe has recorded the highest share of inter390

Migration Data Management in Africa

Figure 23.1  Total Number of International Migrants at Mid-Year 2020

Figure 23.2  Number of International Migrants by Major Area of Destination

national migrants over the years. Other parts that have recorded a large share of international migrants include North Africa and North America. As migration took more prominence in recent years so did the recognition of the importance of migration data management. More recently, the UN Agenda 2030 for sustainable development explicitly included migration in sustainable development goal 17 urging the need to: strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development and requests in Target 17.18 to by 2020, enhance capacity-build391

Daniel Makina and John Atwebembeire Mushomi

ing support to developing countries, including for least developed countries and small island developing states, to increase significantly the availability of high quality, timely and reliable data, disaggregated by income, gender, age, race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability, geographic location and other characteristics relevant in national contexts. Subsequently, the Global Compact on Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) concluded in December 2018 has 23 objectives, the first of which commits UN member states to “collect and utilize accurate and disaggregated data as a basis for evidence-based policies”. Furthermore, the GCM calls upon the development of a global programme on migration data capacity-building.

Importance of Reliable Migration Data Migration data is critical for evidence-based mainstreaming of migration into policy, planning and development frameworks. Policy-makers acknowledge that the non-existence or inaccessibility of detailed, comparable, disaggregated data on migrant stocks and flows is the greatest obstacle to the formulation of evidence-based policies required to maximize the benefits of migration. Data is often not disaggregated by migrant status and as a result it is not known, for instance, the share of migrants that participates in social protection programmes, and those who are able to access health and education services. The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 17.8 focuses on data and monitoring and suggests disaggregation of data by migrant status to address the problem. Figure 23.3 demonstrates the growth of international migrants over the years. In fact, the number of international migrants worldwide has grown faster than the world’s population. However, there are noticeable differences between major areas. In Europe, Northern America and Oceania, international migrants accounted for at least 10% of the population. By contrast, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean, less than 2% of the population consisted of international migrants. International migration contributes significantly to population growth in many parts of the world and reverses negative growth in some countries or areas. According to the 2018 Report by the IOM Global Migration Data Analysis Centre (GMDAC) and McKinsey & Company,1 reliable migration data enables identification of problems or challenges, facilitates the design of appropriate responses and effective monitoring of the effects of migration policies. This would in turn assist policy-makers to manage better migration outcomes such as:

• • • •

Protection of migrants in vulnerable situations; Filling of labour market shortages in a targeted way; Management of asylum procedures efficiently; and Increasing net remittance flows.

The Report of the Commission on International Migration Data for Development Research and Policy compiled for the Center for Global Development by Thomas et al. (2009, p. 2) made the following recommendations to improve international migration data in the short term using the existing institutions and at low cost: 1) To ask three basic questions in every population census – country of citizenship, country of birth and country of previous residence – then publish cross-tabulations of this information by age, sex and level of education. 392

Migration Data Management in Africa

Figure 23.3  Actual and Projected Change in Total Population over Five-Year Time Periods by Major Area, from 2000 to 2050, with and without International Migration Starting in 2015 (Millions)

2) To exploit existing administrative data sources that often contain rich and poorly utilized information on international movements. 3) To compile existing data from the labour force surveys of countries around the world into a single, harmonized, frequently updated database. 4) To provide public access to anonymous individual records of international migrants from surveys and administrative data to allow major improvements in the quality of research while maintaining strict confidentiality. 393

Daniel Makina and John Atwebembeire Mushomi

5) To increase the systematic use of standardized modules of migration-related questions in ongoing household survey programmes, particularly those in developing countries. The United Nations Statistics Commission has set standards and recommendations on the definitions and methods for the generation of statistics including those of international migration. The Statistics Division of UNDESA provides guidance on the implementation of these recommendations. Furthermore, the UN provides guidelines for exchanging data to improve emigration statistics, sending countries wishing to use immigration data of receiving countries could use different sources of data in accordance to their specific needs.2​ Similarly, the IOM (2007, p. 33) recommends adoption of the migration data-sharing mechanism (DSM) in efforts to enhance timely access to critical migration-related data and information whose steps include:

a) Establishment of a network of core institutions dealing with migration-related data; b) Mapping of existing national statistical infrastructures; c) Identifying an agreed minimum set of aggregated overall data indicators; d) Creating an efficient electronic data exchange mechanism; e) Organizing national and regional workshops to discuss data management and policy trends; and f) Addressing national and regional needs through training workshops and technical assistance. Despite the existence of all these elaborate guidelines on data collection, the availability of relevant and reliable data on international migration is limited. The limitation is more severe in Africa because of poor border management systems (porous borders) and lack of resources to formulate and fund migration data collection frameworks. To underscore the severity of lack of resources, the 2008 UN Sustainable Development Goals Report observed that although at the end of 2017 there were 31 African countries implementing national statistical plans (with migration data capturing modules), only three such plans were fully funded.

TERRITORY OF COUNTRY

POPULATION REGISTER

Citizens

Non-citizens with residence permits

Citizens living abroad

Figure 23.4  Main Elements of a Population Register

394

Persons without documents

Visitors & travellers in transit

Migration Data Management in Africa

Overall, data on migration and remittance flows in Africa are often limited, out of date, or unreliable largely due to three reasons. First, many countries in Africa have no established infrastructure that can capture data on migration and remittance flows. Second, intra-continental and regional migration as well as remittance transfer is usually informal, which makes it difficult to incorporate them in the official statistics. Third, many African countries have irregular censuses, which are critical in collecting data on migration dynamics. For instance, the data on remittance flows in Africa is significantly understated. In 2016, the World Bank estimated that only about half of the 54 countries in Africa compile remittance data, and even where the data is compiled, it suffers from significant gaps. Many countries on the African continent and elsewhere are grappling with difficult choices on how to manage migration (Ratha et al., 2011). General weakness in collection and measurement of migration data continues to pose a challenge to measurement of migration in African countries (Schechter, 2009). According to Folden, Manke and Mortensen (2007, p. 32), for data on migration to be useful for policy-making purposes, it should subscribe to the following basic principles of statistics:

• Timeliness: The data must present trends on current processes and quickly react to economic, political and environmental disturbances.

• Reliability: The sources of the data, the methodology of collection and weaknesses must be adequately documented so that use of the data can be trusted.

• Comprehensiveness: The users of data should be provided with sufficient technical background on the data analysis process so that they can meaningfully interpret it.

Sources of Migration Data and Limitations Despite acknowledgement by policy-makers of the importance of migration data, there is limited availability, comparability and frequency of such data. Traditionally, national sources of migration data fall into three broad categories, namely statistical data sources, administrative data sources and innovative data sources (emerging sources of migration data). Statistical data sources comprise censuses and household surveys. The census is regarded as the main source for stock data on migrants. It yields the most comparable information on migrants, especially on key questions such as country of birth, country of citizenship and year or period of arrival. However, there are a number of challenges regarding censuses. First, they are carried out after a lengthy period, often every 10 years. Second, it is a challenge to ensure that relevant questions regarding country of birth, country of citizenship and country of previous residence are correctly coded and processed despite the recommendations by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Third, it is a challenge for most developing countries to ensure that data collected is processed quickly and disseminated timely. Furthermore, ensuring a wider and more flexible dissemination of census information through online databases that permit cross-tabulation of different variables is often a challenge for developing countries. Household surveys are flexible instruments for collecting in-depth information on migration. The good thing about them is that they can easily be used to relate migration to outcomes important for development. As part of its African Migration Project, the World Bank and the African Development Bank jointly conduct household surveys on migration and remittances. In collaboration with some institutions, the Migration and Remittances Unit of the World Bank conducted migration and remittances surveys in Burkina Faso, Ghana, 395

Daniel Makina and John Atwebembeire Mushomi

Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda in 2011. The survey utilized novel methodologies to gather relevant information on both households with migrants abroad and household with migrants. There are several challenges in conducting surveys on migration. First, migrants being a small proportion of the population, it is difficult to develop a sample that includes enough areas with high concentrations of migrants that can yield reliable estimates. Second, in order to meaningfully study the consequences of migration, surveys in both the destination and origin should be carried out. Since such surveys are carried out by different national statistical offices, there should be a mechanism of data sharing. This brings us to the third challenge. If surveys are carried out by different institutions, they usually adopt different definitions of migration, pose different questions and utilize different coding systems, thus limiting intercountry comparability of the data collected. Fourth, there is usually limited analysis and sharing of data collected among different national statistical offices. Furthermore, surveys tend to be undertaken on an ad hoc basis with extra-budgetary funds, yet for them to be a regular source of data, migration modules in large-scale surveys need to be a regular activity of the data collection programme of national statistical offices. Administrative sources include visas, work permits, residence permits and border control statistics such as immigration and emigration cards, passenger statistics from a list of passengers on sea or airport lists, and deportation statistics. Because of the varied sources and institutions that collect these types of data, and the fact that the data results from administrative processes, much of it is not processed for statistical purposes. Thus, while administrative statistics can provide a useful basis for studying international migration flows by country of origin and destination, few countries (mostly developed countries) publish systematically such data systematically. Other administrative sources include population registers. These are national data collection systems in which the demographic details and some socio-economic characteristics of a population are continuously recorded. Information about life events and place of residence originally been recorded in different administrative systems is automatically linked on an ongoing basis. Figure 23.4illustrates the main elements of a population register. The management of a population register requires the establishment of efficient datasharing mechanisms, as well as coordination between the institutions responsible for registration. Each institution responsible for the registration of specific information has to ensure that the data are updated regularly and in a timely manner, and that the registered data are correct and complete. When it is well designed, a population register is useful for population estimation, census planning, census evaluation and for obtaining a sampling frame of household surveys. In fact, population census results can be compared with the population register as a way of authenticating results. Some countries use population registers to produce census-typed tables every five or ten years in place of conducting regular census operations. They can produce data on both internal and international migration through the recording of changes of residence as well as the recording of international arrivals and departures. The problem of population registers is that responsibility for their compilation usually lies with the home or interior ministry which usually views them as assisting administrative processes rather than statistical analysis purposes. In developing countries, there is little cooperation among national statistical offices with regard to the design, analysis and sharing of information in population registers. Two other factors play a decisive role in determining the accuracy of migration statistics derived from a population register. First, there are issues 396

Migration Data Management in Africa

regarding incentives to register and deregister. While long-term immigrants may have interest in registering, immigrants staying shorter periods tend to under-report and those leaving the country have little incentive to deregister. Second, the operational effectiveness of the population register will depend on the legal framework, human resources, organizational capacity and information technology infrastructures. Recently, technology has enabled innovative sources of migration data to complement information on migration flows, drivers and impact of migration, internal migration, public opinion on migration, etc. These innovative sources include, among others, application of big data and other alternative data sources such as social media platforms and mobile phones. However, these sources present their own problems, in particular issues of privacy and ethical use of such data without consent, selection bias in the use of social media and big data given since users of internet-based platforms and mobile phones are not representative of the population at large, and issues of access to data mostly owned by private actors. Furthermore, reliability of self-reported information on social media is questionable because there is subjectivity of what may consider as their home country, for instance, and the difficulty of applying the UN-recommended definition of an international migrant. Notwithstanding the limitations of innovative data sources, using social media (e.g., Facebook), estimates of the foreign-born population can be obtained especially in countries in Africa that lack recent census data provided they have high social media penetration rates. Table 23.1 provides an indication of the technological profile of individual African countries. The emergence of technology and increasing use of internet has improved access to social media platforms among Africans and the world at large. Table 23.1 indicates that a significant share of the population among African countries has phones and access to internet, with Mauritius and Gabon of up to 57% and 56%, respectively. Though data for internet penetration and social media usage is lacking for many African countries, Table 23.1 shows that mobile networks are well established in Africa, with 99%, 96% and 95% of the population having access to mobile network in Mauritius, Eswatini and Tunisia, respectively. This therefore indicates a potential and actual market for social media platforms. However, Table 23.1 indicates that for Egypt, Nigeria, Algeria and South Africa, there were up to 48.8 million, 31 million, 25.1 million and 24 million Facebook Subscribers in December 2020 respectively. Given that census data is lacking for many African countries, and generally conducted after ten years, social media are easy and cost-effective platforms to access migration data. Though some countries may still be lacking in the adoption of internet, data should be collected for countries that are well established in terms of internet and social media usage.

Migration Data Sharing Migration data also has cross-border implications as Mudungwe (2012, p. 63) aptly states: “By its nature, migration requires co-operation between governments, and if it is to be managed successfully there should be consistency between the migration policies and legislation of various governments, and reliable migration data”. Thus, given the cross-border nature of migration in- and outflows, there is a need for international collaboration in this area, the development of joint migration data templates and data sharing. Cognizant that most migration in Africa is intra-regional, regional collaboration is key in collecting and managing migration data. 397

Daniel Makina and John Atwebembeire Mushomi Table 23.1 Key Statistical Indicators for Internet, Mobile and Social Media Users for Selected African Countries Countries

Ownership of Cell Phones with Internet Access in 2019 (%)

Use Phone and Internet Regularly (%) (2016/2018)

Use Phone or Internet Regularly (%) (2016/2018)

Cell Service and Electricity (%) (2016/2018)

Facebook Subscribers 31 December 2020 (Million)

Algeria Kenya Namibia Ghana Guinea Mauritius Gabon Tunisia Sudan South Africa Morocco Gambia Cameroon Namibia Eswatini Nigeria Lesotho Zimbabwe Côte d'Ivoire Benin Tanzania Botswana Angola Egypt DR Congo

– 50 47 40 31 – – – – –

– 32 42 26 15 57 56 53 53 52

– 58 52 64 45 38 38 41 41 41

– 74 59 88 32 99 83 95 75 71

25.1 10.4 – 7.9 – 0.9 0.8 – – 24

– – – – – – – – –

52 48 43 42 42 37 25 22 24

40 45 49 54 51 52 62 64 69

93 63 77 59 96 80 54 48 55

21 – 4.2 – – 31 – – 5.8

– – 54 – – –

16 17 38 – – –

67 70 51 – – –

55 55 88 –

1.5 5.2 1.1 2.8 48.8 3.8

–

Source: Extracted from Afrobarometer (2020). Data is based on 45,823 interviews completed in 34 countries. Data for Facebook subscribers was extracted from Internet World Statistics (2021). Data for each key indicator is not available for most countries.

