Nunu Kidane

Stories of African migrants in desperate conditions, usually on the Mediterranean Sea heading towards Europe, have become commonplace. It wasn’t always like that.

The way migration is discussed in this country one would think it is a problem of the US alone and not a global phenomenon about people’s movement, displacement and mistreatment across national boundaries.

For years, the US never considered Africa as a priority foreign policy agenda. The only context in which Africa came up in Washington was for preferential trade as in AGOA (Africa Growth and Opportunity Act) or in AIDS-funding from PEPFAR and of course humanitarian assistance.