African governments should encourage and facilitate free movement of persons within the continent and provision of alternative legal channels of migration.
This was the message at the opening of a three-day international conference on migration and labour mobility which opened in Kigali, yesterday.
About 60 African regional economic communities are represented at the roundtable meeting on ‘Intra-Regional Migration and Labour Mobility within Africa.’
The meeting is a joint initiative of the African Union, the International Organisation for Migration, the Economic Commission for Africa, the Swiss government and Rwanda.
The first of its kind, the meeting aims at identifying challenges to free movement across borders for the continent’s integration.
“The challenges that still impede mobility include lack of transformative leadership whereby some countries have not yet ratified while others ratified but have never implemented the protocols signed,” said Dr Khabele Matlosa, director for political affairs in the African Union Commission.