French president Emmanuel Macron has said African nations must do more to keep young people from leaving and work to reduce their birth rates to ease the migrant crisis.
“We need more Africans to succeed in Africa,” Emmanuel Macron said on a visit to the Nigerian capital, Lagos, this week. “Let’s build homes for the African youth in Africa.”
He added that, right now, Africans were trying to reach Europe by taking “the most crazy risks” whilst making people-traffickers “richer and richer”, the Telegraph reports.
Too many were emigrating from peaceful nations like as Senegal, the Ivory Coast, and Nigeria because of “a lack of hope, a lack of opportunities”, he continued.
However, he said there are too many for them all to settle in Europe: “These people, given the magnitude of this wave, cannot be accepted, at least, not all of them.”
Earlier this year, the European Union (EU) agreed to begin setting up migrant processing centres on the African continent, so economic migrants with no legitimate claim to asylum can be sorted from genuine refugees.
The bloc also last month proposed billions more in aid for Africa, including a €10.5 billion “Peace Facility.”
Spending in sub-Saharan Africa is set to see the biggest increase, from €26.1 billion to €32 billion over seven years, with €9 billion earmarked migration-related causes.
The EU had to work even more closely with African countries, President Macron said, whilst also urging African nations to alter the domestic policies that drive poverty and emigration.
Governments needed to control booming populations and birth rates, as high as “seven, eight children” per family, Macron said.
Nigeria’s population, according to some projections, is forecast to more than double by the middle of the century to 400 million.
If it did, it would surge past Pakistan, Brazil, Indonesia, and the U.S. to become the world third most populous nation.
Last month, EU leaders said they intend to stop migrants leaving African shores by paying countries like Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia to hold them there and check asylum claims.
They backed the creation of “regional disembarkation platforms” to “provide for rapid processing to distinguish between economic migrants and those in need of international protection, and reduce the incentive to embark on perilous journeys.”
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