According to the United Nations (2010) guidelines for exchanging data to improve emigration statistics, sending countries wishing to use immigration data of receiving countries could use different sources of data in accordance to their specific needs. In collaboration with the Danish Immigration Service (DIS), the IOM developed a migration data-sharing mechanism (DSM) to assist countries to have credible, comprehensive and timely statistical data on migration (IOM, 2007). The idea behind the DSM is that every country is at a different stage of development regarding technical infrastructure, availability of human and financial resources and information, documentation and legislation on migration. The DSM comprises various components such as a formalized dialogue of migration users and producers and a technical component that facilitates the actual sharing of data and 398

Migration Data Management in Africa

information via an electronic database and through the internet. The fundamental principle behind the DSM is the assumption that all countries have some kind of information on migration obtained from administrative processes and from some systematic data collection, but this information is neither known nor shared with other stakeholders. Cognizant that one country’s emigrants are another country’s immigrants, the DSM urges bilateral and multilateral dialogues to agree on statistics and related information to be shared based on mutual needs and benefits. Since most international migration in Africa is intra-continental, such an approach is cost effective.3

Migration Data Collection and Management in Africa Global travel is increasing, with the International Air Transport Association expecting 7.2 billion passengers by 2035, nearly double the 3.8 billion passengers who travelled by air in 2016 (Greenfield, 2020, p. 1). The increasing trend of cross-border movements has called for concern by various governments to put in place better border control measures to mitigate and control the number of migrants, especially illegal migrants as they amplify the degree of complexity in migration data management. Data management is a requisite for migration policy, evident by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and Migration Information and Data Analysis System (MIDAS) (Greenfield, 2020). However, despite the growing trend in the implementation of computer algorithms to manage migration, especially in the assessment of migrants’ risk profiles, Africa is still lacking relative to the rest of the world. Though risk analysis does not require high-technology to categorize people into risk categories, computer algorithms play an integral role in border management because they are less biased than direct human analysis. The use of sophisticated algorithms to analyse migrants’ risk levels upon entry has witnessed a sharp rise after the US 9/11 attack. An efficient migration management system is directly related to the method of data collection and management. Data collection methods and management in Africa are relatively weaker compared to the rest of the world. The various evaluations conducted over the past years have pinpointed weaknesses in the African Statistical System (ASS); these weaknesses are institutional and organizational (African Union [AU], 2017, p. 4). To overcome these weaknesses resulting from poor data collection, management and analysis, the AU’s comprehensive strategy for the Harmonization of Statistics in Africa II (SHaSA II) has been developed. Furthermore, in Africa, the need to have comparable quality statistics that are regularly produced and disseminated is becoming increasingly urgent (AU, 2017). In this regard, the African Statistical System (ASS) acknowledges the importance of producing and analysing statistics on emerging themes such as governance, democracy, peace and security, the environment, natural resources, intra-African trade, migration, etc., which are all essential for the smooth progress of African integration. Considering the multivariable nature of migration data and the ambiguity that exists in causal relationships between variables, paper data system becomes outdated as data grows. According to AU’s Report on the Statistics of Labor Migration in Africa (2nd ed. 2017), the total number of international migrants in Africa increased from 13.3 million in 2008 to 25.4 million in 2017; a tremendous increase of 91.2%, which translates into an average annual growth rate of 7.5%. Such big data can only be properly managed by computer programs as is done in advanced economies. Statistics on international migrant stocks and flows, including key data on the level of educational attainment of migrants, their skills, duration of stay and legal status in the des399

Daniel Makina and John Atwebembeire Mushomi

tination country, working conditions, wages, access to services, and health and safety conditions may mislead if not properly disaggregated. A proper data management system must be efficient in disaggregating the various variables to aid effective policy-making. Most crossborder movements are motivated by the need to search for work. As such, migrant workers’ data is critical in migration policy; this category of migrants tends to report themselves in the destination countries as political migrants for fear of deportation. This makes data disaggregation difficult as officials cannot easily distinguish between economic and political migrants. The Report on the Statistics of Labor Migration in Africa (2nd ed. 2017) shows that the number of migrant workers in Africa has increased from 7.5 million in 2008 to 14.4 million in 2017: an increase of 91.7%. While the topic of migration was once a low priority for African governments, it has gained traction as a strategic policy area for the continent over the past decade (Le Coz & Pietropoll, 2020). According to the authors, this shift is driven by the increase in EU migration-related investments in the region, especially since 2015, and the establishment of the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF). As a result, many African countries are now integrating migration as a main dimension in their national development strategies and across policy domains such as health and education. Today in countries such as Mali, Morocco and South Africa, immigration has moved into the public sphere to the point of influencing electoral outcomes (Le Coz & Pietropoll, 2020). Furthermore, in Burkina Faso, as migration data tools do not always use comparable methodologies, work is underway with IOM to improve the harmonization of data and tools of collecting data. The National Institute of Statistics & Demography intends to use smartphones to collect information and to accelerate data collection (Vidal, 2019).

State of Migration Data Capacity in Africa Good practice tells us that a migration management system is dependent on data collected through a national migration data information system. Ideally, migration data should be consolidated in a national migration profile. By definition a national migration profile is a consolidation of migration data and is a snapshot of the migration situation in a country at a given point in time. The data that is fed into the migration profile is collected from various sources that include national censuses, inter-censal surveys, administrative sources, household surveys and other regular or dedicated migration data collection activities (e.g., commissioned surveys). Table 23.2 summarizes selected countries by region on the state of capturing migration data in national migration policies, national census, household surveys, administrative data and compilation of migration profiles. However, while many countries in Africa operate in a challenging statistical environment, there are at the same time various examples of progress and data innovation in the region. Harmonization of migration data can be a major challenge; it can be difficult to standardize concepts, definitions and methods of collecting migration data. The Ghana Statistical Agency (GSS) has been exploring innovative ways to improve migration statistics, working with Flowminder and Vodafone to make use of big data, including satellite imagery (Vidal, 2019). In Zambia, The Central Statistical Office has been deploying more up-to-date technology and increasing levels of automation in its processes, to boost efficiency and reduce costs; it has started using tablets in its regular data collection and has begun automatically 400

Country

401

Uganda

Rwanda

Kenya

East Ethiopia Africa

Region

Yes

Drafted in 2016 by Yes the government. No information about its adoption.

Yes

It is not clear if household surveys are used.

Yes

Yes

Does Census Do Household Surveys Capture Capture Migration Migration Data? Data?

It was drafted in 2017 Yes by the National Coordination Mechanism on Migration (NCM) (IOM, 2018). There is no information about the adoption of the draft. Exists, developed by the Yes Government (IOM, 2015b).

There is a national migration policy; an adjustment was made in 2018

National Migration Policy in Place

Table 23.2 Migration Data Collection by Selected African Countries

Yes

(Continued)

Compiled (IOM, 2015). No regular compilation.

It is not clear if The first migration profile administrative data was developed in 2019 by is used. IOM (IOM, 2019a).

Administrative sources Compiled. The first profile are used. was published in 2015 and updated in 2018 (IOM, 2018).

Administrative sources Compiled. The first version are used. was developed in 2016 (Danish Refugee Council, 2016). There exists a 2017 version developed with the help of European Union (European Union, 2019e).

Use of Administrative Migration Profile Compilation Migration Data and Frequency

Migration Data Management in Africa

Country

North Africa

402

Tunisia

Morocco

Egypt

Algeria

Gabon

DRC

Central Cameroon Africa

Region

Table 23.2 (Continued)

Yes

The national migration policy was drafted in 2014, but yet to be adopted.

No recent information, But earlier, Zohry (2007) affirmed that no single or unique formal document on migration exists. There is a national migration policy. Yes

Yes

Yes

Compiled (European Union, 2019c).

Compiled but not frequent. There are two versions; 2009 and 2017 (IOM, 2009; European Union, 2019a).

Administrative sources are used.

(Continued)

Compiled. There exist three versions: 2009, 2016 and 2017. Compiled. There exist three versions: 2010, 2016 and 2017.

No profound No information about information migration profiles. about the use of administrative data. Administrative There exist two versions; sources from many 2010 and 2017. institutions are used. Administrative Compiled, but not frequent. sources are used. There are two versions; 2010 and 2017 (CARIM, 2010; European Union, 2019d).

Not clear

Not clear.

Use of Administrative Migration Profile Compilation Migration Data and Frequency

Yes, partly captured by Administrative Living Standards sources are used. of Tunisian Households

Yes.

Yes, mainly compiled by Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics.

No profound information about the use of survey data. Not clear

Not clear

Yes

Does Census Do Household Surveys Capture Capture Migration Migration Data? Data?

No information about the Not clear existence of national migration policy. No information. Yes, compiled by General Directorate of Statistics No national migration Yes policy.

Drafting in progress.

National Migration Policy in Place

Daniel Makina and John Atwebembeire Mushomi

403

The national migration policy was adopted in 2015

Nigeria

Yes

Yes

Still formulating the national migration policy with the support.

Senegal

Yes

The national migration Yes, compiled policy was developed every ten and launched in 2016 years.

There is no national migration policy (IOM, 2019).

Ghana

West Cote Africa d’Ivoire

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

The government is Yes, censuses are Yes developing the conducted national migration after every policy with the help of ten years. IOM (IOM, 2019).

Yes

Yes

Zimbabwe

Yes

Yes, compiled every ten years.

There is a proposed national migration policy.

There is a national migration policy.

Southern Lesotho Africa

Does Census Do Household Surveys Capture Capture Migration Migration Data? Data?

South Africa

National Migration Policy in Place

Country

Region

Table 23.2 (Continued)

Administrative data are used

Administrative data are used

Administrative data are used

Compiled but not frequent. There exist two versions: 2009 and 2014

Compiled but not frequent (Maastricht University, 2017; European Union, 2019).

Compiled, there are two versions: 2017 and 2019

Administrative sources Compiled (European Union, are used. 2019b), but not frequent.

Administrative sources Compiled (IOM, 2010; are used. ZimStat, 2010; IOM, 2018).

Administrative sources No information about the are used. existence of migration profiles.

Administrative sources First Migration Profile are used. commissioned in 2021.

Use of Administrative Migration Profile Compilation Migration Data and Frequency

Migration Data Management in Africa

Daniel Makina and John Atwebembeire Mushomi

tracking exit movements of Zambian citizens from the country so that it is not necessary for them to fill out exit cards (Vidal, 2019). Furthermore, in Burkina Faso, work is underway with IOM to improve the harmonization of data and tools of collecting data. The National Institute of Statistics & Demography intends to use smartphones to collect information and to accelerate data collection (Vidal, 2019).

Concluding Remarks In recognition of importance of the migration data management, the African Union has formulated for its member states the AU Migration Policy Framework for Africa to guide them in managing migration in general. Migration data and research is one of the strategic themes. Broadly, a number of policy objectives and strategies are proposed with regard to managing migration data. Policy objectives for managing migration data proposed for African countries include, among others, enhancing migration data collection, strengthening institutions responsible for collection of information and data related to labour migration, developing systems of sharing migration data among countries and utilizing migration for development planning. As earlier discussed, most of these recommended strategies are work in progress for majority of African countries. Going forward and as African countries increasingly become technological savvy, there is potential in using big data and innovative data sources to complement traditional data sources on migration.

Notes 1 IOM and McKinsey & Company, “More than numbers: How migration data can deliver real-life benefits for migrants and governments”, Final version for World Economic Forum in Davos on 24 January 2018. 2 United Nations (2010). Guidelines for Exchanging Data to Improve Emigration Statistics. Prepared by the Task Force on Measuring Emigration Using Data Collected by the Receiving Country, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe Statistical Office of the European Union. United Nations: Geneva. 3 For instance, in the case of Lesotho, 99.5% of emigrants are in South Africa so that a cooperation and collaboration mechanism between the Lesotho Bureau of Statistics and Statistics South Africa would benefit both countries.

References African Union. (2017). Strategy for the harmonization of statistics in Africa 2. https://au​.int​/sites​/ default​/files​/documents​/34580​-doc​-34577​-doc​-shasa​_ii​_strategy​_eng​_full​_web​.pdf Boisot, M. & Canals, A. (2004). Data, information and knowledge: Have we got it right? Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 14(1): 43–67. Consortium for Applied Research on International Migration. (2010). Migration profile: Egypt. https://cadmus ​ . eui ​ . eu ​ / bitstream ​ / handle ​ / 1814​ / 22435​ / migration​ % 20profile​ % 20EN​ % 20-​ %20Egypt​%20-​%20with​%20links​.pdf​?sequence=1 Danish Refugee Council. (2016). Ethiopia country profile. https://reliefweb​.int​/sites​/reliefweb​.int​/ files​/resources​/Eth​iopi​aCou​ntry​Prof​i leM​ay2016​.pdf European Union. (2019a). Migration profile: Cameroon, End 2017. https://publications​.jrc​.ec​ .europa​.eu​/repository​/bitstream​/JRC115024​/mp​_cameroon​_2019​_online​.pdf European Union. (2019b). Migration profile: Cote d’Ivoire, End 2017. https://publications​.jrc​.ec​ .europa​.eu​/repository​/handle​/JRC115035 European Union. (2019c). Migration profile: Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). file:​///C:​/ User​s/Use​r/Dow​nload​s/mp_​drc_2​019_o​nline​%20(1​).pdf​

