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The rate of labor migration within developing regions is highest in Sub-Saharan Africa, but it has fallen since the 1960s. More than 60 percent of emigrants from Sub-Saharan countries move to other countries in the region. The higher rate of labor movement within the region relative to other developing world regions is partly a consequence of the large number of land borders, but also of the relative permeability of these borders and the difficulty of monitoring the flow of people crossing them, despite numerous legal restrictions.

Migrants represented just over 3.5 percent of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa in 1960 but only 2.3 percent by 2000. In 1960 the stock of migrants relative to the population was much higher in Southern Africa than in other corners of the region, but it has since fallen to about the level of migrants in Western Africa (see the table below). In Eastern Africa and Central Africa the stock of migrants has fallen significantly.

Voluntary migration across borders in Sub-Saharan Africa is motivated by the same reasons that prompt people to move within a country: to pursue job opportunities and to diversify risks to income. Indeed, the economic rationale for movement from a lagging to a leading area of the same country is virtually indistinguishable from that for moving across a border in a region like Sub-Saharan Africa, where these movements are over relatively small distances and for the most part unmonitored. But many migrants also move across borders within a framework of formal agreements between countries. Since the 1960s, a web of bilateral and multilateral agreements has grown in an attempt to reap the benefits and control the costs of labor mobility within subregional neighborhoods.

In West Africa governments have attempted to manage population movements within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which has had the most influence on the flow and composition of migration in Sub-Saharan Africa. Established in 1975, ECOWAS includes a protocol allowing the free movement of people and the right of residence and establishment for the citizens of its member countries.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC), a loose alliance of nine countries of Southern Africa formed in 1980, coordinated development projects to lessen economic dependence on South Africa during the Apartheid era. Part of this alliance was a provision for the flow of labor between member countries. The recent anti-immigrant violence in South Africa is a setback for regional integration and migration.

Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda have formed the East African Community (EAC), a regional intergovernmental organization for interterritorial cooperation with roots extending to 1948 before independence. The EAC, gaining strength as a framework for economic integration since 1999, recently introduced East African passports and temporary passes to speed the movement of labor.

Click to enlarge The movement of labor across borders in Sub-Saharan Africa’s neighborhoods could be encouraged. During economic contractions, policy makers in these neighborhoods feel the same xenophobic political pressures as governments in rich countries do to favor native workers and ration public services to nonnatives. Less than one-third of governments in Sub-Saharan Africa have ratified the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. To really reap the benefits from labor mobility for faster economic growth with convergence across Sub-Saharan Africa’s regional neighborhoods, much more can be done to welcome migrants and open channels for the flow of remittances to their home countries. Source: Lucas 2006. Â