Sub-Saharan African nations account for eight of the 10 fastest growing international migrant populations since 2010

The total number of emigrants worldwide from all sub-Saharan African countries combined grew by 31% between 2010 and 2017, outpacing the rate of increase from both the Asia-Pacific (15%) and Latin America-Caribbean (9%) regions. Some 25 million sub-Saharan migrants lived outside their countries of birth in 2017. The number of international migrants from sub-Saharan Africa between 2010 and 2017 has grown at a higher rate (31%) than in the 2000s (25%) and the 1990s (1%). And as international migration has increased, the breakdown of where sub-Saharan emigrants live has changed. In 1990, 75% of emigrants from the region lived in other sub-Saharan countries, a share that dropped to 68% by 2017. More substantially, the share of sub-Saharan migrants living in European Union countries, Norway and Switzerland rose from 11% in 1990 to 17% in 2017. Looking ahead, the number of international migrants from Africa as a whole is expected to increase in coming decades, due in part to the continent’s growing population.