“Ghana Must Go” again?: Between African solidarity and national frustrations

By Hannah Gyamfua MENSAH

The recent xenophobic attacks and anti-immigrant protests in South Africa, which prompted the evacuation of Ghanaian citizens by the Government of Ghana, have once again brought attention to a recurring challenge within Africa’s migration landscape.

Beyond the immediate humanitarian concerns, the situation raises deeper questions about African unity, regional integration, migration governance, and the effectiveness of continental institutions established to promote cooperation among African states.

If Africa is truly committed to regional integration, free movement, and Pan-African solidarity, then the protection of migrants must become a continental responsibility rather than an afterthought during moments of crisis.

Migration has always been part of Africa’s social, economic, and cultural reality. Long before colonial borders divided the continent, African communities moved across regions for trade, security, family ties, pastoralism, cultural exchange, and economic survival.

Today, migration remains closely linked to the search for livelihood opportunities, education, safety, dignity, and social mobility. This is precisely why migration is central to the objectives of regional and continental bodies such as the African Union (AU), Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and Southern African Development Community (SADC).

These institutions were not created solely for political cooperation. They were also established to promote regional integration, peaceful coexistence, economic development, labour mobility, free movement of persons, and stronger people-to-people connections across African states.

Initiatives such as the African Continental Free Trade Area(AfCFTA), and the AU Free Movement Protocol reflect a continental vision where Africans can move, trade, work, and contribute across borders with dignity and protection. Regional integration depends not only on the movement of goods and capital, but also on the safe mobility of people.

Continental integration cannot flourish where Africans continue to experience exclusion, discrimination, and violence within fellow African states. Xenophobic violence therefore undermines the very objectives of these institutions and the irony is difficult to ignore. Unfortunately, these xenophobic sentiments and attitudes are not uniquely South African in nature, even though South Africa has experienced some of the most visible and violent manifestations on the continent.

Similar tensions have also emerged in Tunisia, where reports of discrimination, arbitrary arrests, and hostility toward sub-Saharan African migrants drew international concern following political rhetoric linking migrants to demographic and security threats.

In Libya, migrants transiting through irregular routes have frequently been exposed to exploitation, abuse, trafficking, and detention within weak protection systems. In parts of North Africa and the Sahel, migration has increasingly become framed through security lenses, often overshadowing the humanitarian and developmental dimensions of human mobility.

Even within West Africa, despite the ECOWAS Free Movement Protocol, tensions occasionally emerge around undocumented migration, informal labour competition, border enforcement, and public perceptions surrounding foreign nationals during economic downturns.

These realities demonstrate that while Africa continues to pursue regional integration and free movement frameworks, implementation gaps, weak migration governance systems, and rising socio-economic pressures continue to threaten the broader vision of Pan-African solidarity.

This reflects a wider continental challenge where economic insecurity, weak governance systems, inequality, nationalism, and political populism can easily fuel anti-immigrant narratives. In many cases, xenophobia is less about migrants themselves and more about unresolved structural and governance issues within states.

Migrants become symbolic targets onto whom frustrations about poverty, exclusion, corruption, unemployment, and state failures are projected. This explains why anti-migrant sentiments can emerge in different forms across various African societies regardless of historical commitments to Pan-Africanism and African solidarity.

Hence, where strong migration governance becomes essential. Effective migration governance is not simply about border control or restricting movement. It involves developing coordinated systems that ensure migration is safe, orderly, regular, and beneficial both for migrants and host communities.

It requires governments to strengthen labour migration frameworks, improve documentation systems, combat misinformation, invest in social cohesion, protect migrant rights, and create mechanisms for addressing community tensions before they escalate into violence.

Regional bodies such as the AU, ECOWAS, and SADC have already developed frameworks that recognize mobility as a tool for development and integration. ECOWAS, for instance, has long championed the Free Movement Protocol, allowing citizens within the region to travel, reside, and establish economic activities across member states. Similarly, the AU Agenda 2063 envisions “an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa” driven by its own citizens and functioning as a strong force in the global arena.

However, these Pan-Africanism ideals and objectives must evolve beyond symbolic rhetoric into a lived reality that protects the dignity and rights of Africans everywhere on the continent. African unity cannot only exist in speeches during AU summits or in trade agreements signed by political leaders.

It must also be reflected in how ordinary Africans treat one another within communities, workplaces, schools, markets, and public spaces. This calls for the need to address the structural conditions that fuel xenophobia such as high youth unemployment, inequality, weak service delivery, urban poverty, housing shortages, and political populism. These create fertile ground for anti-immigrant narratives.

The recent evacuation of Ghanaian citizens by the Government of Ghana may have been necessary as an immediate protective measure. However, addressing xenophobia requires more than reactive security responses or emergency evacuations.

It demands stronger migration governance, inclusive economic policies, responsible political leadership, public education on migration, and deliberate efforts to promote social cohesion between host communities and migrant populations.

It also requires African governments and institutions to consistently reaffirm that African migrants are not outsiders to the continent’s development, but contributors to its growth, diversity, resilience, and interconnected future. Migrants contribute through labour, entrepreneurship, innovation, remittances, skills transfer, cultural exchange, and regional trade.

Ultimately, migration should not be viewed as a threat to African development, but as part of Africa’s development story itself. Well-governed migration has the potential to strengthen economies, deepen regional integration, and reinforce the interconnected future envisioned under Pan-African ideals. The recent events in South Africa should therefore serve not only as a moment of outrage, but also as a wake-up call for African leaders, institutions, and citizens alike.

Hannah  is a Migration Analyst and Researcher with interests in Migrant Liminality and Precarity, Internal displacements, Climate Change, Migration Governance, Social Protection and Sustainable development. She is passionate about promoting inclusive, rights-based solutions to the socially vulnerable as well as human migration and its related global realities.

LinkedIn :http://linkedin.com/in/hannah-gyamfua-mensah-62a78934

Email: [email protected]

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