There is a devastating rupture occurring across our continent right now, and we cannot afford to look away.
Imagine the sheer weight of it. You leave your country of origin, cross borders, and migrate to another African nation to build a life. You work hard, pour your energy into the local community, and strive to integrate. For years, you make a place your temporary home. Then, the political and social winds shift. Host authorities launch sweeping immigration crackdowns, and grassroots anti-immigrant movements issue ultimatums. Almost overnight, the society you have contributed to turns its back on you. It looks you in the eye and delivers a crushing verdict: “You do not belong here anymore.”
This profound displacement is happening right now to our own African brothers and sisters. We are seeing it acutely with the sudden, anxious repatriation of undocumented Kenyans from South Africa, following similar mass forced returns of Ghanaians and Malawians. People who were actively building livelihoods are suddenly being uprooted, handed exit orders, and forced to return to their home countries with their lives in suitcases.
The Uncomfortable Question
When we witness fellow Africans being abruptly chucked out of another African country, we have to look in the mirror and ask some deeply uncomfortable questions.
- What are we becoming?
- How did we get to a place where an African is made to feel like a hostile stranger on African soil?
We know the systemic triggers. This fear of the migrant breeds when local populations are frustrated, when resources are tight, and when economies are struggling. In those desperate moments, it is always easier for systems and societies to point fingers at the vulnerable neighbor than to hold failing structures accountable.
But let us be entirely clear: when we allow fear to dictate how we treat migrants, human dignity becomes negotiable. And the moment you decide someone else’s dignity is up for negotiation, you have already lost your own.
A Call for Dignity at the Border
For the home communities in Kenya, Ghana, and across the continent who are currently receiving their returning citizens: we must welcome them back with absolute dignity. This is not a time for judgment, suspicion, or viewing their return as a failure. They are returning from a battlefield of rejection and intense anxiety. They need love, immediate shelter, and fierce communal protection.
And to those of you who are packing up your lives right now, watching your hard-work dissolve into a forced evacuation: I see your grief. Please, do not carry this crushing weight on your own. Reach out, lean on your roots, seek support, and hold onto this truth: your fundamental worth as a human being is never defined by a border, a lack of papers, or a political stamp.
Restoring the African Fabric
For the rest of us—the policymakers, the regional bodies, and ordinary citizens.We are dangerously close to forgetting the very essence of who we are. Ubuntu reminds us of an inescapable truth: I am because we are. Our survival on this continent has always been, and will always be, bound up in our interconnectedness.
When we allow one migrant community to be targeted and pushed out, the entire African fabric is torn. We cannot build a prosperous, united continent on the broken spirits of our neighbors.
The next time you hear someone spreading xenophobic rhetoric or divisive hate about fellow Africans migrating for a better life, check it. Stop it in its tracks.
Let us actively build a future where our continent is defined by how we care for the traveler and the neighbor, and not just by the arbitrary lines drawn on a map.
