In Douala, Cameroon, a funeral is being held for Bryan Achou*, whose body was pulled from the Mediterranean and returned to his family less than a year ago. Friends and relatives commiserate about his fate. “He’s a child from my neighbourhood. In less than two weeks, we lost two children: one was in the ocean between Turkey and Greece, the other was in Tunisia,” says one woman. “Really, before 2035, this country will have been emptied of its citizens,” another mourner says. This is a reference to the government’s new development paper Cameroon vision 2035, an outline of plans by the president, the 90-year-old autocrat Paul Biya, to turn his ailing, conflict-ridden country around. Judging by the resignation in the reactions to the remark, no one here believes it will succeed. There have been so many plans since Biya came to power in 1982. Those gathered here – business people, teachers, office workers – are not starving. Nor are they directly affected by the armed insurgency in western Cameroon. But they understand why young people want to leave, even if it means they risk death. Shortly after attending Achou’s funeral, Elizabeth BanyiTabi, a Cameroonian ZAM reporter, hears that a friend plans to leave the country via the American route: flying to Brazil and taking buses north from there, eventually reaching the notorious Darien Gap jungle crossing at the Panama border. From there she will have to walk through dense rainforest, risking attacks by poisonous snakes, spiders and criminal gangs. Survivors of the 80km trek from Colombia to Panama have described it as being “littered with bodies”. BanyiTabi’s friend knows this as another of her friends died there not long ago. “Yet, I’ll try,” she says. Njoya, a young Cameroonian who “made it” to Germany, almost drowned when his boat sank in the Mediterranean. Now, he is waiting for the result of an asylum application. “There is no hope in Cameroon,” he says. “I felt like a dead man and therefore I was no longer afraid of death. Why should I be afraid, when back home, people live just to die?” At Entebbe airport in Kampala, Uganda, a human rights worker waiting for a flight sees a line of veiled young women seated in the departure area. They look Ugandan. An immigration officer tells him the group is travelling to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to take up jobs as domestic workers. The activist is perturbed. Many reports say that this domestic worker route often ends up with young women trapped in modern slavery conditions, where they suffer long working hours, beatings, rape and even murder. How have these Ugandans missed the numerous radio and news reports? But Emmanuel Mutaizbwa, a ZAM reporter and friend of the activist, tells him he has come across many Ugandans who have heard the stories, but still go. Such as Joyce Kyambadde, 27, who says she was abused, beaten and raped, but nevertheless recently returned to the Gulf for a second domestic job. “You keep thinking that this time you’ll get a salary. There is barely any hope here [in Uganda],” she says. According to the Ugandan Bureau of Statistics, at least 41% of 18 to 30-year-olds – more than 9 million young people – are not engaged in any productive activity. Of those who are, a large proportion do not earn enough to pay even a modest rent. This stands in stark contrast to the children of the country’s extremely wealthy governing elite. In neighbouring Kenya, the story is similar. Patricia Wanja Kimani, who experienced months of abuse as a domestic worker in the Gulf, says: “It’s like telling a child not to put its hand in the fire; it will still put a hand in the fire.” Kimani has written a book about her experiences and now works for an NGO that aims to warn Kenyan women off leaving. Her colleague Faith Murunga, who works at an NGO with a similar mission, says that Kenya’s young people, 67% of whom are unemployed, have few alternatives. As in Uganda, a wealthy elite does little to tangibly improve the lot of the majority. “We try to engage with the government. We do what we can,” says Murunga. According to Kenyan government statistics, the bodies of 89 Kenyans were transported back from the Gulf between 2019 and 2021, with their employers reporting that they had died from cardiac arrest, suicide or had “died in their sleep”. Awareness campaigns by NGOs seem to have limited effect. Ngina Kirori, an investigative reporter at ZAM, recently approached 10 women and men at random on the streets of the capital, Nairobi, and asked if they were considering going to the Gulf, despite the horror stories. Four people said they would still go because “there is no hope here”; two hesitated, saying they were scared, but still considering it; only four were sufficiently deterred to say they wouldn’t go. Kimani has little faith that the government will address the situation. “Honestly, some government officials and civil servants are