Crisis Region Western Africa: The Cradle of African Migration to Europe

Africa’s economic history is a history of large population movements driven by a variety of reasons: notably, slave-trade and colonialism, violent conflicts, poverty, ecological degradation, population pressure and a certain cultural propensity of some ethnic groups for outward orientation. ² Even today, most of the 680 million Africans live under conditions of extreme poverty and insecurity. Although the incidence of trans-national migration has remained about the same on a global scale since the 19th century, its structure and direction has changed significantly. ³ Whereas Europe was known as a source of waves of large scale out-migration until the early 20th century, trends were reversed after the Second World War. The rate of immigration in highly industrialized Western European countries has accelerated significantly in the past decades. It is mostly undocumented Africans who constitute a growing proportion of these immigrants. There are well founded reasons to believe that this tendency will accelerate, as Sub-Saharan Africa probably has a higher potential for immigration into the EU than any other region in the World.