Tensions over migration are rising again between South Africa and its neighbors. Over the weekend, Nigeria’s Foreign Ministry said two Nigerian nationals were killed in South Africa earlier this month – one allegedly by police officers, the other by unidentified attackers.
Nigeria said the deaths “raise questions about the safety of foreigners” in South Africa and the government’s commitment to curbing attacks on migrants. They come after months of anti-migrant protests and violence that have forced thousands of people to leave.
Much of the resentment is economic. South Africa, the continent’s largest economy, has long drawn other Africans seeking work and opportunity. But it also has one of the world’s highest unemployment rates, and polls show that South Africans, particularly those already under financial pressure, blame migrants for taking jobs and straining public services.
Tensions over migrants extend beyond South Africa. Last week, Kenya gave foreigners 90 days to regularize their immigration status and proposed reserving some small businesses for its citizens. Tanzania, East Africa’s second-largest economy after Kenya, also recently barred foreigners from several small-business sectors amid deep economic frustration.
Africa sees millions of migrants move within the continent each year. Less than 1% of people in sub-Saharan Africa migrate beyond the continent to places like Europe, North America, and Asia, according to the World Bank and the French Development Agency. As our Graphic Truth shows, most migrants stay within Africa – and their numbers have risen sharply. The number of people who had moved from one African country to another nearly doubled between 1990 and 2024, from roughly 13 million to over 25 million.
What’s behind the increase?
Demographics are part of the story. Between 10 million and 12 million young Africans reach working age each year, but the continent’s economies create far fewer jobs needed to meet this demand. For every two people who joined the Democratic Republic of Congo’s working-age population between 2005 and 2020, only one job was created on average – a pattern that repeats across other large states. Because of this, many young migrants head for regional economic hubs – South Africa in the south, Kenya in the east, and Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire in the west – in search of work.
For example, Kenya receives roughly twice as many migrants as it sends abroad, as do Côte d’Ivoire and South Africa. Cross-border migrants make up nearly 10% of Côte d’Ivoire’s population, among the highest shares on the continent. South Africa now hosts 60% of migrants from the Southern African Development Community, up from 31% in 1995.
Logistics matters too. Moving to a neighboring country is easier and cheaper than financing sometimes dangerous journeys overseas, particularly as Europe and the United States tighten immigration rules. Regional agreements, including those within the Economic Community of West African States, have also made crossing borders, trade, and establishing legal residency in some areas much simpler.
But implementation of agreements like these is also patchy. The African Union adopted a continent-wide free-movement protocol in 2018 that aims to allow Africans to live and work across member states. So far, only four countries – Mali, Niger, Rwanda, and São Tomé and Príncipe – have fully ratified it. Bureaucratic barriers and security concerns remain, and undocumented migration is high, though the exact figures are hard to track.
Without enough jobs where they live, many Africans will keep moving toward the continent’s economic centers. The question is whether those countries can accommodate them – or whether migration will become an even sharper political fault line.
