and poverty.
She hosted Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, having also met Chad’s
head of state Idriss Deby two days earlier following a three-day whirlwind tour
of Mali, Niger and Ethiopia, the seat of the African Union.
As Germany, Europe’s
top destination for people fleeing war and misery, looks to chair the G20 next
year, she has pledged to step up efforts to help Africa and fight the causes of
the mass migration.
“I think we will need to take a vastly greater interest in
the destiny of Africa,” Merkel said at the start of her first major Africa trip
in five years. “The well-being of Africa is in Germany’s interest.”
Data backs
up that notion — while most asylum-seekers in Germany so far this year came
from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, Germany has also taken in over 13,000
Eritreans and thousands from other African countries. More than 10,000 came
from Nigeria, the oil-rich economic giant now grappling with a plunge in crude
prices and the Boko Haram jihadist insurgency that has claimed over 20,000
lives and spilled into Cameroon, Chad and Niger.
At a joint press conference
with Buhari, Merkel stressed support for the country’s battle against Boko
Haram, but also said that Germany would send back most Nigerians.
She said that
while most refugees from war zones like Syria were granted asylum, “the
approval rate for people from Nigeria is only eight percent. We presume that
most of them came for economic reasons.”
– ‘Life-threatening
journeys’ –
Merkel on her three-nation trip repeatedly warned Africans against
crossing dangerous deserts and seas for an uncertain future in Europe
“Often it’s the
young people who head for Europe with completely wrong ideas,” she said in
Addis Ababa. “They risk a life-threatening journey without knowing what’s
waiting for them or even whether they’ll be able to stay.”
The best way to stop
the mass flight would be to encourage greater stability in their countries of
origin, Merkel said, picking up on the theme of an EU-African Summit held in
Malta last year. The list of goals is ambitious — promoting democracy, fighting
terrorism and fostering prosperity through investment.
In Mali, Merkel said it
was crucial that “African countries don’t lose their brightest minds” needed to
develop their own countries. Merkel said that as chair of the Group of 20,
Berlin would next year host a conference on investment in Africa, especially in
the transport and energy sectors. In poverty-stricken Niger, a major migrant
transit country, she pledged 10 million euros in military aid and 17 million
euros to encourage human traffickers to switch livelihoods. The aid was
relatively modest compared to something on the scale of the “Marshall Plan”,
the US’s $12 billion post-WWII assistance to Europe, that President Mahamadou
Issoufou called for from the EU.
“Merkel’s trip was mainly a message sent to
European and German audiences that said, ‘we are actively doing something’,” to
reduce migrant flows, said Annette Weber of the German Institute of
International and Security Affairs.
With huge youth unemployment, repression
and conflict in many states pushing people to leave home, she said, the
migratory pressures were unlikely to stop soon.
– ‘Accommodation
centres’ –
Merkel — facing a backlash at home over last year’s huge migrant
influx — is also working on more short-term solutions.
Berlin has proposed EU
deals with North African countries modelled on the pact the bloc this year
struck with Turkey, the main transit country for Middle Eastern migrants.
Under
that controversial deal, the EU pledged billions in aid and eased visa access
in return for Turkey taking back irregular migrants stranded on Greek islands
and fighting traffickers.
The EU Commission has expressed skepticism about
trying to apply the costly and uncertain approach in Africa. Other approaches
have also met with mixed success. Germany this year moved to declare Algeria,
Morocco and Tunisia as safe countries of origin, to raise the bar for asylum
requests.
But the bill has been stuck in the upper house for months over human
rights concerns in those Maghreb nations.
On Thursday, German Interior Minister
Thomas de Maiziere suggested that migrants rescued at sea should be taken to
“accommodation facilities” in north Africa.
“Their need for protection would be
verified and we would put into place a resettlement to Europe with generous
quotas, fairly divided between the European countries,” he told reporters in
Luxembourg. “The others have to go back to their home countries.Link
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