45% of Africans Have Considered Leaving Their Country. Jobs Are The Main Reason.

Africa's migration story is increasingly an economic story, not a border story. Afrobarometer's 2026 African Insights report finds that across 38 countries, 45% of Africans say they have considered emigrating, including 25% who say they've thought about it "a lot." That represents a 40% increase from levels recorded nearly a decade earlier, when the same question in Round 7 (2016/2018) found 18% considering emigration seriously. The reasons are almost entirely economic Among people who've considered leaving, half, 50%, say they would go in search of work. Another 29% cite escaping poverty or economic hardship directly. Everything else is a rounding error by comparison: pursuing education accounts for 4%, political factors like democracy and freedom for 3%, travel and tourism for another 3%. That distribution should reframe how the migration conversation gets held. Coverage of African migration tends to centre on border enforcement, irregular crossings, and relations with Europe, the visible, dramatic end of the phenomenon. Afrobarometer's data says the actual pressure sits much closer to home, in the absence of a job or a viable income, not in any pull toward a specific destination or political system. The young and educated are leaving the fastest, and that's the problem Emigration consideration isn't distributed evenly across the population, and the pattern it follows is the one that should worry policymakers most. Citizens aged 18-35 are three times as likely (32%) as those over 55 (11%) to have given emigration serious thought. More than half of young Gambians (62%), Liberians (59%), Ghanaians (55%), Bissau-Guineans (53%) and Tunisians (51%) have seriously considered leaving. Education compounds the pattern. Those with post-secondary education show 31% serious consideration of leaving, versus 18% among those with no formal education, a 13-point gap. That creates a genuinely difficult development equation: countries invest scarce public resources in educating their populations, and the citizens who benefit most from that investment, the most mobile and most employable, are also the most likely to consider taking that human capital elsewhere. Emigration isn't inherently a loss, migrants send remittances, build skills abroad, and create international business and trade connections that can benefit home countries. But when the driver is specifically unemployment rather than opportunity-seeking, the pattern looks less like healthy labour mobility and more like a symptom of domestic labour markets failing to absorb the people they trained. Where Tanzania sits, and why it's the outlier worth noting Tanzania is a striking exception to the regional trend. Just 5% of Tanzanians say they've thought about emigrating "a lot," among the lowest figures recorded anywhere in the 38-country survey, alongside Madagascar (5%) and the Seychelles (6%). Young Tanzanians specifically show only 7% serious consideration of leaving, versus 32% across all young Africans surveyed. That's a genuinely unusual result worth sitting with rather than assuming it reflects contentment alone. Afrobarometer's broader dataset shows Tanzania also reports one of the lowest ease-of-cross-border-movement scores in East Africa (26% say it's easy), and Tanzanians report comparatively modest AfCFTA awareness and moderate free-trade support relative to regional peers. Low emigration intent could reflect genuine domestic satisfaction, but it could equally reflect lower expectations of what emigration would deliver, limited exposure to information about opportunities elsewhere, or structural barriers that make even considering emigration feel impractical. The data doesn't distinguish between these explanations, and conflating "low interest in leaving" with "high satisfaction at home" would be reading more into a single figure than it can support. Where migrants actually want to go, and how that's shifted Destination preferences have moved meaningfully since Afrobarometer first tracked this in 2016/2018. Across 31 countries with comparable historical data, the share of potential emigrants preferring to move to another African country dropped from 36% to 26%. Over the same period, preference for North America rose from 21% to 28%, and preference for Europe increased modestly from 27% to 29%. That's a genuine reorientation, not just noise: Africans considering emigration are increasingly looking past the continent entirely rather than toward a neighbouring country. Regional variation is wide, though. Southern Africans lean toward staying continental (47% would stay on the continent, largely toward South Africa specifically), while North and West Africans lean heavily toward Europe (49% and 39% respectively), and Central Africans lean toward North America (38%). It's worth noting, per the report, that despite these stated preferences, more than half of Africans who actually do emigrate remain somewhere on the continent, a reminder that aspiration and outcome diverge considerably in practice. Why this matters beyond the individual decision The economic cost of this pattern doesn't show up cleanly in migration statistics themselves. It shows up downstream, in shortages of engineers, doctors, researchers, technicians and entrepreneurs in the countries they left. A generation of educated young Africans increasingly aspiring to leave, driven specifically by the search for work rather than any push factor policy can address through visa rules or awareness campaigns, is a signal about domestic labour market health that's arguably more direct than unemployment statistics themselves. The Uchumi360 insight Africa's migration debate too often begins at the border. Afrobarometer's data suggests it should begin at the workplace instead. People leave countries when they can't see a future in them, and the data is explicit that the future they can't see is specifically economic, a job, an income, a way out of poverty. The strongest migration policy available to any African government isn't a visa regime or an awareness campaign. It's a productive economy that gives its most capable citizens a reason to build their careers at home rather than somewhere else. FAQ What share of Africans have considered emigrating? 45%, including 25% who say they've thought about it "a lot," up from 18% considering it "a lot" in 2016/2018, a 40% increase. Why do Africans say they'd consider leaving? Overwhelmingly economic: 50% cite the search for work, 29% cite escaping poverty. Education, political freedom, and tourism together account for only about 10%. Who is most likely to consider emigrating? The young and educated. 18-35 year-olds are three times as likely as those over 55 to give it serious thought, and those with post-secondary education show a 13-point higher inclination than those with no formal education. How does Tanzania compare? Tanzania records one of the lowest emigration-intent figures in Africa, just 5% "a lot," though this could reflect genuine contentment, limited information about opportunities elsewhere, or other structural factors the survey doesn't isolate. Where do most potential emigrants want to go? Preferences have shifted away from other African countries (down from 36% to 26% since 2016/2018) toward North America (up to 28%) and Europe (up to 29%). Most actual emigrants, however, still remain within Africa.