In Africa, Climate Migration Is Not Just About Weather – It’s About Power
By Thomas Omusolo, La’eeqa Martin, Judith Wafula, Samantha Muller, Luvo Mnyobe, Zahraa Essa, Lalla Masondo, Stella Hertantyo, Pempho Budda, Byrone Ochieng, Celiwe Shivambu, Rachel Itenderezwe, and Basitsana Pitso
Photo by Speak Media Uganda via Pexels
Climate migration is no longer a future risk. It is here, reshaping lives, cutting ties to heritage, and forcing young Africans into new and often hostile realities.
The United Nations International Organisation for Migration defines climate migration as the movement of people forced to leave their place of residence, permanently or temporarily, due to a sudden or progressive change in the environment caused by climate change. This can happen across international borders or within their own countries.
Yet too often, climate migration is presented as an isolated event caused by a drought, a cyclone, or a flood — natural disasters that are worsened through climate change. In truth, it is never only natural disasters that push people to move. It is the legacy of history, governance failures, economic inequality, and the deep scars of colonialism that make people more vulnerable to climate shocks in the first place.
Climate migration as a polycrisis
Climate migration forms part of a polycrisis: a network of global crises, triggers, and stresses all interacting and overlapping across global socio-economic, political, and environmental systems that affect both the migrants and the host communities.
In Kenya, Judith Wafula describes extreme weather conditions where families lose sources of livelihoods such as cattle and crops, necessitating moving to a completely new environment and culture. “This shapes one's belonging as they have to fit in the new way of life,” says Judith. But it is not just the drought itself that causes this displacement. It is how political systems fail to provide safety nets, how economies are structured around fragile agricultural systems, and how borders, both visible and invisible, decide who can move and who cannot.
It is about how exclusionary conservation policies evict communities from ancestral lands in the name of protecting biodiversity, while neglecting to protect the people who have always cared for these ecosystems.
From Alexandra Township in Johannesburg to Den Staat Farm in Limpopo, South Africa, we see how colonial land dispossession and present-day conservation strategies continue to displace communities. The borders we draw around nature reserves or city neighbourhoods can be as powerful as international ones, reinforcing who belongs and who does not.
“It is not just the drought itself that causes this displacement. It is how political systems fail to provide safety nets, how economies are structured around fragile agricultural systems, and how borders, both visible and invisible, decide who can move and who cannot.”
Borders are not only lines on a map. They are also embedded in exclusionary city planning. In the xenophobic context, when climate migrants leave rural homes for cities, they often find themselves confronted by hostility from communities while trying to access jobs, housing, and water. Migration becomes a cycle of survival but also of discrimination and criminalisation.
Pempho Budda from Malawi reminds us how political negligence worsens these realities. “Politicians do not take this thing seriously. Instead, they are very reluctant, using the victims of climate migration to attract votes and favours.” This is evidence of the fact that climate migration is not only about weather — it is about power.
Byrone Ochieng from Kenya reminds us how climate migration intersects with economics. “Climate change-induced migration is significantly impacting Kenya's economy by affecting agricultural productivity, increasing competition for resources in urban areas, and potentially disrupting key sectors like tourism and trade. The displacement of populations due to droughts, floods, and other extreme weather events strains resources and services in receiving areas, while also creating challenges for migrants themselves,” says Byrone.
“Migration becomes a cycle of survival but also of discrimination and criminalisation.”
This is the essence of climate migration within the polycrisis. Beyond movement, climate migration is about the effects on governance, development, culture, and conflict. It is about how displacement in one area triggers pressure in another.
A crisis without protection
Despite its urgency, climate migration is not clearly defined by the law. The 1951 Refugee Convention and the African Union’s 1969 Refugee Convention do not recognise climate migrants. This leaves millions of displaced people criminalised, unprotected, and denied basic rights. Children and vulnerable groups are especially invisible in both migration and climate policy frameworks.
At the African regional level, non-binding legal instruments such as the Kampala Declaration of 2022 point towards the unwillingness of countries to solve the issue of climate migration through binding laws.
According to the World Bank, by 2050, up to 85 million Africans could be internally displaced within Sub-Saharan Africa because of climate change. Without recognition in law, they will remain on the margins of protection, with their lives treated as collateral damage of a crisis they did not cause.
Small steps towards the legal recognition of climate migrants have been taken. The UN Human Rights Committee recently made a decision that highlighted the host countries’ responsibility in ensuring climate migrants are not returned to dangerous conditions that put their lives at risk. While a step in the right direction, more decisive action is needed to ensure the protection and safety of climate migrants under national and international law.
Women and children bear unequal burdens
Around 80% of people displaced by climate change are women. Caregiving roles, lack of resources, and restrictive cultural norms limit women’s mobility. In rural communities, women often lack land ownership, independent income, or access to formal support networks. As men migrate first in search of work, women and children are left behind until displacement becomes unavoidable. By then, resources are even scarcer and risks even greater.
