Catholic Official: Main Driver of African Migration Is ‘Climate Change’

african migrant boat
AP/Arturo Rodriguez
Thomas D. Williams, Ph.D.

ROME — The majority of those leaving Africa for Europe are not economic migrants, a Catholic official asserted this week, but climate migrants.

Tapfuma Murove, Zimbabwe’s country representative for Catholic Relief Services, the overseas development arm of the U.S. bishops, said that climate change tops the list of drivers of African migration.

“There are many reasons for why people make the decision to migrate, whether that is to escape conflict, to seek higher education, or to find a job,” Murove declared. “However, the main driver of migration in Africa right now is climate change.”

“In East Africa, we are seeing prolonged droughts. In Southern Africa, stronger and more frequent storms are causing intense flooding,” Murove said. “In West Africa, sea level rise is causing coastal erosion in major cities. All of these things are pushing people to leave their homes and forcing them to move to safer places where the weather is more predictable.”

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), more than 75,000 people migrated from Africa into Europe in 2022.

Frontex, the European agency in charge of control of the EU’s borders, has proposed that African migrants often attempt the perilous journey to Europe drawn by promises from human traffickers and stories of welfare benefits for all.

“Migrants and refugees – encouraged by the stories of those who had successfully made it in the past – attempt the dangerous crossing since they are aware of and rely on humanitarian assistance to reach the EU,” Frontex said in a report released in 2017, at the height of Europe’s migrant crisis.

File/Intending migrants watch on as they wait to disembark the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) “Phoenix” vessel on May 27, 2017 in Crotone, Italy. (Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

Frontex criticized NGOs involved in search and rescue (SAR) operations in the Mediterranean, declaring that they “unintentionally help criminals achieve their objectives at minimum cost, strengthen their business model by increasing the chances of success.”

The ready availability of effective SAR operations has served to stimulate demand for smugglers services, by making migration to Europe more accessible, resulting in what Frontex described as a “pull factor.”

At the height of Europe’s migrant crisis, Professor Anna Bono, who teaches African History and Institutions at the University of Turin, asserted that most of the migrants coming to Italy are not refugees escaping from war, hunger, or bad weather.

The migrants tend to be young, middle-class males, Bono said, adding that the enormous costs of emigration contradict the common thesis that migrants are fleeing dire situations of indigence. Those who want to come to Europe must procure as much as $10,000 to pay traffickers for their passage.

The professor also noted that there is extensive propaganda by traffickers in African countries promoting emigration to Europe.

“In the countries of sub-Saharan Africa there are advertisements inciting people to go to Italy, explaining that everything here is free. And indeed it is,” she said. “I imagine the phone calls these guys make home to their friends, confirming that everything is actually given them for free.”

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