What drives young Africans to migrate? Explore five regional realities through data and young people’s voices.
Data from the International Organization for Migration, UNHCR, and African regional economic communities tell us what is happening on the continent’s migration routes. Afrobarometer’s nationally representative public-attitude data tell us what young Africans themselves say about emigrating and where they perceive opportunities to lie. Nuru Trust Network’s five regional PESTEL analyses bring these evidence streams together, and this webinar showcases that integrated analysis.
The case for the conversation is stark: 55% of Africans aged 18-35 have considered emigrating, with economic reasons dominating among potential emigrants. But migration is not solely driven by poverty: Emigration intent is concentrated among highly educated, urban youth, pointing to a threat of continued brain drain.
Youth migration aspirations are unfolding against a regional mobility landscape in which established pathways for regular movement are increasingly constrained. ECOWAS lost three members to the AES exit in 2025; SADC’s free-movement protocol remains unratified after twenty years; the AMU is paralysed by the Algeria-Morocco dispute; and the EAC’s Secretariat has acknowledged that members are restricting movement contrary to the Common Market Protocol.
As opportunities for regular movement within Africa become more limited, some migrants increasingly turn to irregular routes beyond the continent, including the Atlantic route to the Canary Islands, the central Mediterranean, and the Horn of Africa’s eastern route to Yemen, all of which are under-documented. That is the story this webinar is built to tell: migration not as a single continental narrative, but as five distinct regional patterns, read through both official data and the views of young people themselves.