Is Climate-Vulnerable Africa Prepared for Increased Displacement?

This transcript was generated using AI and may contain inaccuracies. If you notice an error, feel free to email [email protected].

 

CHAPTERS 

[00:03:12]: Regional climate trends and factors shaping vulnerability 

[00:10:09]: Armed groups, resource competition, and local dynamics 

[00:13:11]: Regional legal frameworks and protection mechanisms 

[00:17:05]: The Kampala Convention and its role in protecting internally displaced persons 

[00:23:50]: Regional mobility frameworks and the role of ECOWAS and IGAD 

[00:29:53]: International funding, aid allocation, and migration-related spending 

[00:33:22]: Loss and damage and debates around climate finance 

[00:36:44]: Urbanization and preparedness for internal migration 

 

TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:03.11] 

Hello and welcome to Changing Climate, Changing Migration. This is a podcast from the Migration Policy Institute that explores the nuanced ways that climate change is affecting migration. My name is Julian Hattem. I'm your host and the editor of MPI's online magazine called the Migration Information Source. Parts of the African continent are some of the most climate vulnerable regions of the world. Different sub-regions have experienced regular periods of drought, intense flooding and massive cyclones that have destroyed people's homes. The continent is also experiencing some of the most pronounced climate migration on the planet. Millions of people have been displaced in recent years by disasters in Nigeria, Mozambique and Somalia and other countries. And in the coming years the situation is likely to be no less severe. By 2030, there could be as many as 86 million climate migrants moving within their own countries in just Sub-Saharan Africa, according to the World Bank's seminal Groundswell report. That's more than any other sub region. And as many as another 19 million climate migrants could be on the move in North Africa. A slightly different projection by the Africa Climate Mobility Initiative has found that by 2050, Africa, as many as 113 million people, or roughly one out of every 20 residents on the continent, could be migrating internally due to climate impacts.

 

 

 

[00:01:32.24] 

Not all of this migration will stay internal though. Climate change has surely already forced some unknown number of people across borders, which in some places can be rather porous. As the world heats up, that trend is only likely to continue. Is the continent prepared? My guest today is Aimée-Noël Mbiyozo. Aimée-Noël is a senior research consultant focusing on migration at the South Africa based research organization, the Institute for Security Studies. Aimée-Noël, thank you so much for your time.

 

 

 

[00:02:04.12] 

Thanks very much for having me.

 

 

 

[00:02:06.14] 

Africa is a very big place with lots of diversity and I want to avoid too much generalization. But with that being said, it is true that multiple parts of the continent are currently witnessing a significant amount of climate linked migration and are projected to experience a lot more in the future, more than any other region. Why is that? I guess what are the factors in Africa in particular that make people likely to move amid climate change?

 

 

 

[00:02:33.00] 

Yeah, well, I think it's, it might be a bit of a misnomer to say that it's experiencing more than some other places. I think that, you know, by the sheer numbers, actually Asia experiences the most climate displacement because they've got of course, increasingly huge and impactful monsoons and flooding and all that, and then their population is so huge. But so I don't know if it, pound for pound sort of outdoes some of the other continents. But I think it is definitely fair to say that it is particularly vulnerable to climate change. So parts of the continent are heating at a rate that's more than the global average, up to two times the global average, depending where you are. Areas like the Sahel. So, you know, the Sahelian band sort of stretches across from West Africa, from coastal West Africa, Senegal, up towards the edge of the Sahara Desert, as well as the Horn of Africa. So the East East Africa and the Horn, which is on the eastern side. And the Horn, of course, is the part that juts out from Djibouti. And those parts are warming extremely fast. And the continent is really vulnerable in part because we talk about climate change and we say that it's a fragility amplifier.