404

Migration Data Management in Africa European Union. (2019d). Migration profile: Egypt, End 2017. https://publications​.jrc​.ec​.europa​.eu​ /repository​/handle​/JRC115039 European Union. (2019e). Migration profile: Ethiopia, End 2017. https://publications​.jrc​.ec​.europa​ .eu​/repository​/bitstream​/JRC115069​/mp​_ethiopia​_2019​_online​.pdf European Union. (2019f). Migration profile: Senegal, End 2017. https://publications​.jrc​.ec​.europa​ .eu​/repository​/handle​/JRC117945 Folden, C., Manke, M. & Mortensen, T. (2007). Sharing data: Where to start. An emerging approach to migration data management. International Organization for Migration, Vienna, Austria. Greenfield, C. (2020). As governments build advanced surveillance systems to push borders out, will travel and migration become unequal for some groups? Migration Policy Institute. https://www​ .migrationpolicy​.org​/article​/governments​-build​-advanced​-surveillance​-systems Internet World Statistics. (2021). Internet Penetration in Africa. https://www​.internetworldstats​.com​ /stats1​.htm International Organisation for Migration. (2007). Sharing data - Where to start: An emerging approach to migration data management. IOM, Vienna. International Organisation for Migration. (2009). Migration in Cameroon: Country profile. https:// publications​.iom​.int​/system​/files​/pdf​/cameroun​_profile​_2009​.pdf International Organisation for Migration. (2010). Migration in Zimbabwe: A country profile 2009. https://publications​.iom​.int​/system​/files​/pdf​/mp​_zimbabwe​.pdf International Organisation for Migration. (2015a). Migration in Uganda: A rapid country profile 2013. https://publications​.iom​.int​/system​/files​/pdf​/mp​_uganda​_25feb2015​_web​.pdf International Organisation for Migration. (2015b). Strengthening labour migration in Rwanda. https://www​.iom​.int​/sites​/g​/files​/tmzbdl486​/files​/country​/docs​/rwanda​/IOM​-Rwanda​ -Strengthening​-Labour​-Migration​-in​-Rwanda​.pdf International Organisation for Migration. (2018a). Migration governance snapshot: Republic of Kenya. https://migrationdataportal​.org​/sites​/default​/files​/2018​-10​/Migration​%20Governance​ %20Snapshot-​%20Republic​%20of​%20Kenya​.pdf International Organisation for Migration. (2018b). Migration in Zimbabwe: A country profile 2010– 2016. https://publications​.iom​.int​/system​/files​/pdf​/mp​_zimbabwe​_2018​.pdf International Organisation for Migration. (2019a). Government of Zimbabwe develops national migration policy. https://www​.iom​.int​/news​/government​-zimbabwe​-develops​-national​-migration​-policy International Organisation for Migration. (2019b). In Rwanda, IOM conducts final validation workshop on migration profile. https://www​.iom​.int​/news​/rwanda​-iom​-conducts​-final​-validation​ -workshop​-migration​-profile International Organisation for Migration. (2019c). Migration governance indicators profile 2019: Republic of Côte d'Ivoire. https://publications​.iom​.int​/books​/migration​-governance​-indicators​ -profile​-2019​-republic​-cote​-divoire International Organisation for Migration and McKinsey & Company. (2018). More than numbers: How migration data can deliver real-life benefits for migrants and governments. World Economic Forum, Davos. Le Coz, M. & Pietropolli, A. (2020). Africa deepens its approach to migration governance, but are policies translating to action? https://www​.migrationpolicy​.org​/article​/africa​-deepens​-approach​ -migration​-governance Maastricht University. (2017). Senegal: Migration profile. file:​///C:​/User​s/Use​r/Dow​nload​s/151​​ 81832​​72​.​pd​f Mudungwe, P. (2012). Migration and development in the Southern Africa Development Community Region: The case for a coherent approach. http://www​.diaspora​-centre​.org​/wp​-content​/uploads​ /2017​/11​/M​-D​-in​-the​-SADC​-Region​-The​-Case​-for​-a​-Coherent​-Approach​-7​-Sept​.pdf Ratha, D., Mohapatra, S., Ozden, C., Plaza, S., Shaw, W. & Shimeles, A. (2011). Leveraging migration for Africa: Remittances, skills, and investments. The World Bank, Washington, DC. Schechter, J. P. (2009). Data assessment of labour migration statistics in the SADC region: South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe. International Organization for Migration, 1, 1–33. Tiwana, A. (2002). The knowledge management toolkit. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ. Tomas, P. A. S., Summers, L. H. & Clemens, M. (2009). Migrants count: Five steps toward better migration data. Report of the Commission on International Migration Data for Development Research and Policy, Center for Global Development, Washington, DC.

405

Daniel Makina and John Atwebembeire Mushomi United Nations. (2010). Guidelines for exchanging data to improve emigration statistics. United Nations, Geneva. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. (2020). International migrant stock 2020. https://www​.un​.org​/development​/desa​/pd​/content​/international​-migrant​-stock. Vidal, E. M. (2019). Improving data on migration in Africa: Expert voices. https://migrationdataportal​.org​/blog​/improving​-data​-migration​-africa​-expert​-voices Zimbabwe National Statistical Agency. (2010). Migration in Zimbabwe: A country profile 2010. https://www​.zimstat​.co​.zw​/wp​-content​/uploads​/publications​/Social​/Tourism​-and​-Culture​/ Migration​-Profile​-Report​-2010​.pdf Zohry, A. (2007). Migration and development in Egypt. Institute for Migration and Cultural Studies (IMIS), Osnabruck University, Berlin, Germany.

406

24 THE FUTURE OF IMMIGRATION IN AFRICA Daniel Makina and Dominic Pasura

Introduction Contemporary discourse on migration largely focuses on migration within and out of Africa rather than emigration to Africa from other countries, that is, non-African immigrants settling on the continent. However, from an economic perspective, classical economic theory stipulates that capital should flow from rich countries to poor countries (low-income developing countries most of which are in Africa) because of the effect of diminishing returns in rich countries. Theoretically, the scarcity of capital relative to labour in poor developing countries should be a pointer that the returns to capital are higher in these countries than those in rich countries. Logically, investors in rich countries should be viewing these countries as profitable places for investment and possibly immigration. However, in practice, this seems not to happen as little capital is flowing from rich countries to poor countries. Instead, more capital flows from rich-to-rich countries rather than from rich-to-poor countries, thus creating a puzzle that defies theory. This puzzle has become known as the Lucas Paradox, discussed in a seminal paper by Robert Lucas in 1990. There have been two broad explanations for the Lucas Paradox. One explanation is that the limited amount of capital received by poor developing countries is attributed to differences in fundamentals that affect the production structure of the economy, such as technological differences, missing factors of production, government policies, and the institutional structure. The second explanation focuses on international capital market imperfections. It is argued that although the expected returns on investment could be high in poor developing countries, capital does not flow there because of the high level of uncertainty associated with those expected returns. Researchers have argued that free international labour migration could be one way of overcoming the Lucas Paradox so that capital could flow to poor developing countries. Jeffrey Williamson (2002) observed that prior to World War I North–North migration fostered income convergence in the Western economies. He also showed how the British Empire structure facilitated low-cost international migration and enabled income levels to converge across the British Empire. In the 17th and 18th centuries, England gave incentives to its

DOI: 10.4324/9781003005551-29

407

Daniel Makina and Dominic Pasura

citizens to move to the labour-scarce America in an effort to make overseas migration affordable. The result was that there was significant capital flows between Europe and America. While North–North (or rich-to-rich) migration played a big role in erasing poverty in the labour surplus parts of the North, the South–South (developing-to-developing country) migration that also happened prior to World War I did not achieve the same. There was hardly any South–North (poor-to-rich) migration prior to World War 1. The South–North migration that we witness today is not enough to significantly reduce poverty in the South as it did in the North prior to World War 1. In a nutshell, we can argue that international migration played a role in the development of the rich world. The first  interest in emigrating to Africa by the Western world happened in the 19th century during the colonization era. During that era, a significant population of Europeans settled in Africa, some permanently and others temporarily. The second interest came during the Cold War that was in essence an ideological war between capitalism and communism, whereby the West and East competed for influence among the newly independent African states. During that period there was substantial migration of white settlers back to Europe who feared the consequences of African independence, especially recriminations against land deprivation. Ironically, there was no significant migration from the East (the Soviet Union) to African countries where they had influence. The little immigration that took place was limited to the military, technical advisors, and business people on a temporary basis.

Africa: a Permanent Periphery Writing about the intersection of Caribbean migrations and colonial legacies (Portes 2021: 8) describes the position of the Caribbean Basin in the development of the global capitalist economy as “permanent relegation to the system's periphery”. Africa, we contend, can be viewed similarly, as a permanent periphery within the global economic system, where extraction modes and relationships predominate. As we stated in the Introduction, globalized and racialized capitalism, driven by powerful states, former empires, and high-tech corporations, is intrinsically linked to migration and mobilities within and outside Africa, which is regarded as a permanent periphery within the global economic system where modes/relationships of extraction are prevalent. Before colonialism, Africans were mobile. In the words of Mbembe: We cannot speak about migration without addressing the presence and actions of the West in the rest of the world. Europe and North America cannot possibly go about destroying other people’s living environments, extracting their oil, gas, timber, diamonds and gold, shipping it all home, leaving nothing behind, turning their cities into rubble, bringing to an end the possibilities of life in faraway places, and expect those affected by such upheavals to survive in the midst of the ruins. (Mbembe 2019: 16) In a sense, Africa’s colonial and post-colonial context was and continues to be underpinned by what Shipley et al. (2010: 668) describe as “rapacious modes of extraction” by “corporatist modern-imperial – whose globally-out-sourced systems of production make the racial capitalism of apartheid look almost gentle.” Using the notion of “corporate sovereignty”, “which claims for itself the law of immunity and the powers of exception”, Mbembe (2019: 6) describes “the unprecedented consolidation of power and knowledge (political, financial, and technological) in the hands of private high-tech corporate entities whose sphere 408

The Future of Immigration in Africa

of action is not one country or one region, but the globe”. Our attention is drawn to the continuities between the colonial past and present global and racialized capitalism, in which racial/ethnic hierarchies have assumed new forms. In the post-colonial context, the circulation and reproduction of labour and the accumulation and penetration of capital have intensified throughout the continent. The continent’s demographic shift deserves attention. If Africa uses its natural resource trade to create jobs for its youth, its future is bright despite uncertainty, civil strife, and ethnic conflict. Approximately 90% of the world’s youth live in Africa, Latin America, and developing Asian countries (Cooper et al. 2019; Swartz et al. 2021). As Mbembe puts it, We lost millions of people during the centuries of the Atlantic and Arab slave trades. Colonialism, its endless wars, its political economy and its epidemiological and ecological consequences killed many. By the end of the twenty-first century, Africa will have finally compensated for what it lost during those early centuries. It will have more young people than any other region of the planet. (Mbembe 2019: 15) As Makina and Mudungwe (in this volume) demonstrate, Africa’s population rose from 477 million in 1980 to 1.2 billion by 2017, reaching 2.5 billion by 2050, according to United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA). Africa’s young population of 231 million in 2015 will double to 461 million by 2050. Youth population increase, which outpaces economic growth and job creation, will culminate in massive human migration. Quartey, Osarfo, and Abor (Chapter 21) noted that natural resources dominate Africa’s trade, but 50% of it was exported to other countries, while 33% was intra-African. Thus, correctly argue that Africa loses the chance to process or add value, sacrificing a huge opportunity to improve productivity, self-reliance, and quality of life.

The Contribution of Immigration to Economies Despite immigration being a political sensitive issue, it is generally acknowledged that migrants make a positive contribution to inclusive growth and sustainable development in countries of origin, transit, and destination. According to the 2009 UNDP Human Development Report1 that focused on international migration, most internal and international migrants benefit from higher incomes, better access to education and health, and improved prospects for their children. However, barriers to mobility are especially high for people with low skills, despite the demand for their labour. This usually stems from the fear that these migrants displace local workers and reduce wages, put pressure on social services, and fail to integrate, especially in the absence of a well-managed migration framework and process. Furthermore, many migrants face systemic disadvantages, making it difficult for them to access local services on equal terms with local people – in particular when they migrate irregularly across borders. Furthermore, the contribution is emphasized by both the 2015 Addis Ababa Agenda and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development which advocate for international cooperation to ensure safe, orderly, and regular migration. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development explicitly refers to migration and recognizes the economic value of migrants. Since migration is a cross-cutting issue, it is actually relevant to all sustainable development goals (SDGs) and can contribute to their achievement. It can reduce poverty of migrants 409

Daniel Makina and Dominic Pasura

themselves, their households as well as their origin, and host countries. When migrants and their households benefit from increased income and skills, it enables them to spend more on basic needs, access education and health services, and make investments. This directly and positively impacts SDG 1 (End poverty), SDG 3 (Ensure healthy lives), and SDG 4 (Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education). With regard to female migrants, these benefits can improve their autonomy and socio-economic status and thus positively impact SDG 5 (Achieve gender equality). While in origin countries, remittances sent to support households can lead to increased consumption and investment, in host countries migrants fill in labour gaps and contribute services and taxes, thus positively impacting SDG 1 (End poverty), SDG 8 (Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth), and SDG 9 (Build resilient infrastructure). In the literature the contribution of immigrants to host economies is categorized into four channels: (1) labour markets, in terms of employment, human capital and wages; (2) economic growth and contributions to sectoral value added; and (3) public finance, including public spending and fiscal contributions (OECD/ILO 2018a). Data on the economic contribution of immigration in Africa is sparse due to the paucity of data. This is in stark contrast with high-income developed countries where there is a vast literature on the contribution of immigration (Kerr & Kerr 2011; Bodvarsson & Van den Berg 2013; Bohme & Kups 2017). In a joint study by the OECD and ILO (2018b), the estimated contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) of immigration in selected African countries is as follows:

• • • •

19% in Côte d’Ivoire in 2008; 13% in Rwanda in 2012; 9% in South Africa in 2011; and 1% in Ghana in 2010.

The 2018 UNCTAD Report on Economic Development in Africa cites striking empirical evidence, which shows that intra-African migration has positive impacts on structural transformation in destination countries. First, it is observed that a 1% increase in immigration in destination countries produces a 0.26–0.43% in manufacturing value added. Second, migration is found to induce a higher level of education in the countries of origin rather than in the destination countries. Third, migration is estimated to propel Africa’s GDP per capita from the level of US $2,008 in 2016 to US $3,249 by 2030, a compound annual growth rate of 3.5%. Fourth, immigration is positively related to productivity increases as it is observed that over a 10-year period, a 1% increase in the number of immigrants leads to intra-sectoral productivity growth of 0.07–0.17 percentage points. Additionally, it is estimated that immigrants spend 85% of their income in destination countries and thus contribute to the development of their host countries through taxes and consumption.

