In the absence of windows, the walls spoke. The 22-year-old former Togolese taxi driver, Mazou Suleyman, was the most outgoing of the dozen boys from different sub-Saharan countries who were waiting for the signal to start the most dangerous journey of their lives: crossing the desert from the Nigerian city of Agadez to Libya and from there to cross the Mediterranean and reach Europe. Mazou and the others had been hiding for weeks in a ghetto house on the outskirts of the Nigerien city, a clandestine, one-story building with no windows to avoid prying eyes, where they awaited the order to start a three- to five-day trip together. 48 adults crammed into the back of a van. On the adobe walls of the ghetto, the migrants had written prayers and wishes with charcoal, but above Mazou’s head a phrase stood out that summed up the mood in that room: “Europe or nothing.” He shook off his fear with mathematics and reasons. “How many of those who try to cross the sea do not succeed —he asked—, 5% drown? 3%? In my country I did not earn to give a decent life to my family, there is no future there. Wouldn’t you risk it?”
African migration to Europe is a dynamic and extremely complex phenomenon in which many factors come together, but Mazou’s flight from a life without a future is a reason that is constantly repeated along the African routes to Europe. There is more. In addition to the socioeconomic aspirations to improve their own life or that of their community —often the entire family sells cows or land to pay for the migrant’s trip—, political instability in the place of origin, entrenched conflicts such as jihadism in the Sahel , the ravages of climate change or the lack of freedom of opinion or sexuality, push thousands of Africans towards the Old Continent.
Studies confirm the melting pot of motivations. The African Youth Survey report, conducted by the South Africa-based Ichikowitz Foundation, recently asked young people from 15 African countries what their reason for migrating was. The result echoed the words of the former Toglish taxi driver from the Agadez ghetto: economic motivation was the driving force for 44% of those surveyed, followed by access to a better education (41%) or living new experiences (25%). Fleeing the country because of corruption, for political or security reasons, in addition to family issues, were other main reasons for leaving home. The study provided another key piece of information: more than two-thirds of migrants (69%) planned to return home after a few years abroad.
On the beach of Tanji, in the Gambia, the fisherman Lamin Bah had made his calculations: he wanted to go to Spain or France for five years and return to buy a house for himself and another for his parents. “I prefer life here, you don’t take good care of your elderly there and there is racism too, right?” He said. The Gambia is an example of the influence of community roots in the migratory phenomenon: remittances or money sent home by the 118,000 Gambians who live outside the country account for 20% of the national Gross Domestic Product.
Further north, in the coastal city of Kayar, in Senegal, one of the main points of departure for migrants to the Canary Islands, the fisherman Abdou Fall was carried away by demons. “This morning,” he said, “800 boats have left and we have returned with a handful of fish. Nothing! Between the wind and the fact that foreign ships steal our fish, it’s desperate.” Around him, dozens of young fishermen affirmed without hesitation that they planned to get on a canoe and go to the Canary Islands.
The economic ravages of the pandemic, to which are now added the increase in food and fuel prices due to the war in Ukraine, have pushed many fishermen, who a few years ago did not think of risking their lives at sea, to seek a desperate way out. At the center is inequality. Added to the disadvantageous fishing agreements with the European Union for their boats to fish in West African waters is the impact of European subsidies to their farmers, which fill African markets with foreign products and destroy local trade. But to the almost 200 boats with the international flag that fish en masse off the African coast and dozens more “Senegalized”, foreign-owned but with permits as if they were local, we must add 40 fishmeal and fish oil factories, above all Chinese-owned, in Mauritania, Senegal and The Gambia.
To understand the migratory phenomenon in Africa, it is essential to focus on another figure: 80% of African migrants have no interest in leaving the continent and heading to Europe, according to the latest report African Migration Trends 2023. Beyond the more than 30 million African refugees from a conflict, who mostly cross the border to the neighboring country to flee violence, the search for a job explains why the main regional economies, such as South Africa, the Ivory Coast or Nigeria, are the ones that receive the most migrants welcome. Uganda, with a welcoming policy towards its South Sudanese neighbors, embroiled in endless war, also tops that list. Despite this, the Ugandan country also has shadows. The anti-gay law, recently approved and considered the toughest in the world, has caused members of the homosexual community to flee.
If some Africans envy the images that their friends send them from Spain or France, there are also those who try to avoid more deaths in the desert or at sea. In the port of Mbour, south of Dakar, El Hadji Top, who spent a month and a half in Tenerife in 2006 before being repatriated, went around the neighborhoods to stop young people. “The journey is hard, but we are fishermen and the sea does not scare us. But it is true that once there things are not so easy. That is why I tell the kids to spend the money from the trip to set up a business in Senegal”. Binanyae, a girl with a shiny wig and long false eyelashes, listened to him incredulously, leaning against a plastic cooler full of ice and fish. As El Hadji continued, another boy appeared with three pink fish on a silver platter and came over to listen.
— What does it say?, he asked Binanyae.
— Nothing, it went wrong for him.