Growing numbers of African migrants are passing through Central America [AFP]
Fallou says that his sacrifice came with its share of horrors.
“Several people died before my eyes,” he says.
“But I saw some women who kept going, even with their children on their backs, and I thought: ‘I have to stay strong.’”
After being held in a US detention camp for a few days, Fallou was eventually given leave to remain as an asylum seeker. He has since been reunited with his brother and now works as a mechanic.
Fallou was lucky, but many African migrants to the US are not.
Last September, more than 140 Senegalese people were deported back home after crossing the Mexico-US border.
Human rights groups and diaspora communities who support the new arrivals report that shelters are often overwhelmed with such cases.
Some migrants have no option but to sleep on the street. Others may be allowed to stay temporarily in mosques.
Despite West Africans’ growing interest in alternative migration routes, it is still the case that most African migrants attempt to reach Europe via the Mediterranean Sea.
Over the last decade, the UN’s migration body (IOM) says more than 28,000 migrants have drowned in that one body of water alone.
Political promises
“People are leaving [West Africa] because they are faced with an explosive cocktail of security, institutional, nutritional, sanitary, post-Covid and environmental problems,” says immigration expert Aly Tandian.
The number of people leaving Senegal in particular is rising, despite being a relatively peaceful country with a new president who is promising to create jobs for young people.
Since the new government was elected in March, it has succeeded in reducing the price of some basic necessities, including oil, bread and rice – therefore easing the cost-of-living squeeze.
But it is not enough.
“We all thought that the hope raised by the change of regime would halt the resurgence of these migratory flows, but unfortunately this has not been the case,” says Boubacar Sèye, head of the non-government organisation, Horizon Without Borders.
“Despair and doubt have permeated our sociological environment, to the point where people no longer believe that their destiny can be fulfilled here,” he adds.
These wooden fishing boats – called pirogues – are used by many Senegalese migrants trying to reach Europe [Getty Images]
Mr Sèye has written a formal letter to the Senegalese authorities, pleading for an investigation into what happened to the boat found off the Dominican Republic.
He says reports show “there is a criminal economy surrounding these irregular migrations. Trafficking in drugs, arms, human beings and also organs”.
In July, after 89 bodies were found in a boat off the Mauritanian coast, Senegal’s Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko made a public plea to young people not to take the perilous Atlantic route to Europe.
“The future of the world lies in Africa, and you, young people need to be aware of that,” he said.
Yet, for the large number of young Africans still risking their lives to reach Europe and the US, that future is anywhere but at home.
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Publish date : 2024-08-26 13:00:00
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