Attitudes towards Immigration in Africa Migration in Africa has largely been viewed as the South–North migration driven by lack of development and poverty in African countries (Flahaux & De Haas 2016). It is observed that the common perception is that the trend of migration is basically “South–North” as the income disparities between the poor and rich countries are the “root causes” of migration. Even though more immigration occurs between countries in the South, most literature on attitudes towards immigration focuses on advanced Western economies. In the case of Africa, 410

The Future of Immigration in Africa

immigration should be viewed from the perspective that the majority of African countries became independent during the 1960s, save for a few that became independent later such as Angola (1975), Mozambique (1975), Namibia (1975), Zimbabwe (1980), and South Africa (1994). The liberation or independence political movements that became ruling elites were nationalistic in character who strictly guarded the sovereignty of their countries. Nationalism naturally shaped their attitude towards immigration. As a result, in the early post-independence years, immigration was more tolerated when it emanated from friendly countries especially those countries which hosted the nationalists during exile and provided support for their independence. Immigrants from outside Africa were viewed from the prism of the Cold War, the geopolitical divide that defined the capitalist West and the communist East. African countries who experienced protracted armed struggles for independence would ordinarily welcome immigrants from the communist East which had provided material resources for their struggle while those African countries which were accorded independence by their colonizers tended to welcome immigrants from their former colonizers. Both groups of these countries had either one-party system or one dominant party system during the early post-independence years. Hostility towards immigration in Africa became noticeable in the 1990s. The period coincided with the end of the Cold War, the breakup of the Soviet Union and political liberalization in Africa. Since the 1990 tensions between nationals and foreigners have flared up and in some cases leading to deaths or conflicts in countries such as Botswana, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, and South Africa. Using data from 11 African countries obtained from the World Values Survey (WVS) during the third (2000–2002) and fourth (2005–2007) waves, Whitaker and Giersch (2015) investigated attitudes toward immigration. The two waves of the WVS captured relevant attitudinal immigration questions and respondent answers in respect of each country as illustrated in Table 24.1. Table 24.1 provides a rough idea of the opposition to immigration in 11 African countries. Using the ordinal measure of opposition to immigration, the econometric analysis by Whitaker and Giersch (2015) came to three main conclusions. Firstly, they found opposition to immigration to be higher among individuals in countries that are more democratic and have dominant party systems. Secondly, they found opposition to immigration to be linked to higher levels of ethnic diversity, thus suggesting that immigrants would increase the sense of competition among groups. Thirdly, they found opposition to immigration to be linked to higher levels of economic development, which implies people tend to protect their prosperity from outsiders. Anti-immigration attitudes are usually associated with the phenomenon of xenophobia. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines xenophobia as a: “morbid dislike of foreigners”. One more detailed definition given by Hjerm (1998, p. 341) is that it is “a negative attitude toward, or fear of, individuals or groups of individuals that are in some sense different (real or imagined) from oneself or the group(s) to which one belongs”. Such dislike or negative attitude toward immigrants may be attributed to factors that include, among others: competition for scarce resources, employment, housing, services, and facilities. These attitudes can result in violence, resentment, and abuse against foreigners. This phenomenon of xenophobia has been observed in African countries, especially those countries that offer economic opportunities to attract immigrants. A study by Campbell (2003) focusing on Botswana found that citizens exhibit anti-immigrant attitudes largely driven by a combination of nationalism and economic factors, that 411

Daniel Makina and Dominic Pasura Table 24.1 Immigration Attitudes in Selected African Countries Country (Year)

Let Anyone Come Who Wants to (%)

Let People Come as Long as There Are Jobs Available (%)

Place Strict Limits on the Number of Foreigners Who Can Come (%)

Prohibit People Coming from Other Countries (%)

Burkina Faso (2007) Ethiopia (2007) Ghana (2007) Mali (2007) Nigeria (2000) Rwanda (2007) South Africa (2006) Tanzania (2001) Uganda (2001) Zambia (2007) Zimbabwe (2001)

43

45

10

1

40

28

27

5

18

39

36

6

34

46

16

4

28

41

28

3

41

48

8

2

6

18

49

28

9

19

66

6

12

47

39

2

11

30

44

15

12

53

26

9

Source: Whitaker and Giersch (2015).

is, a strong desire to preserve the fruits of prosperity for nationals only. The researcher also observed a hierarchy of preferred immigrants – European and North Americans occupy first preference, Africans occupy second preference, and Asians (Indians in particular) are the least wanted. The preference for Western immigrants could be attributed to that they are considered as foreign investors who set up factories in the country resulting in employment of citizens. On the other hand, African immigrants are viewed as competitors for the available jobs in the country. It is not quite clear why Asians are most disliked because they usually set up trading operations in the country they migrate to. It is plausible that they are disliked because they are anecdotally observed to employ family members rather than locals. In a number of nationally representative attitudinal surveys undertaken by the Southern African Migration Project (SAMP), citizens of South Africa have been found to exhibit more anti-immigrant attitudes as compared with citizens of other countries (Crush 2008). Antiimmigrant attitudes have been largely directed to African immigrants and occasionally these have manifested in occasional violence and harm being perpetuated against them, their businesses, and their properties (Gordon 2015). Just as observed in the case of Botswana, Gordon (2018) observed that South Africans across all races, socio-economic class, and gender prefer 412

The Future of Immigration in Africa

white immigrants from the West (viewed as investors) to immigrants from African countries who are considered as competitors for employment and resources such as education, health, and housing. It should be noteworthy that the hierarchy of preferences of immigrants is also present in Western countries. Ford (2011) observed the British exhibited attitudes toward immigration based on skin colour, whereby they were more welcoming to immigrants from Australia and Western Europe and not more welcoming to immigrants from the West Indies and South Asia while immigrants from Eastern Europe and Africa received anti-immigration attitudes between the two extremes. Overall, younger Britons were observed to have exhibited less anti-immigration attitudes across all races. Furthermore, there are similarities in anti-immigration attitudes between those observed in South Africa and those observed in the West. In South Africa, anti-immigrant sentiments have been reported to be driven by economic factors, level of education, cultural differences, skin colour, immigrant’s country of origin, and misconceptions about the number of immigrants (Gordon et al. 2015; Dube 2017, 2019), which factors have also driven antiimmigrant sentiments in the West (Ruedin 2019). Anti-immigration sentiments are not a new phenomenon in Africa. It has long been observed that when an economy is experiencing some economic decline immigrants tend to be a scapegoat for the poor economic performance. During the 1950s and 1960s, Ghana was a magnet for migrants mainly from other West African countries. When there was economic decline in Ghana after the 1966 coup, the Aliens Compliance Order was enacted in 1969 which resulted in the expulsion of immigrants mainly from Nigeria, Togo, Burkina Faso, and Niger (Van Hear 1998, pp. 73–74). The anti-immigrant sentiments in Ghana during that time were mainly fuelled by economic considerations which included unemployment, continuing balance of payment deficit and smuggling of minerals mainly diamonds (Aremu & Ajayi 2014). Similarly, accumulation of oil wealth in Nigeria in the early 1970s attracted migrants from other West African countries. Misguided economic policies and corruption in Nigeria resulted in poor economic performance and the deportation of immigrants mainly from Ghana between 1983 and 1985 (Van Hear 1998, pp. 73–74, Okere 1992). Furthermore, historically, there were hostile measures taken by some African countries to control immigration such as the birth of the notion of “Ivority” in Cote D’ Voire as early as 1986; the expulsion of Moor immigrants in Senegal during the Senegal–Mauritania conflict in 1989 where ecology was the source of the conflict2; and the expulsion of subSaharan Africa migrants by the Libyan authorities in early 2000. Initially, Libya had opened its borders to African migrants for cheap labour and in the context of promoting panAfrican solidarity. However, in the 2000s, the anti-immigration sentiments increased, and the government feared that the country had too many foreigners who were saturating the job market (Human Rights Watch 2006). In a study by the IOM in Tripoli and Benghazi, it appears as cultural and language barriers fuel the sentiments of anti-immigration in these two countries.3 In this study, Egyptian rated better in comparison with migrants from subSaharan Africa in terms of host community sentiments towards immigrants. Furthermore, outsourcing of immigration control by Western democracies to control immigrants before they reach European borders is fuelling anti-immigration sentiments, particularly in North Africa. There have also several qualitative studies that have linked anti-immigrant sentiments to political liberalization (see for instance, Jackson 2006; Geschiere 2009; Neocosmos 2008; Landau 2010; Mosselson 2010). Furthermore, Alden (2007) has observed that China–Africa relations are being strained by the practice of using Chinese contract labourers in a continent 413

Daniel Makina and Dominic Pasura

with high levels of unemployment, despite Chinese firms justifying the practice on costs, cultural affinity, and productivity arguments. Thus, hostile behaviours, attitudes, and perceptions towards immigrants prove that most citizens of the host nations seem not to understand that immigration is economically beneficial for the host economies. The intolerance towards immigration in some African countries is rife and the immigrants are sometimes equated to criminals.

Contemporary Emigration to Africa Since the beginning of the 21st century, interest in Africa returned significantly to the extent that some publications termed it the “new scramble for Africa” reminiscent of the 19th century scramble by Europeans to colonize the continent. This new interest was not driven by a desire for colonization but rather by an economic interest to have access to Africa’s natural resources. Traditionally, Africa’s main sources of foreign direct investment (FDI) have been firms from Britain, France, and the USA. During the 21st century, its FDI increasingly became geographically diversified. The Economist (2019) notably observes total FDI from China grew from $16 billion in 2011 to $40 billion in 2016 to nearly match that of France at $49 billion. A glimpse into the trading patterns of Africa with the rest of the world is insightful to its changing and diversified nature. Table 24.2 shows increasing trade with China, India, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, South Korea, Thailand, Singapore, and Turkey. From a migration perspective, the question that arises from the so called “new scramble for Africa” is whether it is resulting in emigration of foreign nationals to the continent. Migration to Africa has experienced tremendous growth in recent years, increasing from just below 2.5 million in 1990 to more than 5 million in 2017 (UNCTAD 2018). Analysis of UNDESA data on migration stocks for the period 1990–2019 shows that immigration in Africa is largely intra-African as illustrated in Figure 24.1. Over 95% of immigration is from within the content; 5% is from other countries from the South; and slightly over 1% is from countries from the North (Western countries). Table 24.2 Selected Trading Partners of Sub-Saharan Africa – Change 2006–2018 Trading Partner

Total Merchandise Trade, 2018 ($ Billion)

Change 2006–2018 (%)

European Union China India United States UAE Japan Saudi Arabia Indonesia South Korea Thailand Singapore Turkey

156 120 58 36 20 14 14 9 9 8 6 5

41 226 292 −45 221 −12 108 224 69 128 81 216

Source: The Economist (2019).

414

The Future of Immigration in Africa

5.15

%

1.65

94.85

From within Africa 14,881,767 From the South (other than Africa) 807,899 From the North 258,638

Figure 24.1  Emigration to Africa Table 24.3 Stocks of Immigrants to Africa and Origin Countries (1990–2019) Country of Origin

Stocks of Migrants in Africa

Belgium China France Greece India Indonesia Italy Lebanon Netherlands Portugal Russian Federation Saudi Arabia State of Palestine Switzerland Syrian Arab Republic United Kingdom USA Yemen

10,934 21,617 143,740 8,267 34,437 8,035 37,590 21,383 23,225 29,457 46,505 23,326 242,419 12,232 25,911 165,322 52,040 17,828

Source: Computed from UNDESA Data (2019).

Further analysis of the main origin countries of emigrants to Africa from outside the continent shows an increasing geographical distribution away from the former colonizing countries. Table 24.3 shows a trend of diversified emigration to Africa from countries in the South such as China, India, and Indonesia, among others.

Why Is Africa Not Attracting Immigrants from the West? There are several factors that discourage migration to Africa. The disparity in the economic wealth between the North and the South has limited the continent from being a pull factor of migrants from the North. According to UNCTAD (2018), migration and trade are correlated. However, the role of state and policies appear to have an important effect on 415

Daniel Makina and Dominic Pasura

extra-continental emigration into Africa (Flahaux & De Haas 2016). Using the visa restrictiveness index, De Haas and Villares-Varela (2014) argued that the border restriction of African countries is relatively higher and it has an upward trend since the 1980s. In 2013, on average, about 90% of nationals from non-African countries needed a visa to enter African countries, while on average 78% of Africans needed a visa to enter another African country. Although there is data paucity and limited research on the North–South migration in Africa, migration paths towards some African countries can possibly become riskier due to the conflicts and instability in some of these African countries. Lack of property is another factor hindering migration to Africa. While 30% of people in the world have formal title to property, in sub-Saharan Africa only 10% have formal title and only 4% of African countries have mapped and registered the private land in their capital cities (Economist 2020). Worse still enforceable property rights are rare. During the colonial times, migrants from the West went to Africa to replicate systems in their home countries which are underpinned by secure property rights. They could do so under colonial administrations. The end of colonization created uncertainties to the security of property rights as some African governments nationalized major industries on attaining independence and in some cases without compensation. Such practices have made migration to Africa a risky venture.

Concluding Remarks Contemporary migration and mobilities within and from Africa are characterized by various and uneven flows and interactions inside and across national borders. A common misconception about Africa is that it is a continent of mass migrations and displacements caused by poverty, conflict, and underdevelopment (Flahaux & De Haas 2016). Due to the perpetual subordination of Africa in the global economy, the lack of new economic opportunities guarantees migration outflows and the growth of transnational networks. However, the demographic shift on the continent merits consideration. Despite the uncertainty, civil strife and ethnic conflict, Africa’s future is promising if it uses its natural resources to create jobs for its youth. Although some African peoples have migrated to the dominant nations of the Global North in response to colonization and neo-colonialism, most of Africa’s migration is intracontinental. African migratory movements have always been characterized by migration and mobility “from below” within and across nation-states. Rural–urban migration remains a dominant migration pattern among these mobility flows within Africa. Migration has become one of the most significant contributors to urbanization, as people move to cities and towns in search of social and economic opportunities (Awumbila 2017). Rural–urban migration often precedes overseas migration as a result of rapid population growth and limited employment growth, particularly in rural areas, where most Africans live.

Notes 1 UNDP Human Development Report: Overcoming Barriers: Human mobility and development (New York: United Nations, 2009). 2 https://www​.hrw​.org​/sites​/default​/files​/reports​/MAURITAN944​.PDF. 3 Study on the perception of migrants among host communities in Tripoli and Perception of Migrants in Tripoli and Benghazi, available at: https://libya​.iom​.int​/sites​/g​/files​/tmzbdl931​/files​/ documents​/LHD​%2520Report​%2520Layout​%2520-​%2520Perception​%2520of​%2520Migrants​ %2520in​%2520Tripoli​%2520and​%2520Benghazi​.pdf.

