Why Do So Many Young Africans Want To Leave?

Nearly three in five young Africans said that they are either very or somewhat likely to consider emigrating to another country in the next three years, according to the African Youth Survey 2024 by Ichikowitz Family Foundation. This marks a seven percentage point increase from 2022, when the last survey wave was conducted, likely driven by the improving freedom of movement post-pandemic.

Where young people from Rwanda who are considering emigrating said that it would likely only be temporary (90 percent), those in Nigeria (45 percent), Ghana (44 percent) and Congo Brazzaville (41 percent) were among those more likely to say they would make a permanent move. The 2024 poll included 5,604 people aged between 18 and 24 year olds across 16 countries: Botswana, Cameroon, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia.

Main reasons cited as motivations for moving abroad included economic reasons (selected by 43 percent of respondents), education opportunities (38 percent) and due to corruption in respondents’ respective home countries. The latter option, corruption, saw an increase of three percentage points since the survey wave in 2022. In South Africa, corruption was cited as the top reason for young people considering emigrating in 2024 (38 percent) as well as in Gabon (32 percent).

When asked what the major barriers are to finding employment, corruption was selected as the top issue (40 percent), followed by a lack of well-paying jobs (29 percent) and not having enough government support (27 percent).