Substantial numbers of African children are on the move – both internally within their own countries and across borders – due to ongoing and emerging crises. Many of these migrant and forcibly displaced children are in urgent need of protection and must be prioritized in national, regional and global efforts. This data snapshot uses the latest available data to highlight key trends about this vulnerable population of children.
Download the Data Snapshot (2024)
Download the Data Snapshot (2018)
More international migrants move within Africa than beyond the continent
As of 2020, over 20.9 million Africans lived outside their country of birth but still within the continent. An additional 19.6 million Africans had migrated from the continent since birth. The bulk of these emigrants went to Europe (56 per cent) and to Asia (24 per cent), mostly the Gulf States. This intercontinental emigration was driven mostly by countries in Northern Africa (55 per cent), while the intracontinental emigration was concentrated in Eastern Africa and Western Africa, representing 75 per cent of all migration within Africa. Migration on the continent is primarily contained within regions: Around 67 per cent of migrants in each area stayed within the same region.
1 in 4 international migrants in Africa is a child – 6.2 million in total
Looking at the age structure of migrant populations across the globe, Africa has the highest proportion of child migrants: Over one in four immigrants in Africa is a child, twice the global average. The share is particularly large in Eastern Africa. In Uganda, for instance, children make up more than half of the immigrant population, while in Sudan and Ethiopia, they account for over 40 per cent of this population. These countries also host some of the largest child migrant populations in Africa in absolute terms – the largest of which is in Uganda, with 928,000 migrants under the age of 18 in 2020.
More than half of all refugees in Africa are children, 4.5 million in total
At the end of 2023, 8.9 million refugees originated from African countries – 1.3 million more than in 2020 – and children are disproportionately represented among them. Some 51 per cent of all African refugees are children, totalling more than 4.5 million (as of end of 2023). The largest numbers of African child refugees come from South Sudan, followed by Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic.
An estimated 16.2 million children in Africa are internally displaced by conflict and violence
More than 32.5 million persons are internally displaced in Africa due to conflict and violence – an estimated half of them are children. At the end of 2023, there were 4.2 million internally displaced children in Sudan alone.
16.2 million new child displacements in Africa in the last 10 years were caused by disasters
Disasters are also driving a significant amount of displacement in Africa, associated with nearly a third of new child displacements from 2014 to 2023. In regions like Eastern Africa, the number of new displacements caused by disasters nearly matched those resulting from conflict and violence. Floods were the primary cause, leading to 11.2 million new child displacements, or 69 per cent of all disaster-related displacements in Africa. Droughts and storms led to 2.4 million and 2.1 million new displacements, respectively. By the end of 2023, an estimated 1.2 million African children were living in displacement due to disasters, with the vast majority of them – 880,000 – living in Eastern Africa.
Almost 3.8 million former refugees and internally displaced persons returned to their homes in Africa in 2023
UNHCR counted over 632,000 former refugees and 3.1 million internally displaced persons that returned to their homes in Africa in 2023. South Sudan alone accounted for 527,000 returnees. Significant numbers of returning children have also been recorded by other sources – for instance, IOM found that at least 60,000 children returned to Sudan from Chad by the end of 2023. However, because most African countries do not have data that reflect the number of returning displaced children, their actual number across the continent may be much higher.