416

The Future of Immigration in Africa

References Alden, C. (2007). China in Africa. Zed Books, Cape Town and London. Aremu, J. O. and Ajayi, T. A. (2014). Expulsion of Nigerian Immigrant Community from Ghana in 1969: Causes and Impact. Developing Country Studies, 4(10): 176–186. Awumbila, M. (2017). Drivers of Migration and Urbanization in Africa: Key Trends and Issues. https://www​.un​.org​/development​/desa​/pd​/sites​/www​.un​.org​.development​.desa​.pd​/files​/unpd​ _egm​_201709​_s3​_paper​-awunbila​-final​.pdf. Bodvarsson, O. B. and Van den Berg, H. (2013). The Economics of Immigration: Theory and Policy, 2nd ed. Springer, New York. Bohme, M. and Kups, S. (2017). The economic effects of labour immigration in developing countries – A literature review. OECD Development Centre Working Papers No. 335, OECD Publishing, Paris. http://dx​.doi​.org​/10​.1787​/c3cbdd52​-en. Campbell, E. K. (2003). Attitudes of Botswana Citizens Toward Immigrants: Signs of Xenophobia? International Migration, 41(4): 72–111. Cooper, A., Swartz, S. and Mahali, A. (2019). Disentangled, Decentred and Democratised: Youth Studies for the Global South. Journal of Youth Studies, 22(1): 29–45. Crush, J. (2008). The Perfect Storm: The Realities of Xenophobia in Contemporary Africa. Southern African Migration Project, Cape Town. De Haas, H. and Villares-Varela, M. (2014). The Evolution of Bilateral Visa Policies 1973–2014: New Evidence from the DEMIG VISA Database, DEMIG Working Paper. International Migration Institute, University of Oxford. Dube, G. (2017). Levels of Othering – The Case of Zimbabwean Migrants in South Africa. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 23(4): 391–412. Dube, G. (2019). Black South Africans’ Attitudes toward African Immigrants between 2008 and 2016. Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 25(2): 191–210. Economist. (2020). Whose Land? Enforceable Property Rights Are Still Too Rare in Poor Countries. The Economist, September 12, 2020. Flahaux, M. L. and De Haas, H. (2016). African Migration: Trends, Patterns, Drivers. Comparative Migration Studies, 4(1): 1–25. Ford, R. (2011). Acceptable and Unacceptable Immigrants: How Opposition to Immigration in Britain Is Affected by Migrants’ Region of Origin. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 47(2): 1017–1037. Gordon, S. (2015). The Relationship between National Well-Being and Xenophobia in a Divided Society: The Case of South Africa. African Review of Economics and Finance, 7(1): 80–103. Gordon, S. (2018). Understanding Evaluations of Foreigners in Modern South Africa: The Relationship between Subjective Wellbeing and Xenophobia. Journal of Happiness Studies, 19(2): 545–566. Gordon, S., Roberts, B. and Struwig, J. (2015). Intolerable Cruelty: Anti-immigrant Sentiment in KwaZulu-Natal. HSRC Review, 13(2): 11–14. Geschiere, P. (2009). The Perils of Belonging: Autochthony, Citizenship, and Exclusion in Africa and Europe. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. Hjerm, M. (1998). National Identities, National Pride and Xenophobia: A Comparison of Four Western Countries. Acta Sociologica, 41(4): 335–347. Human Rights Watch. (2006). Libya: Stemming the Flow: Abuses Against Migrants, Asylum Seekers and Refugees. https://www​.hrw​.org​/report​/2006​/09​/12​/stemming​-flow​/abuses​-against​ -migrants​-asylum​-seekers​-and​-refugees. Jackson, S. (2006). Sons of Which Soil? The Language and Politics of Autochthony in Eastern DR Congo. African Studies Review, 49(2): 95–123. Kerr, S. P. and Kerr, W. R. (2011). Economic Impacts of Immigration: A Survey. NBER Working Paper, No. 16736. Cambridge, MA. Landau, L. B. (2010). Loving the Alien? Citizenship, Law, and the Future in South Africa’s Demonic Society. African Affairs, 109(435): 213–230. Mbembe, A. (2019). Bodies as Borders. From the European South, 4: 5–18. Mosselson, A. (2010). There Is no Difference between Citizens and Non-citizens Anymore: Violent Xenophobia, Citizenship and the Politics of Belonging in Post-apartheid South Africa. Journal of Southern African Studies, 36(3): 641–655.

417

Daniel Makina and Dominic Pasura Neocosmos, M. (2008). The Politics of Fear and the Fear of Politics: Reflections on Xenophobic Violence in South Africa. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 43(6): 586–594. OECD/ILO. (2018a). Immigrants’ Contribution to Developing Countries’ Economies: Overview and Policy Recommendations. In How Immigrants Contribute to Developing Countries’ Economies. International Labour Organization, Geneva/OECD Publishing, Paris. https://doi.org/10​.1787​ /978264288737-en OECD/ILO. (2018b). How Immigrants Contribute to Ghana’s Economy. OECD Publishing, Paris. http://dx​.doi​.org​/10​.1787​/9789264302037​-en. Okere, L. C. (1992). Nigerian Press and the Expulsion of West African Aliens, 1983. International Studies, 29(3): 327–338. https://dx​.doi​.org​/10​.1177​/0020881792029003004; https://www​ .hrw​.org​/sites​/default​/files​/reports​/MAURITAN944​.PDF. Portes, A. (2021). Permanent Periphery: Caribbean Migration Flows and the World Economy. In A. Birkenmaier (Ed.), Caribbean Migrations: The Legacies of Colonialism. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick NJ, pp. 8–14. Ruedin, D. (2019). Attitudes to Immigrants in South Africa: Personality and Vulnerability. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 45(7): 1108–1126. Shipley, J. W., Comaroff, J. and Mbembe, A. (2010). Africa in Theory: A Conversation between Jean Comaroff and Achille Mbembe. Anthropological Quarterly, 83(3): 653–678. Swartz, S., Cooper, A., Batan, C. M. and Causa, L. K. (2021). The Oxford Handbook of Global South Youth Studies. Oxford University Press, Oxford. The Economist. (2019). Africa Is Attracting Ever More Interest from Powers Elsewhere. 7th May Edition. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development UNCTAD. (2018). Economic Development in Africa: Migration for Structural Transformation, https://unctad​.org​/en​/PublicationsLibrary​/ aldcafrica2018​_en​.pdf. Van Hear, N. (1998). New Diasporas: The Mass Exodus, Dispersal and Regrouping of Migrant Communities. University College London Press and University of Washington Press, London, Seattle. Williamson, J. (2002). Winners and Losers Over Two Centuries of Globalization. National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 9161. Whitaker, B. E. and Giersch, J. (2015). Political Competition and Attitudes Towards Immigration in Africa. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 41(10): 1536–1557.

418

INDEX

Abebe 153, 155, 159, 165, 169 Abuja Treaty 11, 155, 159, 167–168, 347 action, anthropogenic 374, 381–382 Addis Ababa 148–149, 270, 272, 342–343 Adepoju 100–101, 104–105, 111, 332, 339–340, 342 Adeyanju 10, 99, 102, 111 AfCFTA agreement 350–351 AfCFTA protocols 138, 148 AfDB visa openness 138 Africa 1–20, 79–89, 91–107, 233–242, 246– 256, 295–299, 305–311, 342–351, 399–411; borders in 10–11, 148, 329–330, 332–333, 341; development 13–14, 19, 260, 267, 371; emigration to 407, 415; horn of 18–19, 112, 114, 173, 312, 314, 324; immigration in 407, 410–411, 414, 418; migration to 12, 16, 249, 414–416; scramble for 329, 334; states in 38–39, 42, 47–48, 190; structural transformation 98, 347, 350, 362–363, 410; underdeveloped 14, 50, 246 Africa countries 188, 192, 195, 218 Africa Migration Report 196, 342 African: beliefs and values 54, 62–64, 70, 72–73; communities 64, 66, 124, 272, 298; continent 1, 4–5, 8, 110–111, 130, 215–217, 349; countries 101, 109–110, 221–225, 232–233, 242, 251–254, 346–347, 410–411, 416; leaders 40, 83, 329, 335, 337 African agency 39–40, 69–70, 122–123, 130–132, 247–249, 253, 268–270 African and Black Diaspora 35, 132–133, 325 African Charter 158, 183, 250, 272 African colonies 61 African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) 16, 45, 215, 336–337, 346–351, 353, 361–363, 365–368, 370–371



‘African Coolies’ 10, 115, 118, 124–127 African Coolies, modern 6, 10 African countries, majority of 87, 131, 404, 411 African Development Bank (AfDB) 86, 138, 148, 308, 342, 378, 385 African diaspora, communities 265, 306, 308 African diasporas 18–20, 72, 253–254, 259, 271–272, 289, 292–293, 297, 306–308; African Diaspora Network (ADN) 297–302, 307–8; business development 297, 306; new 7, 20; refugee diasporas 11–12, 135, 155, 173–174, 180 African economies 243, 252, 349, 371, 373 African Economies, elites 40, 335 African governments 183, 238, 246, 305, 308 African History 23, 34–37, 56–57, 181, 343–344 African host states 172–173 African humanism 66, 74 African immigrants 69, 90–91, 98, 100–101, 104, 107–108, 412 African migrants 80–81, 87–89, 91, 106, 110–112, 115–116, 130–131, 154, 310 African migrant workers 114–116, 124–127, 129–131 African migration 7–10, 17–18, 35–36, 85–86, 96–104, 109–112, 131–132, 196; to Europe and North America 99–103; to the Middle East 115, 117, 125–126 African Migration, patterns and trends of contemporary 7, 9, 77 African National Congress (ANC) 69, 135, 139–141 African people 52, 58, 64–65, 67–68, 71, 73 African philosophy 9, 52, 55, 58–63, 67, 73–76; development of 9, 52, 55, 60, 73; identity 5, 9, 55, 57, 67, 72; knowledge and values

419

Index 57–58; metaphysics of corporeality 63–64, 66, 70; postcolonial predicament 52, 55, 57, 59, 61–62, 72–73 African philosophy and international migration 9, 52–53, 63 African politics 16, 23, 171, 178, 180, 247–248 African postcolonial states 6, 8, 23, 38 African remittance markets 239 Africans 4–6, 66–67, 70–71, 101, 103–105, 107–111, 258–260, 296–299, 301–302; black 2, 43, 61, 70; enslaved 52, 55–56; professional 102, 297 African slaves 73, 249, 254, 259 African state borders 329, 334 African states 6–8, 30–32, 38–45, 47, 159, 171–173, 176, 332–337, 342–344; Economic Community of West 159, 163, 330, 337, 343; independent 11, 39, 42, 170, 172 African Studies 19, 36, 50, 111, 149 African Sub-regions 189, 192, 253 African Union 14–15, 148, 155–156, 168–169, 223, 305–306, 336–337, 350–351, 404 African Union Commission (AUC) 157–159, 168–169, 343, 349–350, 371 African Union Migration Policy Framework 131, 362, 371 African Union’s Ouagadougou Action Plan 169 African youth 99, 101, 105–106, 306 Africa’s return migrants 270–272, 283–284 Africa’s trade and migration 16, 346, 363, 373, 409 agency, human 26, 30, 33 Agenda 2063 15–16, 137, 148, 156, 158, 349–350, 370–371; plan for prosperity 137, 148, 305 Algeria 46, 49, 87–88, 100, 103, 190–191, 193–194 aliens 68–69, 335, 417; illegal 69–70 Angola 41, 73–74, 101, 104, 106, 190–191, 240 Anthropocene 255, 272, 376 anti-immigration 260, 262, 413; attitudes 411, 413; sentiments 269, 413 apartheid regime 135–136, 139, 141, 150, 251 Arab Maghreb Union (AMU) 138, 159–160, 168, 355 armed conflicts 125, 181, 190, 206, 263 arming border communities 202 Asia 9, 81–82, 95, 211, 236, 258–259, 325, 346 aspirations 2, 4, 10, 120, 136–137, 148, 274 aspirations-capabilities framework 18, 26, 35, 132, 283 asylum seekers 10, 12–13, 107, 109–112, 182–184, 216–219, 249 asylum seekers and refugees 10, 105, 165, 217, 339

authorities 23, 26, 53, 160, 176–177; public 8, 39, 47, 384 autochthony 43, 47, 49, 335, 417 Ayele 114, 118, 122, 124–125, 131–132 Bakewell 3, 5, 17, 19, 31, 42 banks 74, 232, 239–240, 245, 358–359 Bantu migrations 24, 26 barriers: migration and mobility 32, 34, 36, 38, 215–216, 297–298, 343–345; non-tariff 346, 348, 350 Basotho migrants in South Africa 135–137, 149, 417 Basotho Mineworkers 142, 145 Bayart 39–40, 48, 181 beliefs 23–24, 31, 34, 62–63, 277, 279 Benin 160, 163, 168, 195, 379, 386 Betts 11–12, 17, 43, 170, 172–173, 181 Bhambra & Santos 2–3 Bisong 16, 124, 130, 132, 329, 345 Bjarnesen 6, 11, 16, 48, 329, 342–343 Black Diaspora 35, 98, 132–133, 325 black entrepreneurs 299–301, 305 Boeyink 6, 8, 39, 42–43, 48 border closures and Covid-19 41–42, 146–147, 149, 212, 214–217, 219 border communities 136, 331, 339, 351 border control 147, 156, 166, 330, 340 Borderless Africa 330–332, 343 border management 147, 164, 206, 394, 399 borders 5–6, 39, 46–47, 50–51, 146–149, 179–180, 320, 330–332, 334–335; African without borders 329; colonial legacy 4, 10, 136, 139, 141; crossing 147–148, 283, 335, 339; Lesotho-South Africa 139; lessons from ECOWAS 337; Pokot pastoral community 203; political 26–27, 329–330; porous 11, 170, 394; refugee and internal displacement 188; as relational, processual and political 16; SADC 38, 107, 138; violent nature 38 Border spectacles and statecraft 47 Botswana 100, 140–141, 195, 279, 411–412 boundaries 50, 56, 62, 334–335, 340–341, 343–344 brain drain 91, 132–133, 136, 251, 271–272, 278–279, 297 Britain 104–105, 289–290, 294–295, 414, 417 brokers, role of 121–122, 124, 126–127, 132, 317 Builders of Africa’s Future (BAF) 299–301 Burkina Faso 160, 163, 168, 190–193, 195, 400 Burundi 43, 46, 48, 160–162, 191, 195, 279–280; returnees in 49, 280 Cameroon 86, 88, 162–163, 190–191, 193, 195, 405

