“Between 1990 and 2024, according to the UN, Africans living in Europe increased from 4m to 10.6m—about half of all African migrants living outside the continent. Over 4m live in France and 1m in Britain. The latest arrivals have swollen diasporas that date to the post-colonial period or earlier. Prior generations of migrants, often from professional elites, have seen their descendants thrive. Children of African migrants perform above the average in exams in England. British-Nigerians, in particular, are increasingly prominent in public life, whether in sport (Maro Itoje, England’s rugby captain, has Nigerian parents), business or politics…
…Africans’ share of immigration to America has risen from less than 1% in 1960 to 11% in 2020. Net migration from the Caribbean and Africa in the 2010s was twice as high as from Latin America. Four times more Africans arrived in America between 1990 and 2020 than during the slave trade, estimates Neeraj Kaushal of Columbia University.
African migrants are so successful that some black scholars on Ivy League campuses have questioned whether their children should have been allowed to benefit from affirmative action. The newcomers are changing what it means to be “African-American”. Mr Kananda says, “I’m African. I had to learn that I was black when I came to the US.” It is wrong to assume, as some scholars have, that “race would overwhelm ethnicity” in shaping migrants’ identity, argues Onoso Imoagene of NYU Abu Dhabi. Ms McCowin says, “Most African-Americans will probably think the African thinks they’re better, and the Africans would think the African-American, with all the opportunities afforded to them, are not taking advantage”.
It is not just the West that is home to more Africans. In 2024 there were almost 4.7m migrants from Africa in the countries of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) according to DESA, more than tripling since 1990. Saudi Arabia is the second-largest source of remittances to Kenya, after America, but ahead of Britain and the EU.
Many Africans in the Gulf are abused. Fully 99% of Kenyans working there claim to have been mistreated by their bosses, according to one survey. Marie Mwiza, a Ugandan activist, says that women from her country who work as maids in the Middle East have no protection. “Employers treat them like commodities,” she says. “Like bags of tomatoes.” She has organised the return of coffins to Uganda after women died in suspicious circumstances.
Yet Ethiopians, Kenyans and Ugandans still pour into the Gulf, with some knowledge of what may await. “This is all about unemployment,” says Ms Mwiza. “People here just don’t have jobs.”
Steven Nuwuguba was in his early 20s when he went to Qatar. He toiled seven days a week at the main airport and was hectored by racist bosses. He does not want his children to go there. But he made twice as much in a month as Uganda’s GDP per person. That enabled him to start a business when he came back. “$2,000 in our country, it’s a lot of money,” he says. Maids make much less but can return with enough to start a business or begin building a house.
In China there are more Nigerians than there are Indonesians and almost as many South Africans as there are Thais. Cities such as Yiwu, Zhongshan and Guangzhou are home to thousands of Africans who buy goods to send home. Peter Sosthenes, who moved from Tanzania in 2023, observes: “Chinese people work so hard. It is not like in my country.” He wants to use Chinese e-commerce software in Tanzania to help farmers find markets. If Africans are not trading they are probably studying. In 2018, the last year for which there are data, there were 80,000 African students in China, more than in America or any other country save France.”
Source: The Economist
