One study of migrants returning to Mozambique found that they were more likely to set up a business, and more likely to vote
Many Africans are taking similar journeys, though most are less glamorous. In a market in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, Ibrahim Bary, a 25-year-old from Guinea, sells cows’ livers hanging from hooks. Work is easier to find in Senegal than back home.He makes around $4.50 a day and plans to send four days’ pay home to his family in Guinea this month. He previously worked as a taxi driver in Ivory Coast. “I will stay a while, earn some money, and then go home,” he says.
Africans are likely to become more mobile. Today, the continent has fewer migrants as a share of population than the world average . Moving costs money: a migrant needs enough to cover at least a bus fare and a few nights’ accommodation while looking for a job. Many Africans cannot yet afford that, but one day they will be able to. Global research suggests that as poor countries grow richer, more of their people tend to emigrate, until average incomes reach around $10,000 a year.
Migration presents an opportunity for Africa. Migrants’ skills and hard work boost productivity. The taxes they pay fund public services. They send billions home in remittances. And when they return, as many do, they bring back new ideas and valuable contacts. The question for African governments is whether they will make it easier for Africans to move around, or throw up more barriers. There are some signs that they are choosing the former.
In South Africa many politicians are quick to blame migrants for problems at home. In 2019 mobs of armed men looted and torched shops owned by migrants. At least 18 foreigners were killed, says Human Rights Watch, an.“There is xenophobia every day in South Africa,” says Timothy Sangweeni , a Zimbabwean who moved in 2008. At police stations and clinics if “officials hear your voice and see your skin colour they are rude and unhelpful and tell you that you don’t belong,” he says.
The biggest winners from migration are migrants themselves. If they did not think moving would make them better off, they would not go. For obvious reasons, they are more likely to want to move to countries where they can earn more, such as South Africa. Wages there are five times higher than in Zimbabwe or Mozambique, which is one reason why 700,000 Zimbabweans and 350,000 Mozambicans live there. Some 1.4m migrants from Burkina Faso are in Ivory Coast, where income per head is twice as high.
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