Policy Brief No. 25 of 2023-2024 on Building Resilience for Youth Climate Mobility in Africa

Abstract

The movement or displacement of people, communities, or populations due to adverse weatherrelated events such as floods, prolonged droughts, rising sea levels, and increased prevalence of invasive species (Boas, 2021; Clement et al., 2021) have made climate mobility an emerging issue within the climate change discourse. These human movements can be forced or voluntary migration and relocations, but may also be temporary or permanent, internal or cross-border. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) observes that without concrete climate action by 2050, about 90 million people in North Africa will become internal climate migrants, another 86 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa will migrate within their own countries due to climate change, and an additional 32 million intra-regional migrants will be recorded in West and East African countries (IOM, 2022). Nearly 21.9 million people were displaced annually in the last 10 years due to climate change, meaning that climate-induced disasters account for twice as many displacements as those attributed to non-climatic events (International Displacement Monitoring Centre, 2021). In Africa, the leading causes of human mobility vary from region to region.