Over half of Africa’s young adults want to emigrate

Economic strife, insecurity, corruption, political intolerance, unreliable internet, and poor education systems are behind the desire of many African youth to relocate to Europe or the US.

To be exact, more than half of African youth aged between 18 and 24 are likely to consider emigrating in the next three years if their governments do nothing to improve the quality of their lives. This is according to the 2022 Africa Youth Survey (pdf) report by the Ichikowitz Family Foundation (IFF), released recently in celebration of the World Refugee Day on June 20.

The study shows that on average, 52% of Africa’s youth population want to emigrate but in Nigeria and Sudan, it’s three quarters of the population while in Angola and Malawi it’s two thirds. Compared to the 2019 study (pdf) there is a 22% increase in the number of youth saying they would like to move to another country. Africa’s average age is 19 years.

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