“By 2050, up to 85 million Africans could be internally displaced within Sub-Saharan Africa because of climate change. ”
The burdens of migration deepen existing inequalities. Women are expected to provide food, water, and care for children in new environments, often without adequate infrastructure or support. The result is not only physical exhaustion but also exposure to exploitation and violence.
Worse still, the children from displaced families are not able to go to school, despite the UN Education for All Goals and SDG 4 which calls for access to quality education. Even in the new allocated living location, the parents lack the required resources to take them back to school. This denies the children an opportunity for self-actualisation.
Loss of heritage and belonging
Young people across the continent know what it feels like to carry the intangible losses of migration. This includes the broken stories, the severed family ties, the burial grounds, and ancestral sites left behind. These are not things that can be compensated with relocation packages. Migration erodes the invisible threads that hold communities together. Our heritage, spirituality, identity, and the feeling of home.
South African artist Nobukho Nqaba captures this poignantly in her work Umaskhenkethe Likhaya Lam (The China Bag is my Home), where the mesh bag, a global symbol of migration, becomes both container and metaphor: a home in transit, carrying fragments of lives uprooted.
Bupe Mwangala from Zambia reflects on the Lozi people’s annual Kuomboka ceremony, where communities move from flooded wetlands to dry lands:
“This migration mainly takes place when the Zambezi River is about to flood…not having permanent settlement affects on the people as they may not truly know where they belong due to the shifting of places annually. Yet, the Kuomboka ceremony also shows resilience and tradition, a reminder of adaptability in the face of environmental challenges.”
“Migration erodes the invisible threads that hold communities together. Our heritage, spirituality, identity, and the feeling of home.”
This story reveals a double truth: climate migration can damage a sense of belonging, but it can also be a site of cultural resilience. Still, many displaced communities do not have the chance to root their traditions in continuity.
A youth perspective: calling for justice
As young Africans, we reject the framing of migration as failure or crisis alone. Migration is adaptation. It is survival. What makes it unjust is the lack of protection, the discrimination, and the erasure of heritage that come with it.
Climate migration is not the fault of those forced to move. Understanding its roots from colonial exploitation and economic inequality, to extractive industries like mining, shifts the blame away from migrants themselves. This issue must be treated as humanitarian, not politicised for short-term gains.
Governments and international institutions must:
Recognise climate migrants within national, regional, and international legal frameworks.
Create inclusive policies that protect the indigent, vulnerable, marginalised victims of climate migration, such as children, women, and vulnerable groups.
Centre heritage and culture in resettlement, conservation, and adaptation plans.
Challenge xenophobia and internal borders that criminalise mobility.
Address extractive industries and governance failures that deepen displacement.
Smooth reintegration of the displaced population back to their communities
Establish inter-country cooperation for transborder migrations
But this crisis is not one to be addressed by governments alone. Here are examples and case studies of ways climate migration is being mitigated and acted on responsibly:
The Tuvalu Climate Migration Treaty, in Australia, established a special pathway for Tuvaluan citizens to live, work, and study in Australia in response to rising sea levels. While the policy doesn't grant refugee status, it provides a specific visa program under the Pacific Engagement Visa for citizens affected by climate change impacts in the Pacific region, indicating a shift toward regional responsibility and migration pathways.
Cultural Survival’s publication on ‘Crossing False Borders: Indigenous Movement and Forced Migration’
How free movement agreements can support climate migrants in Africa, including the 2018 African Union Protocol on the Free Movement of Persons, which operates at a continental level, geared at facilitating the free movement of Africans across its borders. The protocol permits visa-free entry for 90 days across member states with an African Passport, affording migrants the right to reside and start businesses in other member states.
The International Organisation for Migration has an Environmental Migration Portal sharing upcoming windows and opportunities to take action.
The Migration Data Portal for the latest data on environmental migration.
Climate migration is not an afterthought to the climate crisis. It is central. If leaders fail to act, young Africans will inherit a continent where borders, both physical and invisible, continue to determine who survives with dignity and who is left behind.
We must reimagine belonging, not as fixed to one place, but as rooted in justice, care, and shared humanity. Only then can migration become not just a story of loss, but also of collective survival.
Thomas Omusolo, La’eeqa Martin, Judith Wafula, Samantha Muller, Luvo Mnyobe, Zahraa Essa, Lalla Masondo, Stella Hertantyo, Pempho Budda, Byrone Ochieng, Celiwe Shivambu, Rachel Itenderezwe, and Basitsana Pitso are all members of African Climate Alliance’s Youth Activist Network. They are passionate changemakers from across the continent who believe in speaking truth to power, advocating for systemic socio-environmental change within their own countries, and coming together to show the connections between the systemic issues across Africa.
