This background note was issued at the High Level Panel on "G7 & Africa" held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Rome, 5 May 2017.
“Human mobility can be hugely effective in raising
a person’s income, health and education prospects.
But its value is more than that:
being able to decide where to live is a key element of human freedom”
(Human Development Report 2009)
What does mobility mean for Africa today?
Mobility has characterised human life throughout history. However, in the 20th century, changes in the global labour market, improvements in communication technology and significant declines in transport costs have favoured a stark increase in the number of people globally on the move. Particularly, the African continent has recently been at the centre of media reports about an alleged “South-North exodus”, caused by constraints such as poverty and war that compel people to leave their place of birth. In fact, UNHCR estimates that only 14% of the total number of African international migrants are actually fleeing man-made or natural disasters. All the others make a deliberate choice to move in search for better life opportunities, for reasons that include family, work and education.
Moreover, in spite of the “exodus” rhetoric, most Africans move within their own country, in rural-to-urban migration, or to other countries in the same region. International migrants that cross seas and oceans to reach Europe, Asia and the Americas are only a small minority . Even within the smaller context of forced migration, out of an estimated 19 million forced migrants in Africa in mid-2016, only 29% left their country of citizenship, leaving over 13 million people as internally displaced. Nevertheless, international migrants usually achieve better results in terms of income increase and remittances invested in home countries at family and community level.
What are the key issues at stake and the actors involved?
Debates about migration and mobility are shaped by two major issues: the migration-development nexus, and whether migration is an opportunity or a threat for origin and receiving countries.
Following a mainstream perspective that privileges structural constraints as an explanation for migratory movements, migration is often seen as a ‘development failure’: lack of development provides incentives for people to move. In fact, however, evidence seems to suggest the contrary: not only do wealthier societies tend to be more mobile than poor ones; also, it is usually the better-off in terms of income and education that are more likely to move, as their aspirations and capability of moving are usually above average. Migration rates of skilled people appear to be particularly high in Africa, with one out of eight Africans with university education living in OECD countries. This has fostered debates about the negative consequences of migration for developing countries, which are deprived of a qualified workforce with repercussions on development perspectives and service delivery capacity. In fact, however, there is scarce evidence that the alleged ‘brain drain’ hampers a country’s possibilities of developing rather than perpetuating the status quo.
Even though people’s mobility cannot be considered a development strategy per se, African countries generally see emigration rather positively as a way of decreasing unemployment, generating remittances and generally decreasing socio-economic and political dissatisfaction. Regional organizations like the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the South African Development Community (SADC), the East African Community (EAC) and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) have introduced arrangements to facilitate the free circulation of people within their borders, particularly through the abolition of visa requirements. At the same time, these requirements have become more and more restrictive in advanced countries, particularly in the European Union, where concerns for the socio-economic repercussions of immigrants and the fear of terrorist attacks increasingly result in protectionism and xenophobia. Again, however, while it is demonstrated that mobility from low-income societies can dramatically increase income levels for migrants, there is very limited evidence of negative effects on receiving societies. Instead, it is increasingly recognized that migrants can positively contribute to the economic growth of the host country, even expanding globally available job opportunities.
What kind of interventions have proved to work/not to work?
Interventions aimed at managing mobility often approach it as a problem to be solved and implicitly or explicitly seek for solutions to stop or decrease internal and international migration. Restrictive immigration policies in Europe, particularly the introduction of new restrictions on visas since the 1970s, did not work as expected. Instead of reducing immigration from African countries, they contributed both to the informalization of migratory flows and to pushing into permanent settlement temporary migrants who could no longer come and go according to income needs. This resulted in widespread human rights violations against international migrants, and in smuggling becoming an outstanding source of income in transit countries such as Niger.
Despite recent collective and bilateral efforts by European countries, including the launch of the EU’s Migration Partnership Framework in late 2016, it has become increasingly difficult to address such an entrenched state of affairs without fostering political and social instability both in origin and transit countries. Nevertheless, international cooperation assistance to African countries has been extensively influenced by the desire to reduce migration flows. Attempts have been made to negotiate agreements with countries such as Nigeria, Senegal, Niger and Mali, in exchange for better border control and readmission of deported citizens.
However, these agreements depend on the enforcement capacity of the country involved, which can suddenly collapse – as was the case in Libya since 2011 – and on the willingness of a country’s economic, social, and political stakeholders to compromise a portion of the informal economy that may be providing for the livelihoods of a significant share of its citizens. When, in 2015, the EU created the Africa Trust Fund to help African countries deal with migration-related costs (with an initial endowment of 1.9 billion euros), this initiative was criticised by the chairperson of the African Union commission as an attempt to dump the responsibility to deal with migration flows on African countries, instead of working on European immigration policies.
How is the future scenario of mobility in Africa most likely to evolve?
Migration flows from Africa are likely to rise in spite of any attempts to reduce them, for at least two reasons. First, demography: while population growth rates in Africa are among the highest in the world, most countries in the Global North face demographic decline and the rapid aging of their populations. Second, per capita economic growth in a number of African countries lowers the threshold of capabilities and economic power needed to migrate internationally, as more people are able to access the necessary resources for an international migratory project.
If this is the case, Africa as a whole is likely to continue to benefit from growing levels of global remittance flows. The latter increased from $68 billion to $553 billion between 1990 and 2015, and are now almost four times the value of Official Development Assistance. These values are likely to be highly underestimated, as a huge portion of remittance flows is believed to rely on informal channels. Since remittances are often invested in education, health care and recreational facilities besides productive assets, this is likely to have a positive impact on the human development of origin countries as a whole.
How should the International Community and Africa engage in a shared dialogue on mobility?
In dealing with international mobility from the African continent, the logic of emergency should be abandoned. Mobility and migration –with the exception of flows of people under severe threat such as refugees and IDPs – are not sudden phenomena that can be stopped with restrictive policies. Immigration policy-makers should conceive of mobility as being key to development, and acknowledge that restrictions and barriers do not halt the movement of people but only make it illegal and permanent.
In order to reconcile the aspirations of migrants and labour needs in host countries while reducing host societies’ concerns over the social implications of permanent immigration, a system based on temporary permits should be discussed with African countries or regional organizations. Few African countries can currently count on such agreements, which are successfully employed among member states of the Mercosur.
Similar agreements, together with a reduction of transaction costs for sending remittances to origin countries, could restore the circularity of people’s movements, without forcing people to permanent choices and maximizing the opportunities for mobility-related development in origin countries through the maintenance and strengthening of ties with origin families and communities.
Sara de Simone, Università degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale"
 Collier, P. (2013). Exodus: how migration is changing our world. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 UNHCR. (2011). Statistical Yearbook 2010. Geneva: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
 Schoumaker, B., Flahaux, ML., Schans, D., Beauchemin, C., Mazzucato, V. & Sakho, P. (2015). Changing patterns of African Migration: A Comparative Analysis. In C Beauchemin (Ed.), Migration between Africa and Europe: Trends, Factors and Effects. New York: Springer-Verlag & INED Population Studies series.
 Bakewell, O. (2008). ‘Keeping Them in Their Place’: the ambivalent relationship between development and migration in Africa.
 Todaro MP, Maruszko L. 1987. Illegal migration and US immigration reform: A conceptual framework. Population and development review 13:101-14.
 de Haas (2009), op. cit.
 See data from the World Bank (2015): http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.GROW
 de Haas (2009), op. cit.
 UNDP (2009). Overcoming barriers: Human mobility and development. Human Development Report, United Nations Development Programme.