John Simpson is the BBC’s World Affairs Editor. If ever a self-made man revered his maker, it’s John Simpson.
He’s finally got himself a viral post. 2.4 million people viewed his post disparaging the events earlier this week in Dublin. But, true to form it wasn’t the distressing scene of children being stabbed but the reaction of the local riff-raff that got his goat.
You might think Simpson, being the BBC’s World Affairs Editor, would be pretty well clued up on what drives emigration from Africa. Is it war and global warming or something altogether more mundane?
Migrating from Africa or anywhere else is an expensive business. Generally, it’s not the poor that emigrate but the middle and professional classes. For every migrant crossing the channel in a small boat, 40 other migrants arrive by plane.
A fascinating study of the hopes, dreams and concerns of young Africans has been produced by the Ichikowitz Family Foundation, a market research company based in South Africa. Its African Youth Survey 2022 provides one of the few comprehensive analyses of the key drivers of African migration. The study involved 4,500 face to face interviews with 18-24 years olds across 15 African countries.
The study found that 69% of young Africans wanted to migrate within the next five years with most wanting the move to be permanent. Since 2020 there has been an 11 percentage point drop in ‘Afro-optimism’, which the authors identify as one of the key drivers in the wish to emigrate.
The study identifies the main reasons for them wishing to emigrate as:
- Economic reasons 44%
- Education opportunities 41%
- Want to experience something new and different 25%
- Corruption in my country 18%
- Political reasons 12%
- Security reasons 9%
- Reuniting with family members living abroad 9%
- Lack of personal freedoms in my country 9%
- Religious reasons 7%
It may come as a surprise to John Simpson but neither climate change nor war got a look in (though “security reasons” might include conflict fears). Neither did discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The latest data on this I could find related to a U.K. Government study that showed 6% of asylum claims were based on discrimination in the claimants home country.
A further finding of the African Youth Survey was that young Africans see the consequence of infectious diseases being the biggest change in the last five years that has affected both their personal circumstances and that of their nation. Indeed, such was the severity of this, that what in 2019 had been quite an optimistic outlook had reversed and was now far more pessimistic.
The study found that the decline in Afro-optimism can likely be attributed to the global Covid response. Nearly half (45%) of African youth say that deaths from infectious diseases such as COVID-19, Ebola, tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS is the event that has had the largest impact on the continent in the past five years, an increase of 19% since the 2020 African Youth Survey. The researchers comment that this deterioration is likely caused by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The question is, where did the youth of Africa get the idea that Covid posed a threat to them? The data show that deaths from Covid in Africa, cumulatively since 2020 at 181 per million were 15 times lower than the rate of 2,799 per million across Europe.
This miniscule death rate came about despite the vaccination rate across Africa being about one third of the rate in Europe.
However, we only have to look at where these young Africans get their news to begin to understand why they were misled into believing that they faced an existential threat from Covid. Apparently, 69% of them believe that the BBC is a very, or somewhat trustworthy source of information. We’re back with John Simpson and his ilk and misleading information.
Exactly who benefits from migration is hard to determine. Some economists argue that we need more migrants and that they drive up GDP, though the recent sluggish growth during years of record migration make that hard to credit. Whether there are any winners is debatable. However, there’s definitely a loser, and that’s the country from which they migrate.
Covid in Africa was effectively a confected panic, confected by the BBC and other international broadcasters and by global institutions such as the WHO. It looks very much like it has led directly to yet another unforeseen consequence, that of the young, middle-class, well educated, motivated Africans wishing to leave their home countries in ever greater numbers.
John Simpson does a huge disservice to Africa by portraying it as a continent of war and apocalyptic climate change. I’d encourage you to read the study for yourselves; the views of the young people don’t reflect Simpson’s characterisation at all. Rather they come across as entrepreneurial with so much get up and go that increasingly they’ve got up and gone.
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Great photo well done. When I work from home, that is often myself with my cat at least for a few hours. We are mandated to be in the office 2 days a week (IT large bank). Many of us go 3 times or more occasionally.
There is absolutely no doubt from own experience that you are far more productive in an office. I don’t buy the WFH productivity bullshit. The only savings is travel- time to travel and related costs which are significant.
I would be in the office 4-5 days/wk (1 hr 15 min public transport commute), bar the very significant transport costs (often unpaid by firms). This is maybe the excuse used by the uncivil serpents.
Totally agree. I found the train journey good for reading or having a snooze but it would depend on how reliable your service is. I had to laugh when I read this morning that nationalising the rail companies was to focus on delivering for the passengers when there was me thinking the railways are run for the benefit of the unions overpaid and underworked members. I worked for London councils as a direct and indirect employee and both provided a season ticket purchase service so the annual cost was spread over the year.
I am way more productive at home for various reasons
Our firm ranges from 100% home to 100% office and all shades in between and I have noticed no pattern to how productive people are based on where they work
I too am more productive WFH because I’m not being constantly interrupted by others needing to access the single computer owned by the garage for which I do bookkeeping. I go in as they close on a Saturday, take a back up, bring it home, do my work and return a fresh back up before they open on Monday morning. Better than freezing to death, exhaust fumes, interruptions by mechanics who need to access data and those pesky customers!!!!
Indeed. Our office is too noisy for me but suits others.
Every business should choose what works best, but I do feel that insisting people go to offices is partly motivated by bored bosses, partly by a desire to fill expensive office space, and lazy managers and lazy thinking that says if you are at a desk in an office you are producing something. I would much rather see a focus on productivity from each individual, not on where they happen to do their work.
It depends on your role. My son is a software developer and he could concentrate on his work better at home rather than with colleagues interrupting him. Yes, he took time out to do the school run but he more than made up for that at other times of the day. Now he’s moved into management, obviously he has to go to the office more often
I manage people remotely and it seems to work – a manager should be looking at work produced, not presence at a desk. Of course if personal, in-person interactions are very important to a role then that is what should be done.
There needs to be a culture of ‘getting the job done’ for the employer to get the benefit of working from home. Some organisations have it – many do not.
I feel that “working from home” (i.e. doing some work in between all the distractions of home life) leads to lower productivity. As a self-employed freelance translator, I’m familiar with all the things that can tempt you away from your desk, but I also know that I have to be self-disciplined if I want to earn money. If I were on a fixed salary, that incentive would not be there.
I would normally deplore that loss of productivity in the public sector, but I’m actually quite cheered by the drop in productivity of the Net Zero crowd. The less they do to mess up life for the rest of us, the happier we’ll be.
I don’t know why this would surprise anyone, especially if you are a sad person like me who enjoys watching property programmes. During the COVID fiasco, they were full of London and other large town based civil servants who were moving out of the cities for a new life, because they were able to work from home now. These included local authority employees who, it seemed, were able to relocate hundreds of miles away from their employing council. None of these can want to return to their offices having spent so much to get away from them and they can’t have been isolated cases the TV production crews stumbled across.
Don’t judge others by your low standards. Some people enjoy the satisfaction of getting the job done free from distractions from colleagues just wanting to chat and endless unproductive meetings