In the past twelve months, news papers around the globe have painted a gloomy picture on the plight of young African immigrants who die while trying to enter parts of the European Union in search of better paying jobs. The statistics provided paint a stark picture, some 6,000 young African men have died on the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean trying to enter Spain enroute to countries in the European Union.
This comes as last week, Britian announced new immigration rules to control the influx of ilegal immigrants who have complicated the social service order making it a burden to the commoners.
The pressure on unemploymenet among the youth in Europe is also under threat of this young African who have been escaping from their countries because of bad leadership. At least 140,000 Kenyans are reportedly living in the UK, mostly are providing cheap labour in factories and in the hospitality industry. Thanks to the UK.
Yet many more young Africans are still prepared to pay the massive sum of £3,000 for the short but risky trip from North Africa to the Canary Islands.
Why are these young men ready to fork out the equivalent of 14 years’ salary to travel to Europe, when there is no guarantee that they will make it there? Is it because there is something fundamentally wrong with the countries from which they are running away? is obvious that these young men do not have any confidence in the present or future state of their countries.
How else can one explain their actions? Take the case of Zimbabwe where Mugabe's own dictatorship has forced millions of educated Zimbabweans to migrate to South Africa where they are offered jobs to work as 'servants' . This is self impossed slavery. In Botswana the story is the same with low salaries and poor working conditions. Ghana has lost its educated young youths to firms in europe and America . While the instability in Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Sudan continues to force millions of young Africans to self exile in europe.
Let’s face it, £3,000 is a hell of lot of money in Africa and it could go a long way in making the difference between living and merely surviving. But these desperate young Africans don’t see it that way. And those who make it good (relatively speaking) in Europe don’t help matters either.
They only work as alternative labour in europe hired for convinence and for low pay often meant for up keep.
When they return home on holidays, flushed with money earned through menial jobs, they tend to spend it like drunken sailors on shore leave. They give a totally wrong impression of life in Europe to impressionable young African men who are only too willing to listen to tall tales – until they themselves arrive to find out that the reality is completely different.
It was with this in mind that sometime ago Alioune Tine, the secretary general of the Senegalese human rights body, RADDHO, spoke out against visiting young Senegalese men driving around Dakar in flash four-wheel drives. It is not surprising that Senegal provides the bulk of these young illegal immigrants trying to make it to Spain. There is indeed a major problem with regards to the state of young people in West Africa today. This has occasionally highlighted in UN reports, which speak of the high rates of unemployment among young people in the region, and their feeling of despair.
As reports note, the situation is a ticking bomb. But it seems that it has already exploded – and the effects are being felt in the entire Europe.
