Clandestine or irregular emigration continues to be a major scourge in Africa, and in West Africa in particular. The coasts of Spain and Italy (to a lesser extent) receive makeshift boats on a daily basis. Although the phenomenon subsides at certain times of the year, since the early 2000s it has really become the nightmare of the state authorities, in Senegal in particular, where despite emergency plans and measures to combat it, the number of would-be migrants to Europe via the Atlantic continues to multiply. For Senegal's new authorities, who came to power in March 2024 with high hopes for the future, the challenge is to turn the tide, in particular by eliminating the many causes of illegal emigration. But analyzing this phenomenon also involves analyzing the profiles of would-be emigrants, before looking at their motives.
The Causes and Profiles of Clandestine Travelers
There are often several reasons for emigration, including a precarious economic, political or environmental situation. Poverty, armed conflicts, major wars in Africa in particular, and more recently, the impact of climate change, are driving more and more people to leave their African homelands. The option of using makeshift boats to reach Europe is chosen because of the difficulties of regular emigration, with European policies increasingly hostile to foreigners. Furthermore, not all would-be emigrants have the qualifications needed to gain easier access to visas.
In Senegal, the profiles of clandestine travelers are varied. ‘Most of the people who take to the sea are fishermen or fishermen's families’, explains Alioune Tine, founder of the Think Tank Afrikajom Center, to TV5 Monde. He adds: ‘But you have everything. Students, shopkeepers, people selling their shops and businesses. It's gone beyond the migration stage. It's a real exodus towards Europe and the United States’. Most of the fishermen have been forced to leave because of the increasing scarcity of fish. They often point to irregular fishing by foreign vessels and the fishing contracts signed with the European Union and China, among others, by Senegal under the regimes of Macky Sall and Abdoulaye Wade. ‘Senegalese fishermen have come to see me to tell me that resources are now scarce. They can no longer access it. While foreign vessels come to plunder all the resource,’ explains Alioune Tine. ‘It's not like it was 10 or 15 years ago,’ adds Babacar Ndiaye, a researcher at the WATHI think tank. He points out that foreigners ‘have big boats. So makeshift pirogues can't compete with these boats deployed by the Chinese or the European Union’. He concludes: ‘Today, fishing no longer feeds its man’.
Unemployment
The lack of jobs is also one of the major reasons why young people go to Europe in search of a better future. More than 300,000 young Senegalese enter the job market every year, and the unemployment rate has risen from around 10% in 2012 to 24% in 2023, according to ANSD statistics. The industrial and agricultural sectors are not yet boosted enough to capture the number of young people looking for jobs.
There are also social causes. Some young people who have passed through on makeshift boats have managed to reach Europe and fundamentally change the lives of their families in Senegal. This ‘success story’ is often an element of pressure that some families can put on their young children to encourage them to take to the boats and imitate their ‘neighbours’.
What's more, Europe is no longer the only major destination for young Senegalese would-be immigrants. Over the last one or two years, the Nicaragua route to the United States has become one of the new irregular emigration routes for young Senegalese. More than 9,000 Senegalese were arrested crossing the border into Arizona between 1 October and 9 December 2023 (Africanews).
Diomaye and Sonko's Solutions
To remedy this scourge, which claims thousands of Senegalese lives in the Atlantic, structural and endogenous measures are being taken by the duo at the head of the country. Awareness-raising and monitoring of departure points are the order of the day, but to keep young people in the country, structural economic measures are needed. ‘The umpteenth shipwreck off our coast has cost the lives of many young people, although we await the exact figures. I appeal to these young people once again: your solution does not lie in offices, the countries that some young people want to join, I can assure you that they themselves are in crisis, or at the beginning of a crisis! The future of the world lies in Africa, and you young people need to be aware of that. The only continent that still has room for progress and significant growth, the only continent that should drive the world's growth over the next 50 years. That continent is Africa,’ Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko told students at Gaston Berger University last July. Supported by a large section of young people in his clash with Macky Sall's regime, with more than 80 young people killed in demonstrations, Ousmane Sonko has made their situation and job creation one of his top priorities. His government has already set about bringing young people back into the primary and secondary sectors, with measures in line with the doctrine of food sovereignty that has become the leitmotiv of the new authorities.
On 6 May 2024, Dr Fatou Diouf, Minister of Fisheries, Maritime Infrastructure and Ports, published the list of boats authorized to fish in waters under Senegalese jurisdiction. The aim is to better control illegal fishing. Other measures to protect small-scale fishing are also in the pipeline, according to the government. President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and his Prime Minister also intend to boost agriculture, not only to ensure food sovereignty, but also to create sufficient jobs. With this in mind, the creation of around thirty agricultural centers is being studied. Industry, which is virtually non-existent in the country and could be the most job-creating sector, is a pillar on which the Sonko administration intends to build.
The Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr Serigne Gueye Diop, has expressed his desire to turn Senegal into a major industrial country. The processing of agricultural products, industrialization in the livestock sector and, above all, the processing of the country's mineral resources should, in addition to the start-up of oil and gas development, give a major boost to Senegal's secondary sector and create enough jobs for young Senegalese.
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