420

Index camps 39, 49, 170, 178, 218 Canada 10, 101, 103–105, 107–110, 112–113, 283–284 capabilities 6, 8, 26, 30–31, 34, 39; increasing Africans’ 31 capital 4, 10–11, 16–18, 155–156, 159–163, 280, 299–302, 354, 407; cultural 275, 278, 281; human 121, 275–276, 279–281, 302, 305–306, 407, 410 capitalism, global 10, 41, 116, 130, 134 Carling 17, 274, 283 cattle 4, 26, 120, 204, 206 cattle raiding 199, 201–204, 207 censuses 223, 389–390, 395, 401, 403; national 17, 390, 400 Central Africa 138, 168, 184, 189–190, 193, 195 Central African Republic 160, 162, 168, 187, 191, 195, 218–219 Chad 100–101, 160, 162–163, 168, 190–193, 195 challenges 115–116, 127, 157–158, 261, 270– 271, 275–276, 319–320, 339–340, 342–343; of human mobility 342; trade-related 366 Challenges of Free Movement of Persons in Africa 158, 167, 169 children 99, 105, 157, 169, 206–208, 261–262, 276, 320–322 China 209–212, 347, 381–383, 385, 414–415, 417 choices 30, 34, 253, 258, 268, 377–378 Christians and female migration to Muslim countries 313 churches 27, 179, 290, 313 circular migration 28–29, 33, 253; individualized 28 circulation, brain 257, 271–272 cities 39, 41–42, 211, 408, 416 citizens 41–42, 48, 90, 104, 144–145, 147–148, 160–165, 354–355, 411–412; diasporic 249 citizenship 18, 290, 294, 390, 395, 417 clans 24, 27–30, 64–65, 203, 315 climate 197–199, 208, 215, 375, 379–380 climate and environmental changes 12, 197–199, 207 climate change 12, 88–89, 91–92, 97–99, 197–199, 209, 374–381, 385–387 climate migrants 89, 376 climate variability 16, 374, 378–382, 387 Coast, Ivory 104, 191, 343 cognitive return concept 14, 273–275, 280–281 cognitive returnees 274, 276–278, 281 Cohen 4, 10, 18, 225, 287–289, 293–295 Cold War 49, 170, 175, 408, 411 collaborations, regional 80, 344, 397 collective mobility 27–30; expansive 28, 34

colonial 2, 5, 8, 24–25, 41–42, 332–333, 335 colonial administrations 40, 47, 334–335, 416 Colonial Africa 40–41, 50 colonial borders 142, 148, 332, 334, 338–339 colonial era 6, 27, 30–31, 33–34 colonialism 3–5, 8–9, 11, 30, 35, 38–40, 335, 408–409; legacies of 170–171, 180, 418; stages of 29 coloniality of power 3, 5–6 colonial period 27, 30, 56, 59, 79–80, 154 colonial statecraft 8, 40 colonial states 39–41, 333–334 colonial subjects 334 colonies 29–30, 39–41, 73, 79–80, 329, 334 colonization 52, 55–59, 61, 70, 73, 416 Comaroff 18–19, 48–49, 418 common border 10, 135–139, 145–147 Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA) 159–161, 167–168, 348, 355 common market protocol 159, 161–162, 167–168, 355 Common Monetary Area (CMA) 140, 149 communities 24–26, 64, 69–70, 119–122, 159–160, 162–163, 296–297, 353–354, 361; cross-border 339; diasporic 43, 287; host 156, 178, 182, 194, 292; pastoral 12, 194, 198, 202–204 Concepts review on environment-migration nexuses 374 conditions, economic 106, 109, 111, 206, 222 conflict, non-state actors 171–172, 192, 196, 336 conflict and violence 12, 182, 188 conflicts 12, 87–88, 170–171, 180–183, 187–192, 194–195, 197–204, 206–207; civil 16, 88, 262, 340; dyad 155, 183, 190, 195; inter-ethnic 187, 190, 192; non-state 190, 192, 196; political 105, 188, 190, 196, 231; resource-based 189, 200; violent 8, 197, 199, 203 Congolese migrants 43, 283 Congo-Ugandan Border 50 connections 31, 33, 286, 288, 290, 293–294 Contemporary Africa 34, 50, 169, 417 contemporary African diasporas 14–15, 286, 289, 296 contemporary African migration 1, 4, 6–7, 9, 99–101, 110–111 context 57–59, 61–63, 65–66, 69–71, 115, 261–262, 317–318, 320–321, 377–379 continent 5–9, 38–40, 43–47, 86–88, 154–159, 296–298, 305–308, 332–337, 346–349; borderless 330–331, 337 continental institutions 137, 167, 215, 366 Continental Migration Frameworks 155 continent-wide protocol 83

421

Index continuities 5, 8, 17, 39, 42, 298, 301 convention 62, 109, 153, 155, 157–158 cooperation 62, 64, 155, 157, 161, 164–165, 336; inter-state 164, 341 core values of African unity 330 corporeality 63–64, 70, 74; metaphysics of 63, 74 corridors 107, 214, 240–241; expensive remittances 222, 241; important migration 239, 379 cosmopolitan 9, 57–58, 72, 288 Cote d’Ivoire 43, 83–84, 187–189, 195–196, 342–343, 405, 410–411 countries 83–88, 93–96, 135–148, 187–191, 210–219, 246–254, 290–294, 395–400, 409–415; conflict-ridden 85, 106, 216; lowincome 80–81, 233; Middle East and Gulf 130, 313; middle-income 80–81, 232–234, 237, 245; neighboring 69, 106, 374, 377–379, 383–384; receiving 83, 87–88, 170, 288, 290, 394; remittance-dependent 231, 243; sending 108, 277, 279, 394, 398; source 88, 104, 234, 277; top remittance recipient 260; transit 106, 257; Western 6, 31, 93, 413–414, 417 countries of origin 53–54, 65–66, 90–91, 276–278, 286–290, 292–294, 318–320, 358–360, 409–410 COVID-19 12–13, 109–110, 143, 145–148, 181–182, 188, 210–219, 223–226, 237–238; pandemic and possible impacts on African migration 12, 100, 109, 210–211; and remittances in Africa 112, 226, 244; virus 13, 109–110, 146, 210–212, 214–218 crimes 68, 70, 122–123, 158, 314 crisis 17–19, 171, 182, 215, 218, 334–335 cross-border migration 33, 137, 143–147, 160, 346 cross-border traders 9, 15, 33, 240, 242 Crush 18, 33, 35, 412, 417 cultural differences 59, 413 cultures 2–4, 6, 25–27, 40–42, 57–59, 64, 72–76, 301 cyclones 89, 375 Daniel Makina 79, 231, 389–390 data: disaggregated 392; exchanging 394, 398, 404, 406; migration-related 394–395; use immigration 394, 398 data collection 117, 223, 394, 399–400, 404; enhancing migration 404; strengthen migration 390 Data on migration stocks and flows in Africa 17 David Ndegwa 12 deaths 105, 108, 205–206, 211, 213, 215 De-centring Eurocentrism in Migration Studies 2, 18

de Haas 9–10, 17–18, 26, 29–31, 33–35, 104, 110–112, 131–132, 416–417 Democratic Republic of Congo 33, 39, 101, 104–106, 160–163, 168, 187, 189, 195 Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) 9, 104–105, 163, 165, 189–196, 218, 405 dependence 13, 148–149, 238 descendants 249–250, 253–254, 260, 262, 289 descendants of African slaves 249, 254, 259 Deskilling 275–276, 284 destination countries 53, 90–91, 105–106, 216–217, 280–281, 319, 359, 363–364, 410 destinations 9–10, 53–54, 68, 71–72, 80–81, 214, 313–314, 317, 319; major 84–85, 314, 391 deterritorialised identities 287–288 developed countries 13, 20, 80, 96, 235 developing countries 80, 220–221, 231, 241, 243, 394–396, 417–418 development 13–15, 156, 246–248, 251–257, 266–277, 347–351, 356–360, 372–373; continental 139, 155, 263, 297; diasporic identity 289; enacting 174, 283; financial sector 100, 155, 231, 278; human capital 298–299, 301, 348, 357, 362; issues 156; local 14, 131, 254, 257; national 109, 177, 281; outcomes 242, 248; processes 114, 124, 255, 339; remittances and financial 233, 260, 270; socio-economic 166, 256, 263, 267, 275 development agendas 150, 242, 273, 307 development aid 172–173, 175, 245, 247, 257 development and migration in africa 17, 48 development challenges 18, 316, 359 Development Economics 243–244, 271, 284, 373 development initiatives 17, 389 development strategies 157, 207 diaspora and transnationalism 71, 75 diaspora bonds 19, 266 diaspora citizenship 290–291 diaspora communities 290, 307–308 diaspora engagement 8, 11, 13, 18, 266, 307–308 diaspora entrepreneurs 15, 305 Diaspora for development in Africa 19, 272 diaspora investment 7, 298, 308 diasporans 289, 298–299, 301–302, 306, 308 diaspora organisations 179, 264, 291 diaspora policies 45, 111, 294, 363 diaspora returnees 251, 284 diasporas 70–72, 178–179, 259–261, 264–266, 286–291, 293–299, 301–302, 305–309, 360; refugee 178–179 diasporas and migrants 14, 288, 293 Diaspora Studies 19, 246, 250, 294–295 diaspora vote 291

422

Index disarmament 197–199, 205–207 disasters 83, 87, 182, 187–188, 192–195, 374–375 discourse 2–3, 203, 273, 277–278, 323–324 displacement 7–8, 23–25, 43, 180, 182–183, 187–191, 193, 195–196, 205–206 disputes, inter-state border 340 disrupted African civilizations 61 diversification 10, 103–104, 349, 383 domestic work 118, 120, 128, 133 domestic workers 88, 118, 127, 132–133, 215 drivers, migration 89 droughts 188, 192–195, 198–199, 201, 206, 208, 375; prolonged 125, 147 dual citizenship 147–148, 259, 265 Dubai 313–314, 317–318 Dulo Nyaoro 197 East Africa 86, 114–115, 174, 189, 192–193, 197–198, 201–202; East African Community (EAC) 45–46, 83, 138, 159, 161, 167–169, 355 East African 12, 45, 124, 202, 263 East and Horn of Africa 167, 169, 195, 205; countries 169, 195 ecology, political 376 Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) 159, 162–163, 168, 354 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) 16, 83, 138, 159–160, 163–164, 337, 339–340, 342–343, 361–365; countries 337–341, 343–345, 348–349, 353, 361, 363–365, 370–371; Free Movement Protocol 339, 343, 345, 353 economic development 87, 98, 241, 306, 308–309, 372–373, 410–411; sustainable 16, 155, 349, 410 economic growth 13, 91, 231–233, 244, 371–372, 409–410 economic growth and development 15, 161, 168, 349, 351 Economic impacts of immigration 417 economic integration 144, 336, 341, 343–344, 371, 373 economics 98, 243–244, 306, 309, 324–325, 373; new 13, 20, 53, 275, 278, 282 economic system, global 5, 17, 408 economic theory, classical 407 economies 9–10, 90, 93–94, 100–101, 231–232, 283–284, 351, 359; underdeveloped 301 ECOWAS members 138, 164, 340, 342, 363 ECOWAS protocol on free movement 338, 342–343, 345 education 75–76, 107–109, 119–120, 122, 251–252, 275–276, 301, 358–359; advanced 90–91, 306, 392, 410, 413

Egypt 43–44, 160, 190–191, 193–195, 278– 280, 402, 404–406 elections 107, 142–143, 180, 187–188, 292 emigrants 253, 258, 358, 364, 371 emigration 87–88, 261–262, 365–367, 369, 371, 407–408, 414–415 emigration countries 53–54 emigration statistics, guidelines for exchanging data to improve 88, 394, 398, 404, 406 employment 126–127, 131, 161–162, 166, 213–214, 263, 352–353, 410–413 entrepreneurs 251, 257, 279–280, 297–301, 305 entrepreneurship 279–280, 283, 285, 298–301 entry 106, 144, 146, 161–163, 165, 331–332, 337 environment 9–10, 12, 63, 199, 208–209, 256–257, 373–377 environmental changes 12, 198–199, 207, 377, 388 environmental degradation 16, 24, 166, 195, 377–378 environmental factors 131, 188, 375, 378 environmental migrants/refugees 377 environment and climate change 12, 182, 209, 377 Eritrea 43–44, 160, 164, 187, 193, 195 establishment 155, 159–163, 165, 167–168, 337–338, 342–343, 348, 353–355, 363–365; right of residence and right of 136–137, 149, 158, 161–162, 165, 168–169, 354 Eswatini 28, 32, 135, 140, 160, 195 Ethiopia 85–86, 100–101, 120–122, 132–133, 174–175, 177, 189–195, 311–320, 324 Ethiopian labour migration 15, 311, 313 Ethiopian migration 310, 312–313, 317; community 311–312, 315–316, 319–320; in South Africa 114, 312, 317 Ethiopians 90, 114, 311–317, 319, 324–325 Euro-African relations 329 Eurocentrism in migration studies 3 Europe 9–12, 38–39, 55–56, 73–74, 79–81, 95–107, 109–112, 217–221, 258–259; African host states 172, 336–337; Agenda on Migration 96, 173 European colonialism 4, 27, 329 European countries 73, 103–107, 112, 219 European destinations 104, 107, 111 Europe and North America 10, 100–101, 105–107, 109, 111 European powers 27, 29, 329, 334 European refugee crisis 177–178, 332 Europeans 5, 52, 59, 101–102, 110, 333–334, 401–403 European states 38, 172 European Union 18–19, 218–219, 330–331, 336–337, 401, 404–405

423

Index exile 44, 99–100, 112, 178–180, 249 exploitation 10, 114–115, 122–123, 125–127, 130–131, 133, 333–334 exports 235, 238, 346, 348, 351–352, 360, 364 extra-continental migration 9, 12, 108 Faist 52–54, 61, 65, 71–72, 75 families 32–34, 66, 105–106, 110, 120–123, 276–278, 308, 314–318, 320–323 family members, male 64, 321–322 female migrants 33, 89, 214, 310–311, 313– 314, 316, 318–319 female migration 33, 105, 313, 318; continental 133 Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2–4, 18 financial capital 246, 257, 279, 281 financial development 233, 239, 243–244, 260, 270–271 financial inclusion 243–244, 302 fishers 18, 374, 380–385 fishery resources 381–382, 385 fishing 378, 380–385 Flahaux & De Haas 9–10, 18, 31, 33–34, 103–104, 110–112, 114–115, 416–417 Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) 147, 378, 380, 382, 386 forced displacement 8–9, 11, 23–24, 43, 46, 164, 166 Forced Migrant Population 184–185 forced migrants 183–184, 186–188, 195, 250–252 forced migration 12, 19, 154–155, 182–184, 186–188, 194–195; contemporary 12, 182–183; main form of 187 foreign direct investment (FDI) 7, 231–233, 349, 358, 414 frameworks 3–4, 26, 130–131, 136–137, 154–155, 164, 251, 262–263; migrationcapabilities 30, 33 France 91, 103–105, 107, 109, 239–241, 381, 414–415 free movement 45–46, 158–159, 161–165, 331–332, 337–339, 341–343, 345, 353–355, 364–365; continent-wide 337, 341; protocol on 163, 166, 343, 350, 354 Free movement in West Africa 342, 345 free movement of labour 155–156, 162, 336 free movement of people 10–11, 16, 159–160, 162–163, 215, 354 Free Movement of People in Southern Africa 169 free movement of persons 135–140, 143–149, 155–156, 158–163, 167–169, 336–339, 343–345, 354–355; obligations 158, 160, 171–172, 183 Free movement of persons in Africa 146, 158, 167, 169

free movement of persons in regional integration processes 168–169, 372 free movement protocol 158, 162, 168, 339–340, 342–343 free trade area, much-anticipated African Continental 332, 346, 349–350 Fulani people 25–27, 64–65 Gabon 162, 168, 195, 397–398, 402 Gambia 160, 163, 168, 195, 218, 221, 383–384 gender and migration 15, 311, 313, 324; in africa 311, 325 gendered migration patterns 311, 313–314, 316–321, 323–324 Geschiere 43, 49, 334–335, 413, 417 Ghana 85–86, 104–105, 259–262, 267–269, 271–272, 275–284, 363–364, 413 Ghanaian migrants 19, 127, 275, 285, 293–294 Ghana’s trade 348–349, 363–365, 370–371 Global Compact for Migration 96–98, 154, 166, 169, 390, 392 Global Compact on Migration (GCM) 154, 159, 166, 390, 392 Global migration trends 80, 390 Global North 38–39, 43, 47–48, 53, 296 goods and services 159–162, 210–211, 215– 216, 338–339, 343–344, 346–348, 350–352, 354, 356 governments 177–179, 190, 196, 207–209, 265–266, 306–307, 359–360, 397, 403–405; central 175–177 Graham Sherbut 23 gross domestic product (GDP) 13, 221–222, 231, 233–235, 348 Guinea 168, 191, 195, 238, 241, 336, 377–378 Guinea Bissau 16, 104, 374, 377, 382–384 Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCCs) 114, 131, 318 Gulf countries 31, 42, 44, 313, 316–319, 323–324 healthcare 188, 214, 216, 299–300, 307; Covid crisis 216, 237 higher education 69, 75–76, 101, 109, 111 highly skilled, migration of 85, 97, 265, 360 history, continent’s 1, 7–8 home 14–15, 64–66, 70–73, 88–89, 118–120, 126–127, 246–247, 284–295, 316–317; notion of 287–288, 291; returning 65, 292, 316; rural 29, 71, 306 home countries 44–45, 68, 114, 131, 247–249, 257, 273–275, 279–282, 357–360 homeland 14–15, 71, 178, 286–291, 293–295 homeland politics 48, 290 Horn of Africa countries 188, 192, 312 host countries 172, 174, 275–276, 278–279, 359–360, 369, 410