 

 

 

[00:03:56.05] 

And some of the parts of the continent lack some of the infrastructure that you need to adapt to some of the climate effects and the governance that's needed to implement policies and roll them out in a way that helps people to become resilient to, to the impact. So, yeah, so I think it's definitely fair to say that the continent is extremely vulnerable, even the most vulnerable, and that there's also within, underneath mobility. Of course, we have three different kinds, or we talk about it in three different kinds, obviously, voluntary migration, forced displacement and immobility, both for forced and chosen. So it's definitely accurate again to say that Africa's total displacement is, is the worst in the world. So at the end of 2024, there are 19.8 million internal displacements within Sub Saharan Africa, which is the highest in the world. And at the end, sorry, that was in the year 2024, but. And at the end of 2024, about half the world's internally displaced people were on the continent. That's about 38.8 million people. And so when we look at displacement, we're talking about, you know, there's the way they categorize it, and I'm mostly using the internal displacement monitoring center for this data.

 

 

 

[00:05:20.21] 

And they categorize displacement by conflict and by disasters. And, and conflict has by far the lion's share on the continent. So of the 19.8 million in 2024, 11 and a half were displaced by conflict and 7.8 by disasters. But really importantly, it's increasingly difficult to disambiguate those two. And I think the continent is where you see that nexus sort of coming together the most out of everywhere in the world. Yeah, so, and of course, you know, climate change doesn't directly cause conflict. So there's places that get hit by, you know, the same climate impacts as other places. And it, but where it exists already, where there's fragility, where there's tension, where there's conflict, it's emerging as a real amplifier and that is leading to all three levels of mobility. And so, yeah, on the continent, the numbers of people who have been displaced by climate alone has gone up eight times in the last 15 years. So 800%.

 

 

 

[00:06:35.09] 

You pinpointed two kind of great factors there. Lack of infrastructure or lack of infrastructural resilience and then kind of conflict, many of which overlap. I want to talk about the conflict a little bit and this is jumping ahead in my game plan. But I mean, as you note, from West Africa, East Africa, the various parts of the continent, there have been on the one hand, incidences and episodes in which different communities, often in some cases settled farmers or nomadic herders will start to fight each other because changing climate conditions sometimes pushes one group into contact with the other and there's a competition over resources. But then on the flip side, there is a significant amount of research that some larger scale violent conflicts, including perhaps most famously some of the fighting in Darfur and Western Sudan, was prompted in part because of climate factors which maybe have migration as a episode, as a precipitant in that conflict, but then lead to massive amounts of displacement, as you note. I guess how do we think about that and to what extent is the continent trying to reckon or kind of resolve that of this nexus of conflict, migration, climate, that all kind of bounce off each other in different ways?

 

 

 

[00:07:51.08] 

Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of, it's a big area of focus for my work personally and for the Institute of Security Studies to look at this nexus. You mentioned sort of herders. You know, there's what you're seeing with climate change in parts of the continent where pastoralism is prolific, which is largely in West Africa and in East Africa, Africa is, you're seeing, you're seeing an expansion of farms and a change in how the pastoralists are moving. And oftentimes not always, those two groups are also different sort of language wise or ethnicity wise. So there, there might be already some pre existing tension between the groups. So they tend to be. Yep. Cultural as well. So. And you've seen changes to both patterns. So there are, you know, historical patterns where sort of farmers and pastoralists would share resources so they would exchange maybe, I don't know, meat for grazing land or for water. And what climate change is doing is it's changing both those Patterns and so is population change. So you've seen in a lot of places, you've seen an expansion of farming and that's to accommodate, you know, growing population centers and, you know, the food, the food change and changing agricultural conditions.

 

 

 

[00:09:19.08] 

So people are moving, farmers are moving. And then that in and of itself is altering pastoral pathways as well as climate. So climate change factors. So, you know, pastoralism in and of itself is an adaptation to changing climates. That's why they've always moved with their herds and. Yeah. So where there may be in some circumstances used to be agreements that we would do these exchanges, now there's quite a bit more tension and in some places it's flaring up into like outright conflict as well. And you've also seen an erosion of. There are quite a few sort of traditional justice mechanisms that have eroded or lost some authority over the, over time. And then in this factor, in a lot of places where this, this peace is prevalent, you also have extremist groups or militia that are also winding these situations up. So, you know, in some of the work that we've done, say in the Lake Ted Basin, the, where Boko Haram and the Islamic State of Western Africa, ISWAP, we call it, are quite active, they are at the front of being able to manipulate all these situations into recruitment and taxation and extortion.

