[LINK] Two African Migration Notes

[rfmcdonald]

• The widely distributed article "Africans risk all to breach fortress Europe" examines the phenomenon of West African immigration to western Europe, particularly from Senegal. Senegal's interior minister recently estimated that two or three million Senegalese live outside their country, itself home to ten million people. The funds acquired through immigration, by the workers themselves or via remittances, play a critical role in the domestic economy of Sengegal, and help advance the status of the migrants. The extreme dangers facing potential migrants, and the lack of welcome they receive on arrival, are the only things holding back the exodus.


• Ghana, in the meantime, is trying to attract African-Americans as tourists and even as immigrants, as Ghanaweb's "Ghana’s Uneasy Embrace of Slavery’s Diaspora" reports. The problem facing Ghanaians is that any sense of common identity uniting African-Americans and Ghanaians seems to be weak indeed.