Into Africa

I have often been asked this question: If the African immigrants coming to Malta were genuine refugees, migrating for political and not economic reasons, why do they travel all the way to Europe and not just go to a neighbouring country in Africa? And I never could give an answer that left even me fully satisfied. Well, until two days ago.

I have known for some time that sometimes conflicts or political risk in Africa are regional. One cannot always just leave one's country and migrate into a neighbouring one. The risk would not thereby be avoided.

Second, the neat distinction between "economy" and "politics" does not quite work in many economies. Many would say it does not even work well for Europe. But in some post-conflict situations in Africa, it does not work at all. What prospects for economic life in a city are there, for example, if the capacity to deliver basic services has been destroyed by war? Or what real prospects does a reasonably qualified worker have if the economy is deprived of a good supply of skilled workers to keep it ticking - if you have a generation of young workers that have been brutalised or orphaned by war?

These two observations, on their own, go some way to answer the initial question. In the last decade, about 40 per cent of conflicts worldwide took place in Africa. They have had their effect: Although Africa is home to only about 12 per cent of the world's population, more than one-third of "refugees" globally come from there.

Still, even in reeling off such answers I used to feel somewhat uncomfortably aware that there was more to the vital question. Africa is a vast continent. Why face the extreme hazards of a sea crossing if other countries are accessible by land?

The answer was filled out a bit more for me two days ago. I had the opportunity to chair a seminar on this topic in Brussels. The Bavarian foundation, Hanns Seidel Stiftung and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) together with AZAD, organised a discussion on migration and development with the aim of exploring how the EU could embark on a strategic partnership with Africa to tackle the causes of irregular immigration at source.

The five-person panel included two academic experts, Loren Landau (director, Forced Migration Studies Programme, University of Witwatersrand) and Mohamed Haddar (professor of economics, El Manar University, Tunis). There also was Bernd Hemingway, regional representative of IOM in Brussels.

Finally, there were two policy makers. Rob Rozenburg is from the European Commission, the deputy head of the department in DG Development that is responsible for Pan African policies and organisations and, among other things, migration. Carolina Feilman Quina is a representative of Portugal in the Joint EU-Africa Strategy Drafting Committee.

The answer to my question came from Dr Landau. Why do Africans migrate to Europe and not within Africa? Answer: But they do. Only about 27 per cent of international migrants in sub-Saharan Africa go to high-income OECD countries (mostly Europe).

Most do stay within the region, and within neighbouring countries. There are three million or so African migrants in Europe, but 18 million international immigrants within Africa. And the figures get more ghastly.

The number of refugees in Africa is roughly equal that of the total number of Africans in Europe. The number of "internally displaced", within Africa, is estimated to be twice that number.

Then there is rural to urban migration. The rate of urbanisation is placing crippling pressure on the capacity of cities (such as in Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa) to provide health, education, housing, income and functioning political institutions.

There are some potential economic benefits that could be realised from such movements. But they usually are not. African governments are either unwilling or unable to respond with good migration policies, in part because of the lack of the necessary data.

Lack of important data was something seen, by all panellists at the seminar, to be affecting Europe's ability to respond to African migration. But they did also agree that the key to addressing Europe's difficulties with irregular immigration from Africa was to tackle the root causes for migration within Africa.

The issues are inevitably complex since there are unintended consequences. For example, remittances sent back by migrants from Europe to Africa need not end up being invested fruitfully in the economy. In Zimbabwe, for example, they may have provided a safety valve for the corrupt regime of Robert Mugabe, which might otherwise have long been overthrown.

However, the policy makers on the panel suggested that considerable progress has been made on formulating a strategy and action plan for EU-African partnership. The ideas being broached include using migrants as agents for the development of their own countries - encouraging them to set up the kind of international network that have worked so well, say, with India and its professional migrants to the US.

If the Maltese public debate on irregular immigration could engage with this kind of thinking, we might make faster progress on addressing the problem we face as a country than if we stick to chest thumping that gets us nowhere, neither with Africa nor with Europe.

More information on the seminar Migration And Development: Challenges For European-African Partnership can be obtained from www.hss.de/10504.shtml . Dr Fsadni is chairman of the Academy for the Development of a Democratic Environment (AZAD).

ranierfsadni@europe.com