 

 

 

[00:10:35.08] 

And so it's sort of a trifecta. And of course, yes, this is pushing people into displacement. You know, these are the areas where tons of people are. Yeah, being, being forced to move. So yeah, I think, you know, we did speak up from the top about it being a fragility amplifier. And these are some of the key areas where all of these factors are coming in together. And continentally there's quite a bit happening around this. Quite a bit. You know, the, it was, we go back to 2018, it was where the African Union Peace and Security Council, they addressed this issue and have issued statements about it and requested thorough assessments and studies on the nexus between climate change, peace and security. There was a really robust report. It was the African Climate Security Risk Assessment that was launched in 2024. And it gives a lot of really in depth insight into the climate response risks and it does also regional analysis between the north, central, west, east and southern parts of the continent. And it calls for, you know, it forms the basis for a common African position on the climate change peace and security nexus, which is, and this is all current.

 

 

 

[00:11:56.05] 

So there's a lot of meetings that are happening right now. There was a validation workshop at the end of November 2025 meeting that looks. That tried to form this common position. So there is quite a bit of action around it and around. I would say knowledge production between 2018 and today is. In 2025 is enormous. So we know a lot more. When I entered into the space of climate change and mobility, we didn't know much and now there's. And that was about six years ago and now there's an explosion. Explosion of evidence and of predictions and of stuff that we now know to work on. And I think, you know, the African Union in particular is doing its role in trying to make sure the information exists and you know, come up with the common African position and try to integrate that into policy. So there's definitely quite. And that's also happening at the regional level. So there's quite a bit of movement on. Yeah, trying to take. Because it's, it's all over the place. Climate change extends into all these different policy areas that have traditionally been treated separately and people I think are really rounding the corner on trying to pull them together.

 

 

 

[00:13:10.17] 

At least I want to talk more about that. The continental and some sub regional bloc work, especially as it relates both to information sharing, but even more so to policy and law. Uh, we often say on this podcast, and this is a recurring theme, that there are typically few or no legal avenues that allow for people to migrate internationally in response to climate impacts. Famously, the 1951 Refugee Convention makes no reference to environmental factors as a reason why someone might be granted refugee status. My impression though is that Africa, the concept, some of the African continental law is a bit different in this regard though, and that the both continental and sub regional subcontinental levels, there have been some movement forward, I guess. Can you. Is that right? And can you talk about that? I mean, what has been happening?

 

 

 

[00:14:01.10] 

Yeah, well, so yes, the 1951 Convention, which most countries in South Africa. I can't remember, sorry, not South Africa. Africa have ratified and remember, so doesn't mention anything specific to this. There is of course we can get in trouble for saying this, that you know, that there's no such thing as a climate refugee. Yeah, of course people are trying to make the argument and there has been some movement to making to try to advocate for the 1951 Refugee Convention to say that it does include environmental factors if the environmental factors are become a threat to life or existence. And of course it was, I think 2020 that there was the. The Human Rights Council said that yes, actually climate factors and environmental degradation can become a threat to life. There's definitely A camp of people who would like to say that the 1951 or who are advocating for the 51 Convention to include this. Of course, in my view, a lot of that comes back to the fact that a lot of people in the refugee advocacy space right now know that if we were to redraw the conventions, we'd lose a lot of what we have.

 

 

 

[00:15:15.24] 

So, so we're trying to sort of stretch it. And of course, in 51 nobody was, talking about climate change...

 

 

 

[00:15:22.18] 

A concern so much.

 

 

 

[00:15:23.18] 

Yeah, for sure. And so, but on, on the continent, I'd say there's two main conventions that are expanded to this. So the first is the 1969 Organization for African Unity Convention for Refugee Protections. We always say it's the 1969 convention and it offers an expanded view of protections and it doesn't explicitly state environmental protections, but it does, it does encompass prima facie refugee recognition. So it doesn't require a case by case assessment.

 

 

 

[00:16:02.20] 

So meaning like everyone is declared a refugee, right, if you come in between the time.