424

Index host society 101, 103, 108 households 13, 15, 53–54, 232, 317–318, 321– 323, 396; migration of male heads of 323 human mobility 4–5, 47, 50, 89, 211–212, 342 human movement, cross-border 145–146 human rights 45, 68–69, 156–157, 183, 292, 331–332, 345 human rights protection 130, 183 husbands 119, 129, 205, 314–317, 321–323 hybridity 58–59, 72, 287, 295; cultural 58, 71–72, 74 the idea of a borderless world 344 identifications 287–288, 290, 392 identities 6–7, 18–19, 41–42, 57–58, 288–289, 295–296, 334–335 IGAD Regional Migration Policy Framework 164–165, 353–354, 372 illegal fishing 16, 374, 380–381 imagination, diasporic 15, 287, 289, 293 immigrants 67–68, 85–87, 90–91, 102–104, 106–109, 111–112, 296–297, 410–411, 413–415; black 85, 96, 104–105, 309 immigration 101–105, 212, 258–259, 340–341, 368–371, 407–411, 413–414, 417–418; illegal 37, 69 immigration policies, contemporary Canadian 101, 107 immobile cognitive returnees 274–275, 277, 281–282 immobile returnees 14, 275, 282 immobility 10, 18, 64, 311 implementation 16, 145, 148, 157–167, 215, 338–341, 343, 351, 389–391 independence 41–42, 47, 50, 140–141, 175, 335–336, 411 India 86, 115, 154, 347, 414–415 inequality 14, 101, 108, 242–243, 357, 359 infrastructure development 256, 263 initiatives, diaspora-related 363 integration 18–19, 72, 96, 111, 147–149, 250–251, 293–294, 336, 344–345; returnee 251, 257 Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) 159, 164–165, 167–169, 173, 353–354, 363 internal displacement 12, 157–158, 164, 182, 187–188; high levels of 182, 209 internally displaced persons (IDPs) 153, 157– 158, 182–184, 187–188, 194, 207–208 Internally Displaced Persons 157, 169, 182 internal migration 11, 13, 39, 42, 164, 166, 216 international migrants 54–56, 80–85, 87, 89, 91, 213–215, 390–393 international migration 17–18, 52–57, 72–75, 85–87, 96–99, 213–215, 217–219, 283–284,

392–394; context of 68, 250; patterns and trends of 9, 79 International Organisation for Migration (IOM) 80, 97, 167–169, 214–217, 226, 249–251, 256–257, 260–262, 270–271, 342, 398–406 international remittances 221, 243 intra-Africa 12, 80, 83, 253, 257 intra-Africa migration 215, 235, 253 intra-Africa trade 138, 346–347 intricacies of gender and migration in 311, 323 investments 251–252, 279–280, 299, 301–302, 305–306, 350–351, 360–363, 406–407, 410 irregular migrants 8, 10–11, 13, 105–107, 164, 166, 216–219 Islamic jihadist groups 190–191 Italy 60, 85, 91, 104–107, 109 Johannesburg 9, 149, 179–180, 342 John Atwebembeire Mushomi 389 Kafala system 130–131, 133 Karamajong 202–203, 205–206, 208 Kenya 41–42, 83, 85–86, 160–161, 174–175, 190–195, 198–203, 205, 207–210 Kenyan migrants 129, 262 Key Drivers of African Migration 86 knowledge 1–3, 58, 61–63, 75, 108–109, 251–252, 261–263, 267–269, 389 knowledge transfer 109, 248, 263 Kwame Nkrumah 42, 336, 341 labour demand 10, 87, 317, 352, 368 labour migrants 96, 214–216; female 314, 319 labour migration 11, 164, 166–167, 313–314, 362, 399–400, 404–405; skilled 91, 136, 360 lacuna of research on gender and migration in 311 land 4, 187–188, 203, 207, 219, 259, 322, 332–334 Landau 46, 50, 344, 413, 417 Latin America 9, 65, 67, 81–82, 85, 95, 98 leaders 42–43, 99, 142, 298, 301; exiled South African liberation movement 312 Lesotho 4, 6, 135–136, 139–149, 165, 195, 403–404 Lesotho and South Africa 4, 10, 135–139, 141–149 Lesotho-South Africa relations 135–141, 143, 149 Lesotho Special Permits (LSP) 145, 147 liberation movements 43, 135, 140–141 Liberia 163, 168, 195, 260–261, 268, 341 Libya 44–45, 101, 103, 106, 159–160, 191– 193, 218 lived experiences 286–289, 293, 311–312, 315, 323

425

Index livelihoods 33–34, 136–137, 139, 146–148, 197–199, 204, 206–208 livestock 198–201, 203–208, 378, 382, 385 Madagascar 191, 193, 195, 238, 241, 260 Maghreb 9, 24, 26, 43, 103 Makina 9, 12–13, 17, 210, 274 male migrants 10, 88–89, 313–314, 316–317, 319, 323 Mali 24–25, 36, 100–101, 168, 190–192, 194–195, 260–261, 377–378 Mamdani 39–40, 42, 47–48, 50, 344 Margaret Rutendo Magwedere 231 market 239, 246, 297, 299, 356–357, 368–369; common 159, 161, 347, 355, 361; continentwide free 370 market access, increased 352 marriage 199, 201, 313–317, 321, 324; arranged 15, 314–317, 321; migration 120 Mary Boatemaa Setrana 14, 273 mass migrations 208, 215, 416 Matlosa 4–6, 10, 149–150 Mazzucato 7, 19, 293–294 Mbembe, Achille 4–6, 19, 331–334, 341–342, 344, 408–409, 417–418 media 10, 12, 100–102, 110 member states 11, 137–138, 154–166, 183, 336–340, 348–351, 353–355, 361–366, 370–371 Member States and RECs 11, 154, 156–157 Mfecane 70, 74, 154, 169–170 Middle East 10, 87–88, 106, 109–110, 114– 122, 124–133, 313–314, 316, 318–319 migrant communities 216, 335, 418 migrant fishers 16, 374, 382–385 migrant husbands 15, 320, 322–323 migrant integration 71–72 migrant labour 18, 32, 36, 216, 219 migrant remittances 13, 231, 243–245, 358, 373 migrants 9–14, 31–36, 80–81, 90–92, 156–157, 211–222, 249–251, 287–290, 311–322; aspiring 120, 273, 329; category of 88, 91, 331, 345, 400; contributions of 159, 214; economic 34, 88, 106, 284; environmental 376; extra-continental 104; female transit 311, 325; high-skilled 65, 90, 257, 275–276, 359; illegal 10, 17, 68, 75, 111; intra-African 9, 15, 68–69, 83, 239; potential 52, 54, 63, 65, 121–122, 278, 281; returnee 123, 317; rights of 31, 156–157, 217, 339; stranded 195, 214, 219 migrants and diasporas 288–289, 294 migrant smuggling 11, 124, 153, 157, 218 migrant stock 82, 92, 215, 244, 392; international 98, 214, 390, 399 migrant women 214, 318, 324

migrant workers 114, 118, 124–128, 130–133, 212–214, 318, 320 migrating 26, 87–88, 118–119, 206–207, 280–281, 284–285 migration 7–13, 26–36, 43–55, 91–103, 277– 288, 310–315, 352–360, 368–379, 395–410; age of 63, 65, 111; benefits of 282, 362–363, 392; channelling 39, 43, 47; child 133, 389; cognitive 283; collective 25, 30; colonial-era 29–30; complexities of 274; consequences of 13, 156, 396; cultures of 102, 225, 310, 317, 324; definitions of 65, 250, 394, 396; drivers of 8, 10, 17, 130, 132, 134; extracontinental African 10, 104; feminization of 88, 310, 324; forced displacement and irregular 7–8, 11; gendered 15, 322; internal climate 97, 196; international return 258, 273–274; intra-African 24, 26, 31–32, 44, 47, 80, 83–84; leveraging 244, 284, 373, 406; mainstreaming 389; managing 154, 156, 164, 166–167; mismanaged 156, 251; normative understandings of 8, 38; overseas 408, 416; pre-colonial 24, 28; regional 338, 395; regulated work 79; rural-urban 70–71, 88, 216; significant 311, 408; skilled 91; state control of 38, 47; stories and narratives 108, 177, 274, 282, 289; survival 12, 17, 43, 48; transit 81, 106, 216–217, 273, 319; voluntary 8, 87, 105; well-managed 156 migration and climate change 12, 197 migration and development 11, 13, 154, 156, 164, 166, 347–348 migration and mobility 8, 23–27, 29, 39, 148 Migration and public health 33 migration and remittances 213, 272, 320, 395 migration and trade 156, 342, 415 migration concepts 3, 17 migration control 38, 41, 46–47, 172 migration data 164, 166, 389–390, 392, 394–395, 397–401, 404–405; collecting 224, 400; context of 389; forced 184, 195; international 392, 406; managing 397, 404; reliable 392, 397 migration data collection 222–224, 399, 401 migration data management 223, 389, 391, 399, 404–405 migration dynamics 25, 30, 52–53, 375, 377, 379 migration experience 6, 108, 214, 283, 319 migration flows 92, 95, 97, 214, 220 migration frameworks 11, 16, 96, 154, 159; continental-level 159, 362–363 migration governance 11, 153, 156, 159, 167; architecture of 8; enhancing African 169 migration in Africa 39–40, 87, 183, 215; forced 12, 182, 187, 195; international 36, 83, 399

426

Index Migration in Development for Africa (MIDA) 251, 271 Migration in East and Horn of Africa 167, 169 migration issues 11, 154, 164, 353–355 migration laws 11, 130, 387 migration patterns 9–10, 91, 93, 285, 346, 348–349, 370; inter-regional 7, 353 migration policies 8, 11, 34, 95–96, 397, 399–400, 402–403; national 164, 167, 400, 402, 405; well-managed 221, 307 Migration Policy Framework 11, 153–154, 156–157, 164, 251, 404 Migration Policy Framework for Africa (MPFA) 11, 156, 169, 223, 251, 353, 355, 362, 390 migration processes 3, 20, 124, 319, 323 Migrations in Contemporary Africa 169 migration studies 1–3, 18–19, 270–271, 283–285, 294–295, 417–418 migration theory 3, 9, 18, 52–53, 132–133; international 52, 63, 73, 274 migration trends 34, 83, 91, 313, 323; forced 184, 188 migratory dynamics 25, 379, 385 migratory flows 135, 382 migratory movements, national 17 mines 25, 27–30, 32–33, 41, 46, 79–80 mobile money 239–243 mobilisations, political 12, 178, 180, 291 mobility 2–5, 7–8, 23–29, 31–32, 34–35, 38– 39, 45–47, 199–201, 331–334; channelling 8, 40, 46; cross-border 3, 147, 217, 335; internal 216 mobility/migration 16, 374 mobility dynamics 26–29 mobility patterns 2, 6 mobility story 24, 27 mobility transition 376, 388 money 118, 120, 124, 126, 176–177, 241, 322–323 money transfer operators (MTOs) 239, 242 Morocco 103, 106, 159–160, 218–219, 257–258, 355 movement 23–29, 40–41, 44–45, 141, 144– 145, 154, 160–163, 213, 249–250; collective 25, 28; freedom of 177, 210–211, 332, 338, 341, 343, 345; intercontinental 210; intracontinental 42; migrant 53, 131 movement of labour 34, 161, 200, 352 movement of persons 16, 163, 165, 250, 347, 350–352, 365; facilitation of 138, 145, 165, 169; implementation of free 143, 160, 167, 362 movement restrictions 210, 213, 215 Mozambique 42, 89, 101, 104, 189–190, 194–195, 387 Mudimbe 5, 19, 329, 345 Mudungwe 9, 11, 79, 153, 166, 169

Nairobi 178, 180, 204, 208–209, 270–271 national borders 8, 33, 286, 293, 336–337 nationalities 24, 27, 32, 125, 249 nation-states 1, 3, 6, 8, 10, 38, 53 natural resources 16–17, 170–171, 333, 346–347, 414, 416 Ndlovu-Gatsheni 3–4, 19, 57, 75 neighbouring countries 43–44, 142–143, 198, 200, 214, 218; communities 197–198, 203, 205 New Economics of Labour Migration (NELM) 13, 20, 275, 278 nexus, migration-development 13–14 Niger 160, 163, 168, 190–191, 194–195, 216–217, 238 Nigeria 85–86, 104–109, 189–195, 217–218, 237, 260–262, 379, 386–388, 413 non-migrants 249–251, 283, 290, 320–321 norms 32, 34, 167, 171, 320, 323; gendered socio-cultural 318–319, 323 North Africa 83, 85, 95, 138, 226, 234–235, 329–330 North America 9–10, 81–82, 99–107, 109–111, 258, 260 Northern Africa 85, 189–190, 192, 195 Northern Kenya 32, 201, 208–209, 387 North-South migration 52, 61, 72 Nugent 40, 50, 333–335, 340–341, 345 Nyaoro 12, 198–199, 209 off-continent migration 31–32, 34 Opesen 6, 10, 114 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 90, 235, 238, 277–279, 308, 387, 389 Organisation of African Unity (OAU) 141–142, 155, 172, 272, 336, 341 Osarfo, Daniel 16, 409 out-migration 79–80 overfishing 16, 374, 381, 383 pan-Africanism 42–43, 47, 137, 341–342, 344, 349 pandemic 110, 210–219, 221–224, 226, 233, 237, 307; previous 211–213, 224 Papa Sow 16, 374–375, 377–379, 383–387 parents 15, 292, 315, 317, 320–321 passports 123, 126, 137, 141, 162, 164 pastoralist communities 199–202, 204–205, 209 Pasura 14, 17, 19–20, 71–72, 286, 289–291, 295 patterns 7–9, 18, 77, 79, 97, 99, 104; gendered 310, 313, 317–318 peaks 184, 186–190, 192–193, 213, 216 people migrate 52, 80, 197 period, post-colonial 8, 25

