Keypoints:
- Migrant workforce reached 13.1m
- Women made up only 37 percent
- Social protection remains severely limited
AFRICA’S migrant workforce grew by nearly 41 percent between 2010 and 2022, rising from 9.3m to 13.1m, according to an African Union report first published in November 2025 and posted on the AU website in July 2026.
The expansion underlines the growing importance of labour mobility to African economies. But it also exposes a persistent policy gap: workers are crossing borders faster than governments are establishing portable benefits, recognising professional qualifications, protecting women or creating safe and lawful employment routes.
Workforce grows as protections lag
The fourth edition of the Report on Labour Migration Statistics in Africa found that migrant workers represented 64 percent of the continent’s estimated 20.4m working-age international migrants in 2022.
Africa’s total international migrant population, including people outside the labour force, increased from 17.6m in 2010 to 26m in 2022.
The report was prepared under the AU’s Joint Labour Migration Programme with support from the ILO, the International Organization for Migration and Statistics Sweden.
Although the AU document page carrying the report is dated July 13, 2026, the publication itself states that it was first released in November 2025. Its principal statistical reference year is 2022.
The figures therefore provide a detailed historical picture of African labour migration but should not be presented as a count of migrant workers currently living on the continent.
‘Labor migration is, at its core, a powerful human story; one of grit, opportunity, and resilience,’ said Dr Sabelo Mbokazi, head of the Labour, Employment and Migration Division at the African Union Commission.
He added that Africa needed truthful, timely and harmonised information to manage labour migration effectively and unlock its potential.
West Africa hosts largest workforce
West Africa hosted approximately 4.4m migrant workers in 2022, making it the continent’s largest destination subregion.
East and Southern Africa each hosted around 2.9m migrant workers, while Central Africa recorded 1.9m and Northern Africa about 1m.
Together, West, East and Southern Africa accounted for 78 percent of Africa’s migrant workforce.
Regional organisations with established cross-border movement arrangements, including ECOWAS, the East African Community and the Southern African Development Community, remain central to labour mobility.
However, continental integration remains uneven. Africa Briefing has previously examined Africa’s free movement reforms remain stalled, with legal fragmentation, security concerns and limited recognition of qualifications restricting workers’ ability to move and secure formal employment.
The disconnect is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
The African Continental Free Trade Area seeks to create a more integrated market for goods and services, but trade cannot deepen fully while workers transporting goods, delivering services and establishing businesses continue to face restrictive border and employment systems.
Women remain on the margins
Women accounted for an average of only 37 percent of migrant workers during the review period, underscoring their underrepresentation in cross-border labour mobility.
Women face additional obstacles when seeking work across borders, including discriminatory recruitment, unpaid care responsibilities, unsafe migration routes and concentration in informal or poorly regulated occupations.
The gender gap was widest in the Arab Maghreb Union, where men represented 78 percent of migrant workers.
The East African Community and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development were notable exceptions, with women accounting for more than half of migrant workers.
These regional differences show that migration policy cannot be separated from gender policy.
Formal recruitment arrangements, enforceable contracts, access to documentation and bilateral labour agreements can determine whether mobility creates opportunity or exposes women to exploitation.
Young workers drive migration
Young people aged between 15 and 35 accounted for 6.1m migrant workers in 2022, up from 4.3m in 2010. Men consistently represented about 60 percent of the total.
The increase reflects growing pressure across African labour markets as expanding youth populations seek jobs that their domestic economies cannot provide.
Africa Briefing has reported on warnings over Africa’s youth employment crisis, where economic growth has frequently failed to produce enough secure, productive and properly paid work.
Migration can ease some of that pressure by allowing workers to move towards countries and industries experiencing labour shortages.
But poorly managed migration may simply transfer people from unemployment at home into insecure, informal or dangerous employment elsewhere.
Available 2020 data from selected African countries showed that trade, transport, accommodation, food and related services accounted for nearly 44 percent of recorded migrant employment.
Agriculture represented about 17 percent and manufacturing 5 percent, while roughly 60 percent of recorded migrant workers held medium-skilled occupations.
However, the limited country coverage means these figures should not be treated as a complete continental distribution of migrant employment.
Remittances rise as protection trails
Remittances received by African countries increased from $64.8bn in 2013 to $97.5bn in 2022, a rise of more than 50 percent.
Northern Africa received approximately 45 percent of the total, while West Africa accounted for 34 percent. Egypt and Nigeria together received about half of all recorded remittance inflows to the continent.
Those figures include money sent by migrants living elsewhere in Africa as well as Africans working outside the continent. They should not be attributed solely to the 13.1m migrant workers residing within Africa.
Africa Briefing has also reported that remittance inflows remained near $100bn in 2024, reinforcing their importance to household welfare, foreign-exchange earnings and national economic stability.
But many of the workers sustaining those flows remain outside basic safety nets.
In 2023, only 19.1 percent of Africa’s population was covered by at least one social-protection benefit, the lowest regional coverage rate in the world.
Migrant workers face even greater exclusion because eligibility may depend on nationality, formal employment or continuous contributions within one country.
Weak regional coordination also makes it difficult for workers to transfer pensions, health benefits or other entitlements when they cross borders.
Recent anti-migrant unrest affecting Africans in South Africa has illustrated how quickly workers and entrepreneurs can lose livelihoods when legal protection, documentation and political accountability fail.
Data gaps obscure full picture
The report acknowledges that Africa still lacks sufficiently consistent information on informal employment, educational attainment, skills, gender and social protection among migrant workers.
National authorities use different combinations of censuses, household surveys and administrative records.
Seasonal workers, short-term cross-border workers and people in irregular or informal employment may also be absent or poorly represented.
These gaps leave the true scale and composition of migrant labour uncertain, particularly among seasonal, informal and irregular workers.
Closing the information gap will require governments to connect migration policy with employment planning, regional trade, skills recognition and social-security reform.
Africa already depends heavily on mobile workers.
The central question is whether its institutions will continue treating them as an invisible workforce or recognise them as an essential part of the continent’s economic future.
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