 

 

 

[00:16:07.08] 

Yeah, yeah, that's right. So if you're fleeing from what's happening, you know, if there's mass violence in South Sudan and you flee into Uganda, they accept you into Uganda because you're part of that situation. And it doesn't require every individual to file an individualized case, which has done a lot for refugees on the continent. And then as well it allows for serious, public, serious disturbances to public order, which is where a lot of the climate advocates are saying this fits environmental. So it is a more expensive view. And climate related events. So droughts, floods, erosions, famines fall under the serious disturbance of public order. So it's already more expensive and it doesn't need as much. Yeah, you don't need to stretch as hard to incorporate all of these factors. The 2009 Kampala Convention, which is the convention for the protection and assistance of internally disputed displaced people. And this is particularly important because most people who are displaced by climate are going to be displaced within their country. It is the. So this was an African Union agreement and it is the first and is still the only legally binding regional agreement that protects international Internally displaced people IDPs and it explicitly extends protection to people who are forced to flee as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of natural and human made disasters.

 

 

 

[00:17:47.04] 

So it's explicit and it identifies the states as being responsible and calls on them for. To create conditions that are sustainable and lasting solutions. So it's preventative in, in. In its language. So it's calling on prevention and it labels the states as the one that are responsible. So those both of those factor, like both of these legal conventions allow for a more expansive view on displacement that protects people who are fleeing environmental and climate issues.

 

 

 

[00:18:25.16] 

You mentioned some of the applicability with regards to prima facie recognition that everyone fleeing a certain crisis is granted refugee status. But I mean, so my question is to what extent are these frameworks, are these legal conventions like implemented in the lived reality of people's day to day experiences or is this all still nice words and still abstract, but doesn't manifest on the ground?

 

 

 

[00:18:49.09] 

I think, I think a mix of both and I think it's easy. Like broadly speaking, there are often in Africa there's often some implementation blocks, but there is, I think it does matter still in multiple areas. One is that it's political will. So I think that, and I think we underestimate the importance of messaging. So and I think you can see that with some of the sort of global geopolitics that are emerging right now that the messaging around saying and having political will around protecting people and recognizing the interlinkages between these factors as well. So those, that political piece of it and the messaging part is actually quite important. And, and you know, there's 55 states, member union, member states of the African Union. And so everybody is going to have some different positions and it's really hard to coordinate 55 member states into broad conventions with different priorities. But there is sort of, there has been a lot of progress into, you know, integrating these obligations into legal and policy frameworks. And also again, there's the spirit. So, you know, we can go back to the Lake Chad basin or to South Sudan where people are in all likelihood fleeing a mix of both and they aren't blocked at the border for not having a legitimate case.

 

 

 

[00:20:22.24] 

So if somebody is fleeing South Sudan again into Uganda, no one's standing there saying are you fleeing the flood or are you feeling conflict? And they recognize that you could be fleeing both and they're going to let you in. And that is actively happening all over the place, unfortunately in reality. But there is, you know, yeah, so there's obviously much more room for things to be incorporated and implementation is definitely compromised by various factors. So, you know, Africa is definitely not immune to rising nationalism and in some country situations, sort of the waning political will to support refugees and of course, you know, again, going back to sort of the limitation on resources and inadequate asylum systems and in some places inadequate governance and you know, a lack of legal precedent for Some of this stuff. So and technical knowledge, you know, and this part's progressing. There's quite a robust effort in increasing the technical knowledge about how climate change intersects with these other factors and how to incorporate it into the legal and policy frameworks within countries. So there is progress. I always want to frame that carefully. Like there is effort, there is political will, there is also a gap because of, you know, it's one of many priorities, it's one of many, many threats.

 

 

 

[00:21:51.14] 

And then at the end of the day, if, you know, if I don't know if there's another coup, which there have been quite a few in West Africa in the last, then this just falls down or if there's a massive conflict or war or it falls down the priority list.

