People take a train of the Lagos Rail Mass Transit (LRMT) Blue Line in Lagos, Nigeria, Feb. 29, 2024. (Xinhua/Han Xu)
By Xinhua News Agency
The majority of Africa’s international migrants move primarily within the continent, according to a new report jointly released Tuesday by the African Union (AU) and the United Nations migration agency.
The second edition of the Africa Migration Report, jointly launched by the AU and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, noted that migration in Africa remains a complex phenomenon, with multiple drivers shaping people’s decisions about movement within and outside the continent.
According to the report, one key characteristic of African migration is that the majority of international migrants engage in intra-African migration. It noted that African countries have more emigrants than immigrants, with a level of international migration lower than the global average.
Data from the report showed that about 25.1 million people, accounting for about 1.9 percent of the 1.3 billion people who live in Africa, live outside the countries where they were born, which remained below the global corresponding share of 3.6 percent as of 2020.
“African migrants do migrate outside the continent, although at a slightly lower extent than within Africa, while limited immigration to Africa from abroad occurs,” the report said.