A continent at a crossroads
Africa’s migration debate has reached a fever pitch, and understandably so. From the streets of Johannesburg to the corridors of Addis Ababa, the question of who belongs where, and under what conditions, is reshaping politics, straining resources, and testing the limits of regional solidarity. But the loudest voices in this conversation are not always the most honest ones. To have a serious debate about migration on this continent, we must be willing to hold more than one truth at a time.
The scale of what we are dealing with
The number of internally displaced persons in Africa has tripled since 2015, reaching 35.4 million in 2024. Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo together comprised nearly half of all conflict-driven internal displacements worldwide that same year. These figures do not exist in a vacuum. They are the cumulative output of wars that have dragged on for decades, of coups that have gone unchallenged, and of governance failures that have quietly made entire countries uninhabitable for ordinary people.
In 2024 alone, sub-Saharan Africa recorded 19.3 million new internal displacements, 11.5 million of which were caused by conflict and 7.8 million by disasters. The people behind these numbers did not choose to move. They chose to survive. That distinction should be the foundation of every policy conversation that follows.
The issue of legality
Much of Africa’s public debate about migration rests on a legal misreading that has calcified into conventional wisdom. The 1951 Refugee Convention, complemented on this continent by the 1969 OAU Convention, is the governing framework. Countries that have signed the 1951 Convention are obliged to protect refugees on their territory and treat them according to internationally recognised standards. The cornerstone principle is non-refoulement: a person cannot be returned to a country where their life or freedom is at risk.
What the Convention does not do is require that refugees claim asylum in the first country they enter. There is nothing in the 1951 Refugee Convention which requires an asylum seeker to lodge a claim in the first country they pass through. Equally, there is nothing to prohibit an asylum seeker from lodging a legitimate claim having passed through other safe countries. However, the absence of explicit guidance gives states some scope to adopt a safe third country approach. This is a nuanced legal space, and it deserves nuanced treatment rather than the blunt instrument it has become in political rhetoric.
That said, it is worth acknowledging that most African migration does occur to neighbouring countries within sub-regions. The majority of people fleeing conflict in the Sahel are not bypassing viable options to reach southern Africa. Regional proximity remains the primary pattern of movement, and that reality matters for how receiving states calibrate their responses.
South Africa’s burden is real, and so is its obligation
South Africa occupies a uniquely difficult position in this conversation, and it deserves to be treated as such. It is the continent’s most industrialised economy, which makes it a natural destination for economic migrants and refugees alike. It is also a country managing deep structural unemployment, a strained public health system, and housing backlogs that predate democracy. The pressure on communities, particularly poor communities, is not imaginary. It is daily and it is documented.
These realities do not, however, resolve the legal and moral obligations that come with being a signatory to the 1951 Convention and the holder of one of the most progressive constitutions in the world. Vigilante movements such as Operation Dudula spent the past year storming clinics to force patients to produce citizenship documents and blocking foreign-born children from attending school. In November 2025, the Gauteng High Court interdicted Operation Dudula and named the conduct for what it is: “xeno-racism,” a hatred disproportionately directed at black African non-nationals.
The court’s intervention was not an attack on South Africans who are genuinely struggling. It was a defence of a constitutional order that South Africa itself authored. Those are different things, and collapsing them into one grievance helps no one. What South Africa legitimately needs is not permission to abandon its obligations, but meaningful continental and international burden-sharing so that it is not carrying a disproportionate weight alone.
The crisis hiding in plain sight
One reason receiving countries feel overwhelmed is that the scale of intra-African displacement is consistently underfunded and underreported. About 80% of African migration occurs within the continent, yet donor priorities, media coverage, and policy research remain disproportionately focused on the smaller fraction who attempt to reach Europe. This imbalance has consequences. It means the countries absorbing the most displaced people receive the least attention and the least support.
Eight of the top ten most neglected displacement crises globally in 2025 are in Africa. The Norwegian Refugee Council rated Cameroon the world’s most neglected crisis, assigning a zero out of thirty for political will. When the crises generating displacement go unaddressed, the pressure on destination countries does not ease. It compounds. Addressing South Africa’s migration pressures, therefore, begins not at Beitbridge but in Khartoum, Kinshasa, and Ouagadougou.
The governance question that cannot be avoided
No honest analysis of African migration is complete without confronting the political conditions that drive it. Mali was the leading country of origin for irregular migration to Europe in 2024, reflecting growing repression and diminished livelihood opportunities under the military junta that seized power in a coup. In Burkina Faso, the junta formally dissolved all political parties by decree in January 2026, seizing their assets, and has used emergency laws to arbitrarily arrest critics, judges, and journalists.
These governments are producing refugees while sitting at the same AU table where migration solutions are supposedly being discussed. The AU’s reluctance to apply meaningful pressure on member states engaged in the very governance failures driving displacement is not a procedural gap. It is a political choice, and it has costs that are borne most heavily by ordinary citizens and the countries that receive them.
Who should be held accountable?
The path forward requires honesty from multiple directions. Receiving countries, South Africa included, must distinguish between economic migrants and refugees, enforce their legal obligations, and advocate loudly for international burden-sharing rather than displacing frustration onto the vulnerable. Origin countries must reckon with the fact that when their citizens flee en masse, it is an indictment of their governance, not their geography. And the AU must evolve from a forum of solidarity statements into an institution capable of enforcing the standards its own charter demands.
Many African countries that are already hostile to refugees will be more likely to shut borders and demolish camps if they believe the world is no longer paying attention. In some circumstances, these conditions will drive onward migration and push people towards illegality. The answer to that spiral is not harder borders. It is better governance, upstream. Africa does not have a migration problem that exists separately from its political problems. The two are in the same crisis. Until the continent treats them that way, the displaced will keep moving, the receiving countries will keep buckling, and the leaders responsible for all of it will keep attending summits.
Written by:
*Sesona Mdlokovana
Associate, BRICS+ Consulting Group
Africa Specialist
**The Views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Independent Media or IOL.
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