 

 

 

[00:22:09.02] 

Is that description the same at the sub regional level you talked about? You just mentioned West Africa, which had a couple of coups. ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States has a very robust internal free movement zone, although some of the political changes there have caused some countries to leave ECOWAS, but there are also several other sub regional blocks across the con, across the continent, egad, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development in the Horn of Africa, the SADC's Southern African Development Community. My impression is the summer maybe all of these kinds of groups have the, at least the ambition to become kind of free movement areas in their own right where nationals from one country can move and live in the others as much as they like. Are those, can those be useful in during episodes of climate disaster when people need to move for climate change reasons? And I guess generally speaking, are these sub regional institutions also effective or how does it work at a sub regional level and not just at a continental level?

 

 

 

[00:23:14.20] 

Yeah, yeah, I would. We argue quite that the again, 55 member states in the African Union.

 

 

 

[00:23:23.12] 

A lot of countries, a lot of. Yeah.

 

 

 

[00:23:25.03] 

Huge number of priorities. And so the regional economic communities, the wrecks as we call them, can play a significant role. We also argue quite regularly that there's too many and there's often overlapping membership. So there's some countries that are members of multiple and that sort of hinders it. There's definitely some that are much more active than others. So ECOWAS, the West African states was the earliest and they implemented free movement from 1979 with some of. Interestingly if you look back, some of the fears from some of the wealthier countries in 1979 were that everybody was going to flood into them. And then you have seen quite, you know, round like broadly success when it comes to circular migration in the region. So not everybody flooded to the wealthiest countries. There are still, you know, it's not to say it's absolute, it's not quite the same as the Schengen Zone. So there are still borders requirements that are in place. Unfortunately, there have been three now, four military coups in three countries have withdrawn from ECOWAS and that remains. And they are, of course, three of the most conflict and climate affected countries. It's Niger, Burkina Faso and what am I missing?

 

 

 

[00:24:51.18] 

Mali.

 

 

 

[00:24:52.13] 

Thank you.

 

 

 

[00:24:53.04] 

Mali, right, yeah, yeah.

 

 

 

[00:24:56.11] 

And they're all, yeah, closely packed in. And there's a threat, of course, once you have that level of political instability, there's a threat of it spreading. Where I would say you see the most progress on this stuff is in East Africa. So the East African countries there is overlapping membership between IGAD and the East African Community. So EAC there, the EAC in particular is moving faster than anybody else right now in integration, regional integration and free movement among them. And they're also the fastest growing economically. And I like to say that there's a link between that, which is great. So, yeah, in 2022, the countries that make up IGAD and the ESA, they signed the Kampala Ministerial Declaration. There's a lot of long words in this work.

 

 

 

[00:25:48.24] 

And Kampala features prominently. Yeah, this one.

 

 

 

[00:25:51.04] 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, and yep, Uganda's active in all of it, so. And Uganda has always been very forward thinking on refugee issues broadly. So. No, maybe not always, but in, in recent, in recent times for sure. Yep. So they've, it's a ministerial declaration and there were, depending on who, you ask, 11 countries who signed it in 2022 and by 2023 there were 48 countries who had expanded it. And there's a, you know, quite, it was a declaration what should happen. There's been quite a bit of advocacy behind it and an effort to get technical support in to really say, what does this declaration mean and how is it going to translate into, again, legal and policy instruments? Yeah, so there's, there's quite a bit of movement on that. 48 countries have now signed, so it's expanded. And again, it's, you know, it's a signal of political will, which I think is really important. And there's an appetite for it, which again, we can't underestimate that. And there is, yeah, there's some, there's an action plan that goes with it. So there has definitely been progress for including it in regional and climate discussions for incorporate, developing and incorporating instruments for adopt into national policy in sort of facilitating national level dialogs to inform other areas of government on how this works and what we need and to really sort of prioritize it at national levels.