enablers. I was once threatened for going public about the abuse I suffered, and the person in question told me that a certain government official was on their side. Other women have also told me that they were given ‘orders from above’ to drop charges whenever they spoke out.” Kimani has now left Kenya to look for a future elsewhere. In Nigeria, ZAM reporter Theophilus Abbah stops and questions builders, plumbers and doctors in the capital, Abuja. Nine out of 10 say they want to “japa”, the Nigerian term for exiting the country at the “slightest opportunity”. They cite poor governance, the dismal state of health, education and other public services, a massive wealth gap, corruption and the oppression of media and civil society organisations. “The suffering is unbearable,” says one building contractor. A plumber says he just feels sad: “I would love to stay in Nigeria, if the country worked.” Most Nigerians try to leave with visas, but many also japa illegally, trekking north through the Sahel, hoping to reach the Mediterranean. According to NGOs who work with Nigerian migrants, the overwhelming majority never make it to the sea, getting stuck in the Sahel, ending up in exploitative labour projects, trafficking or other criminal rings, begging syndicates, brothels or even detention. The risks are well-known in Nigeria, just as the dangers of the Gulf are known in Kenya and Uganda, and Cameroonians know they can perish in the desert, sea or jungle. But people continue to leave nevertheless, says Grace Osakue, co-founder of Girls’ Power Initiative, which aims to create small business futures for former and would-be migrants in Nigeria. Osakue tells Abbah that her work is challenging, as “even many of those who already experienced the hardship, go again”. A 2021 report commissioned by the EU, found as many as half of Nigerians who returned were likely to try leaving again. In Zimbabwe, 95% of teachers would emigrate given the opportunity, according to a 2022 survey. The reason, says Obert Masaraure, president of the Amalgamated Rural Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe, which conducted the survey, is that teachers earn too little to take care of their families “even without food or school fees”. Speaking to ZAM reporter Brezh Malaba, Masaraure says he regards a colleague who made it to Saudi as “so lucky”. Zimbabwe boasts some of the world’s richest gold and diamond reserves, as well as lithium and other minerals. But the proceeds don’t reach state coffers; many reports have exposed how income is appropriated by individuals in the ruling Zanu-PF party. “The ruling elites are stripping the nation of all the wealth,” Masaraure says. “They even facilitate the looting of our natural resources by foreign multinational companies. We as teachers and other professionals are taxed heavily, but ministers get salary packages of around $500,000. We fund their private jets and luxuries.” When Zanu-PF won the election in August, which was widely criticised as fraudulent, Zimbabwe social media was full of messages addressing its neighbour South Africa after the country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, congratulated Emerson Mnangagwa on his presidential win. One read: “I congratulate you too; on the number of Zimbabweans coming illegally into your country soon.” Of the 3 to 5 million Zimbabweans who have left their country, as many as 2 million are estimated to have gone to South Africa. Their presence has been the target of political scapegoating by South African populist politicians, who have orchestrated hate campaigns, accusing Zimbabweans of criminality. Xenophobia has escalated into violent attacks, which Zimbabweans are well aware of, referring to it in online messages. “But we are still coming,” they say. In none of the five countries did the reporting team find people who thought that migration could be stopped. Cameroonian opposition activist Kah Walla says: “No one leaves their home if it is comfortable. If I believe for my survival I need to leave my country, I will use every means to do that.” BanyiTabi was urged by a man sitting next to her on a plane from Cameroon to Amsterdam “not to come back”. Most people felt sadness about the state of the countries of their birth, feeling powerless to change anything, or “build up their own country”, the mantra of many of those in the west who oppose migration. “Yes, our country must develop, it needs excellence,” says Dr Ejike Oji, a health sector expert in Nigeria. “So it is sad when our best minds are leaving. But [in the Nigerian system] you will be overlooked, even if you are the most excellent. Excellence is not rewarded here.” *Names with asterisks have been changed This transnational article was a co-publication with the non-profit platform ZAM which works with a network of African journalists. It was coordinated by ZAM’s investigations editor Evelyn Groenink