An atlas of movement

Six eras of African migration

Roughly 25 million Africans live in another African country. About 20.7 million live outside the continent. Many of the largest routes were cut by colonial recruiters a century ago.

Line thickness is a rough visual scale, not an exact volume. Route endpoints are indicative, they mark a region rather than a precise point of departure or arrival.

Sources

Caveats

Line thickness is a rough visual scale, not an exact volume. Route endpoints are indicative. The trans-Saharan, Red Sea and Indian Ocean figures are contested and are shown as ranges, not settled totals. Every figure on this page is tied to a source in the list on the left. Where a movement could not be given a sourced number, it is described without one.