427

Index permanent residence 32, 35, 68, 128, 142–144 personhood 66–67 persons 135–140, 143–149, 158–165, 167–169, 249–250, 336–339, 342–345, 350–356, 364–367; displaced 43, 218, 221; stateless 166, 184 Pokot 12, 197–208 policies 41–43, 46–47, 153, 155–157, 167, 330–331, 337–340, 353–355, 401–403; proRM-2-A 256, 259; regional 337; return-andreintegration 248, 270 policy and practice 133, 226, 339 policy frameworks 153, 164, 354, 362; major relevant continental 164 political instability 15–16, 83, 87–88, 100–101, 311, 313 politics 13, 18–19, 48–50, 178–180, 295–296, 418 politics of asylum in africa 50, 181 population movements 7, 23–25, 27, 30, 65 population registers 390, 394, 396–397 populations 184, 203, 212, 305–306, 331–332, 380–382, 385, 392, 396–397; diasporic 288; refugee 182; working-age 91, 93–95, 297; youthful 17, 94–95, 215 Portugal 85, 91, 104–105, 107, 264 Portuguese East Africa 27–28 Post-Apartheid South Africa 31, 50, 149, 417 Postcolonial Africa 24, 30, 33, 35, 57–58 Post-colonial African migration 33, 154 post-colonial context 5–6, 8, 31, 33–34, 408–409 postcolonial states 39, 42, 46–47, 49 postcolonial states and migration 38 postcolonial states in africa 46–47 poverty 6–7, 90–91, 99–100, 108–109, 120– 121, 124, 243, 358–359, 408–410 poverty and inequality 14, 242–243 power 5–6, 19, 40, 42–43, 50–51, 126, 176–177, 408 practices, cultural 12, 26, 197–198, 321 Pre-Colonial Africa 8, 25, 35 principles, co-development 362 Prominent African Philosophers 59–60 property rights 416–417 protocol on free movement of persons 136–138, 158–159, 161–166, 168–169, 337–339, 342–343, 353–355, 364–365, 367; protocol aims 163–165 quarantines 12, 210–212, 219, 237 Quartey, Peter 16, 346, 373, 409 race 60, 63, 108, 112, 412–413 racism 5, 13, 18, 67–68, 107–109, 156–157 Ratha 19, 222, 231, 244, 358–359, 372–373

recruitment agencies 122–123, 126 refugee encampment policies 42 refugee-hosting regions 175–176 refugee movements 11, 109, 170, 173, 180 refugee policies 11, 171, 173–175, 177, 181 refugee politics 11, 47, 170–171, 178–180; historical context 11, 138–139 refugee politics in africa 11, 170, 179–180 refugee regime, global 171 refugee rights 11, 171 refugees 9–13, 31–32, 42–50, 70, 88–89, 155, 170–184, 217, 219; environmental 376, 387; forced repatriation of 46–47; role of 171, 178; urban 50, 176 refugees and asylum seekers 12, 101, 109, 214, 216–219 refugee studies 49–50, 180, 284 Regional Economic Communities (RECs) 11, 16, 45–46, 138, 153–160, 162–164, 167, 333, 336, 338, 348–349, 353, 367–368 regional integration 155–156, 164, 166–167, 334, 336–337, 342 regional integration and development 11, 36, 156 regional integration processes 168–169, 372 regionalisation 338, 341, 343, 345, 350 Regional Migration Policy Framework 159, 168–169, 353 regions 82–83, 85–86, 88–92, 102–104, 164– 167, 238–239, 337–339, 352–355, 400–401 regulations 144–145, 160, 162, 165, 241–242, 338–340 reintegration 247, 256–257, 262, 267, 273 reintegration challenges 261, 268 relationships 9–10, 16–17, 54–55, 66–67, 74, 135–136, 139–141, 286–288, 316–317; migrant worker-employer 119 religion 20, 74, 76, 294–295, 375–376 remittance channels 220, 239; formal 237, 239–240 remittance flows 221, 223, 233, 237–238, 395 Remittance inflows and financial development 91, 237–238, 260, 271, 358–359 Remittance markets 237, 239, 241 remittance recipients 232, 234, 239 remittances 13–14, 108–111, 220–222, 231– 235, 237–245, 260–261, 320–323, 358–359, 371–373; cost of 240–242; diasporic 242, 252, 261; digital 241; global 114, 222; high levels of 13, 233, 238; leveraging 373; macroeconomic impacts of 233, 244; personal 233–234; role of 13, 20, 242, 245; sending 7, 308; share of 221–222; trends of 234; value of 232, 235 Remittances-Development Debate 271 remittance transfer 239, 241, 395

428

Index remittance trap 13, 238, 243 research on gender and migration in Africa 311 residence 136–137, 147–149, 155, 158, 160–163, 165, 337–338, 355, 396 Residence and Establishment, ECOWAS 163, 168, 353, 364–365 residence and establishment, right of 155, 163, 338, 355 resource extraction, natural 32, 79 resources 11–12, 54–55, 63–65, 101, 256–257, 260–261, 298–301, 359–361, 384 resources depletion 16, 281, 384 return 44–46, 66, 141–142, 246–248, 250–259, 261–263, 267–276, 278–281, 283–285; actual 247–248, 255, 280; context of 14, 28, 268; forced 250, 261; international 273; motivations for 14, 268, 279; reintegration challenges 250; sustainable 158, 273; voluntary 216, 219, 253 return and brain gain 278–279 returnees 14, 128–129, 247–248, 251–252, 254–263, 267–269, 275–276, 279–280; business-minded 276; capacity of 247, 256, 269; forced 257, 263; investment-savvy 14; skilled 278 returnees agency 252 return flows 256–257 return home 28, 32–33, 65, 71, 109 returning 29–30, 32–33, 45–46, 250–251, 261, 269, 278–279 returning migrants 13, 248, 251, 257, 285 return migrants, cognitive 274, 282 return migration 14, 246–248, 250–253, 255– 256, 268, 270–280, 282–285; cognitive 274, 280; long term 251–252; skilled male 271 return migration and reintegration 273 return migration literature 275, 278 reverse migration 253, 283 rights 127–129, 133, 157–158, 162–163, 170– 171, 174, 331, 337, 353; socio-economic 174–175, 177–178 rights of establishment and residence 160–161, 165, 355 risks 46–47, 67, 69, 116–117, 216–218, 319–320 RM-2-A, development potential of 247–248, 252, 255–257, 260–261, 268 routes 106, 109, 214, 217–218, 379, 383 rural areas 40, 42, 86, 239, 247 Rwanda 43–46, 160–162, 168, 173–174, 179, 195, 240, 405 Rwanda Diaspora 50, 179 Rwandan state 46 SADC Labour Migration Frameworks 138, 166, 169 SADC Protocol 135, 138, 145, 165–166, 169

Sahel-Saharan States 160 Saudi Arabia 104–105, 120–121, 123, 128–130, 260–261, 314, 414–415 scramble for Africa, new 414 SDGs migration governance 221 SDG target 241–242 seasonal migration 12, 197–198, 200–201, 204–207, 325 security 88, 141, 144, 146, 178, 204, 336–337 Senegal 99, 104, 168, 260–261, 265, 374, 377–384, 386–387, 405 Senegalese fishers 383–384; migratory routes of 374 Senegalese migrant fishers 384 Senegalese migrants 113, 383–385 Setrana 14, 274, 276–278, 282, 285 Silicon Valley-based African Diaspora Network 15 skilled labour 44, 91, 359 skills 91, 103–105, 107–108, 246–248, 251– 252, 255–257, 261–263, 267–268, 278–281 skills development 305–306 slavery 1, 4, 8–9, 35–36, 52, 55–56 slavery and colonization 52, 55–57, 59, 61, 73 slave trade, transatlantic 259–260, 289 social capital 24–25, 32–34, 54–55, 280, 285 social media and migration 118, 315–316, 397 social networks 66, 106, 256, 261–263, 267, 269, 291 social protection, limited access 126–127, 214, 216–217, 297 societies 23, 64, 73, 201, 261, 272, 324–325, 333–335, 350 Somalia 43, 85–86, 101, 160, 189–195, 201–202, 218–219, 262 Somaliland 45, 276, 284 Somalis 12, 27, 32, 90, 292 Somalis in South Africa 32, 90 South Africa 9–10, 35–37, 67–70, 83–88, 135–149, 179, 310–314, 316–325, 410–413; liberation of 135, 141, 144, 312; xenophobic violence in 47, 67, 418 South Africa and Lesotho 136, 146 Southern Africa 5, 28, 41–42, 86, 138–139, 149, 169–170, 189–190, 324; climate change in 98, 388 Southern African Customs Union (SACU) 139–140, 148 Southern African Development Community (SADC) 46, 75, 138, 159, 165–167, 169, 215, 354 Southern African Migration Project (SAMP) 18, 149, 412 South-North migration 52, 54–55, 61, 73, 80 South-South migration 80, 324; context of 15, 311, 323

429

Index South Sudan 125, 161, 164–165, 168, 170, 189–195 sovereignty 45, 47, 49, 330–331, 340–341, 343–344 statecraft 47, 50 state power 47, 141 state practices 39, 47 states 38–40, 42–51, 155–158, 164–165, 171–172, 180–181, 190, 333–336, 340–344; bifurcated 8, 40–42, 47; host 160, 165, 173–174, 268, 352; post-colonial 2, 6–8, 23, 47, 109; recipient 14, 268–269 state sovereignty 38, 47, 331, 340 structure 14–15, 26, 128, 253, 255–257, 261–262, 268 sub-regions 186, 189–190, 193, 195, 377, 379–381, 384 Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) 80–81, 89–91, 94–95, 103–104, 106–110, 171, 221–223, 233–239, 372–373 Sub-Saharan Africa: recent trends in international migration in 111; remittances to 108, 221, 297 Sub-Saharan African 83, 85–86, 104, 107, 109–111, 297 Sub-Saharan immigrants 90, 104 Sudan 43, 45, 100–101, 160, 187, 189–195, 218–219 sustainability 246, 248, 383, 386, 388 sustainable development 75, 133, 155, 390–391, 409 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 156, 166, 232, 273, 307–308, 391–392, 409–410 Tanzania 41–43, 46–47, 49–51, 104–105, 161, 174, 195, 240 tariffs 350–351, 361, 365, 371 temporary migration 32, 68, 208, 279, 283 territories 38–40, 55–56, 160–163, 165, 171, 199–201, 339–340 time 63–64, 74, 144–146, 276–277, 281–282, 310–312, 321–322, 333, 373–374 Togo 160, 163, 168, 195, 337, 340 trade 16, 25, 156, 173–174, 267–268, 333, 346–352, 356–358, 360–373; data on 364, 370; inclusive 372; intra-African 16, 346, 350, 367, 399; preferential 140 trade agreements 346–349, 353, 356–357, 361, 368 trade liberalisation 347, 357, 365, 368, 371 trafficking 100, 132, 134, 157, 159 Trafficking in Person (TiP) 157 trans-border security 342, 345 transformation 35, 50, 143, 147, 347, 351 transnational 12, 14, 180, 283, 286–287, 289–291, 293–294

transnationalism 19, 48, 50, 75, 108–110, 290, 293–295 transnationalism and integration 19, 293–294 transnational migration and diaspora 286 transnational practices 287, 289–290, 293 treaties 45, 153–155, 158–161, 354–355 Tunisia 88, 103, 159–160, 397–398, 402 Turner 6, 8, 44, 48, 50 Ubuntu 55, 66–67, 70, 73 Ubuntu and xenophobia in Africa 62, 66 Uganda 8–9, 45, 122–125, 160–161, 173–176, 200–203, 205–206, 209–210, 405 underdevelopment 13, 40, 110, 188, 242 understanding home 293–294 United Kingdom (UK) 104, 107, 109–110, 173, 179–180, 278, 290–292 United Nations 98, 104, 140, 398, 404, 406 United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) 105, 113, 379, 388–389 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) 33, 37, 98, 373, 388 United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) 80–81, 83–85, 89, 389–390, 394, 414–415 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 173, 272, 308 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) 387, 389 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) 32, 171–173, 176, 178, 183–185, 187–188, 195–196, 262 United States (US) 10, 74, 97–98, 104–105, 107–110, 212–214, 278, 296–301, 308–9 values 4, 57–59, 61–64, 70, 72–73, 320–321, 364 value systems 5, 55–56, 59, 61–62, 70 Van Hear 134, 295, 413, 418 Vigneswaran 39, 43, 45, 48, 50–51 villagisation 41, 46, 51 villagisation programmes 41, 46 violence 12–13, 49–50, 105, 182, 187–189, 205–206, 213–214, 379, 411–412 visa requirements 161, 165, 346 visas 45, 126, 128, 160–161, 163, 165, 416 vulnerability 118, 125–126, 209, 380, 382 wage convergence 356 wage differentials 248, 356 wages 27, 347, 352–353, 356, 409–410 walls 106–107, 259, 330–331 West Africa 16, 32–33, 336–338, 342, 344–345, 374, 378–380, 382–385; economies of fish eldorados in 374 West African 104, 282, 337–338, 377, 381–382, 384, 413

430

Index Western Africa 86, 114, 184, 189, 192–193 Western Europe 62, 234, 413 Wiredu 56–57, 59, 76 women 33–34, 114–115, 119–121, 134, 157, 207, 310–311, 315–316, 318–324 women and girls 119–120, 122–124, 313, 315–316, 320–321 work 28–31, 87–89, 108–111, 121–129, 161– 162, 174–175, 177–178, 275–277, 318–319 workers 126, 162, 165, 352, 358, 368–369; migration of 10, 124; skilled 103, 258, 341 World Bank 194, 196, 237, 239, 243–245, 249–250, 272, 372–373, 395 World Health Organisation (WHO) 146, 210, 227, 237, 251 WorldRemit 239 World Trade Organisation (WTO) 348, 350

xenophobia 55, 66–70, 125, 138, 156–157, 342, 417; phenomenon of 69, 411 xenophobic attacks 68–70, 319–320, 335 young girls 310–311, 314–320, 324, 379 Young girls in southern Ethiopia and migrant 316 young people 6, 86, 124, 203, 409 youth 86, 88–89, 99, 101, 121–122, 409 youth migration 120 Zambia 33, 37, 41–43, 160, 165, 195 Zeleza 2, 7, 20, 249, 253, 289 Zimbabwe 41, 104, 168–169, 179, 261, 290–292, 405–406 Zimbabwe Diaspora 12, 179, 284, 289–292, 295

431