 

 

 

[00:27:35.02] 

So that's been, that's, that's been great or sorry, I don't want to say it's been great. There's still a lot of work to do before you actually see the fruits of it. But again, there's, there's progress and it is, it's happening. And, and that's important. And then in 20. 20, 20, sorry, 2020, there's only two. The IGAD states also adopted the, the protocol for free movement of persons within their region. So it's much like the ECO- ECOWAS one, but notably it's the first one to address people who are fleeing disasters and climate change specifically, which is really important and it's moving a little bit more slowly. So it was endorsed in 2021 and now five of eight countries and it's big on the overlap with the EAC have signed. So you've got Kenya, Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Uganda who have signed it. Yeah. And those are of course areas that are really, really impacted by climate change. So there's, there's progress to, there's still of course a ratification gap. So some more countries need to ratify it. And egad, despite this, still rates really low on visa openness. So there's still quite a few barriers within the region, even though this is the goal.

 

 

 

[00:28:50.17] 

And again, capacity building around sort of technical and capacity of. What does this actually mean and how do we translate it into movement?

 

 

 

[00:29:00.13] 

It probably bears mentioning, we should mention that the continent is one of the least responsible for global climate change. It's produced, contributed less than, something like less than 5% of all global greenhouse emissions. So there is kind of a justice component to this discussion too. Right. Although at the same time, as we speak, a lot of big Western countries have slashed their foreign aids budgets. The so called Loss and Damage Fund, which aims to compensate communities for climate impacts that are irreversible that has been kind of slow to get off the ground. So what are the prospects for some sort of international assistance or contributions for the countries and people forcibly discussed or forcibly displaced rather or otherwise moving amid complicated, treacherous situations because of or in response to and amid climate change?

 

 

 

[00:29:48.16] 

Yeah, I mean, this is the billion dollar question right now, I think is, yeah, there's been an absolute gutting of development and humanitarian aid in the last year. A lot of it very, very sudden. There is tons of money on the flip side for migration related stuff. So migration is a priority and there's no lack of spending there, but it tends to be really exclusively in some cases focused on keeping people out. So there seems to be lots of

 

 

 

[00:30:23.09] 

money for border guards, but.

 

 

 

[00:30:24.13] 

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So there's an in, there's, there's, we've done a lot of work that looks at what's happened mostly from European funds into Africa. Where has it gone? What are the trickle down impacts? The trickle down impacts are really dire. So Europe labeled migration a crisis in 2015. And since Africa, even though Africans weren't making up anywhere near a majority of people, asylum seekers mostly who are arriving into Europe, since it's a neighborhood, it has borne what I'm going to call the brunt of a lot of these externalized and securitized measures. So people trying to prevent people, anyone really coming up from Africa and that, and that has looked pretty bad. Lots of spending, plenty of money there and it has resulted in, you know, co opting Libyan militia, so putting in the hands of militia who control different parts of coastal Libya, putting cash in their hands to prevent boats from crap from crossing. And then of course that money, and this is coming from the European Union and European countries. That money then going onward to destabilize democracy in Libya. There's an agreement between Tunisia and Italy and the European Union, despite the human rights and democratic record of President Saied, who has jailed opponents and who is deeply unpopular and has autocratic tendencies.

 

 

 

[00:32:00.16] 

But as long as you cooperate on migration, we have 900 million euros for you. And, and this is despite of course claiming, you know, principles, democratic principles and the importance of, yeah, liberal democracies and free movement within Europe itself. And so yeah, I mean the paradox is obviously that there is lots of money for that, almost endless in this case. It's a political priority. The US has spent, you know, a pretty penny in shipping deportees over onto the continent and coming up with yet conditional agreements that are leveraging their power to, to make this. Anyway, once or not, once the topic gets politicized, it always gets sort of shut out of the water. But from a development perspective, yeah, it looks really dire. I don't know if I, I can't answer what the hopes are. They're not huge right now. The movement on the loss and damage fund has been really sluggish. You know, there, there should be some action on it next year, but I think at last count there was less than 800 million in that fund in the, in the, you know, the loss of damage. Do we need to explain what loss and damage is?

 

 

 

[00:33:18.09] 

Sure you can give, give us a very brief.

