More than a third of Africans want to move permanently to live elsewhere, according to a study by the US-based analysis and consulting company Gallup based on a 2023 survey. A result that marks a new high, if we compare the 37% of Africans willing to emigrate last year, with the percentage amounted to 29% in 2012.

However, the authors of the study note, the desire of Africans to leave their country has not increased everywhere in the last decade. While more people in Zambia, Mauritius, Ethiopia and Senegal want to leave, the opposite has been the case in Gabon, Burkina Faso, The Gambia, Comoros and, albeit to a lesser extent, Nigeria.

The continent's growing general desire to settle elsewhere mirrors global trends: about 16% of the global adult population in 2023 wanted to move to another country, up from 12% a decade ago, Gallup said. Even in the US and Canada, the two top destinations for all would-be migrants over the past decade, more people said they wanted to move abroad than in the previous survey. Only in the European Union did the percentage remain stable.

In Africa, it is the western region that is the epicentre of the most intense push towards migration away from the continent. Gambia, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ghana and Nigeria are five of the six African countries where at least half the population wants to move abroad, according to Gallup. These countries are also among the top 10 countries in the world with the highest desire for migration.

Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation, has experienced a booming wave of migration in recent years, driven mainly by young people seeking work, education and security. One measure of this wave is the increase in companions joining migrant students in countries of arrival. Between 2018 and 2022, the number of dependents of Nigerian graduate students in the UK rose from just over 1,000 to over 60,000. Only India and the Philippines have more foreign-trained nurses in the UK than Nigeria, according to the UK nursing regulator.

However, not everyone who wants to leave for a foreign country can do so. ‘The percentage of people worldwide who are planning to move is much lower than the percentage of those who would like to move,’ Gallup pointed out.

See, Oltre un terzo degli africani desidera migrare fuori dal continente