Fifty Percent More Movement, Still Stuck In Same Old System
Intra African labour migration is up by half since 2010, and the official response is still to write frameworks while people move anyway. Leaders gather to praise the Global Compact for Migration and celebrate Africa as a champion of orderly mobility, but most workers do not feel any more protected than they did a decade ago. The gap between diplomatic language and life on the road from one country to another keeps widening, even as the numbers prove that mobility is no longer a marginal issue but the backbone of the continent’s labour market. The surge in movement is not an accident. It is the predictable outcome of demographic pressure, unemployment at home, and uneven growth between neighbours. Migrant workers go where wages and stability are slightly better, whether or not the paperwork is in order. They are doing the hard work of regional integration in real time, while institutions are still negotiating how to define “safe, orderly and regular” in conference halls far from border...