 

 

 

[00:33:20.13] 

Yeah, right. Okay. So you know, loss and damages related to climate change are things that there are impacts that go beyond adaptation. So when we look at climate migration we, or climate change in general, we look at mitigation. So reducing climate impacts, adaptation is responding to them and then in a lot of cases it's beyond adaptation. So. Yeah, so and that's because of whether or not the measures weren't in place to help people adapt or because they don't exist because it's too far gone. And of course it's been added as the third pillar of the UN FCCC funding structure. And yeah, but it's, it's, that took 30 years. It's, it's ultimately in my view it's like a climate justice fund and it took 30 years to get across the line and the resistance was because of the liability component. So if the large polluters are, can be held liable for what they've done, then that opens a gateway. Yeah, so and it is just really underfunded and really quite has been very sluggish. So my. Yeah, unless there's sort of, you know, hope hopefully. I guess the, the first question group of funding that goes out has high impact and is spent responsibly and spent well and is able to demonstrate impact and then you have I think hopes for replenishment.

 

 

 

[00:34:46.19] 

But again I think everybody, everybody, if I would love to have the answer to what's going to happen here because but yeah, and then the, the costs of it, of, of these funding cuts on in Africa are extreme and it's, it's not good.

 

 

 

[00:35:00.03] 

Yeah, we are kind of running out of time. But I did want to close with one overarching, potentially simple, potentially very complicated question just to kind of wrap things up. Is the continent prepared for a future of seemingly likely increasing climate driven migration? And if not, what happens then what could the future look like?

 

 

 

[00:35:23.24] 

Yeah, I mean I think the prediction is that right now, look, mobility is going to move, it's going to increase no matter what. We haven't talked a lot about forced immobility, which is the other factor. So one of the things that's very likely in Africa is that people are going to be trapped by poverty and unable to move. I don't know that anyone's ready for any of this. But yeah, there's. The climate impacts are increasing. I would say broadly speaking the continent isn't ready. But also at the same time Africa has proven to be extremely resilient. And so, yeah, so you've got to, you have to sort of maintain hope and keep focused on the progress there will be. You know, we often talk you, you hear all the time about sort of these concepts of the global south overwhelming the global north with migration. That's not what is happening broadly. It's by far and away the most common impact is that people are moving within their countries, into neighboring countries, and that's going to happen regardless of how ready you are or not. So a lot of where I would like to see an enormous amount of focus is on urban areas.

 

 

 

[00:36:44.09] 

Africa is the fastest urbanizing continent in the world. The cities aren't ready. There's already sort of 75% informality. I'd like to see a lot of focus pulled away from this idea that the global south is going to overwhelm the global north and focus instead on really preparing African cities for. For what, what it's going to do to food security, what it's going to do to population dynamics, and to really prepare those cities to be able to maximize the dividend and the economic benefits as opposed to sort of moving from one fragility to another. So, yeah, so I don't, I would say, are we ready? No. Broadly speaking, lots. Too much work to be done. Lots of work to be done. But you just, you have to keep chipping away at it. There is progress, so stuff is happening. We have to remember that.

 

 

 

[00:37:39.13] 

Thank you so much for coming on. This was helpful and enlightening and I really appreciate it.

 

 

 

[00:37:44.02] 

Yeah, thank you very much for having me.

 

 

 

[00:37:46.02] 

Aimée-Noël Mbiyozo is a senior Research Consultant at the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa. This has been another episode of Changing Climate Changing Migration. I hope you enjoyed my discussion with Aimée-Noël. If so, you should make sure to subscribe to the podcast so that you can catch all of our episodes the moment they're released. We are on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all the other major services and if you really want to support the work that we do, please leave us a positive review. In my conversation with Aimée-Noël, we talked a bit about the notion of loss and damage. If you want to hear more about that and how it relates to migration, I'd urge you to listen to a previous episode we recorded with Adelle Thomas called Could a Loss and Damage Fund Compensate Climate Migrants? All the episodes of Changing Climate, Changing Migration and other MPI podcasts are available on the Migration Policy Institute's website at migrationpolicy.org/podcasts. This episode was produced by Daniella Espacio. Lisa Dixon offered additional assistance. Editorial oversight came from Michelle Mittelstadt. And our theme music is a song called Touch by Patrick Patrikios. Once again, my name is Julian Hattem.

 

 

 

[00:39:06.17] 

I'll see you again soon.