The images of thousands of women, men and children who risk their lives every day crossing land and seas to arrive in Europe are unsustainable.

If Europe cannot, according to the famous formula, “welcome all the misery of the world”, it can’t either simply ignore this spectacle and close its borders without participating in developing realistic and constructive solutions.

Africa is, at the same time, a rich continent which has two major assets to get by: its dynamism and the youth of its peoples (nearly 380 million people entering the labor market by 2030) and the wealth of its lands (65% of the world’s available land reserves).
Therefore, solutions exist. And it wouldn’t take much to reverse the trend and that aspirants to emigration consider it playable, even advantageous, to stay home and not to emigrate anymore. So what to do, and what are these solutions?

One of the keys to the problem is to revitalize, restructure and develop local agricultural sectors that are now bloodless but whose potential is extraordinary. Here, the idea is to help young people in Africa who wish to settle on their land and get a higher living standard than they would have had if they had tried the risky adventure of emigration.

This approach involves a rethinking and reform of support mechanisms for African states to their own agriculture. It implies, for European States, to work hand in hand with them to create sustainable infrastructures (roads, schools, health centers), to the implementation of frameworks (legal and tax) more reassuring for the investors and, especially in the energy supply and loan at a cheaper market (fundamentals in Africa have never been so good, the prices of agricultural commodities are at their highest and will certainly remain so; labor is abundant, but expensive energy and the cost of money are today barriers to take-off from the mainland).

But this requires, above all, companies that understand the issue and promote, agricultural basins and beyond, a small job-creating entrepreneurship, doing their part to food crop and allowing those who wish to stay in their countries.
The concrete idea that launches today the association “Patrons Sans Frontières ” is to create a new structure that will bring together all stakeholders: governments, embassies, European companies, as well as African companies operating in Africa in the key sectors.

This structure will receive, study and process applications for return home. It will ensure, though its member companies, and within existing integrated sectors, a minimum number of jobs to these returnees. It will encourage, particularly in cotton growing areas, the creation of modernized small farms of a few hectares of which a portion will be imperatively reserved for returnees.
Because it takes one to two years to become a professional and independent farmer, and the centers of “catch-up training” are only profitable indirectly and in a medium term, the companies participating in the project will seek the support of financial development organizations (AFD, EIB, BPI …) as well as agencies of the European Union and African states.

But the bulk of the effort will rest on the shoulders of entrepreneurs themselves who will have to admit that the political powers reached, facing the drama of mass emigration, the limits of their abilities and it is now up to them to take over and assume their historic responsibility vis-à-vis future generations.

The balance will be win / win. Indeed, African countries will begin to slow down the rural exodus to limit overcrowding of their cities and provide their income, education, quality of life, access to health, enabling them to look to the future without having to emigrate.

The European countries will begin to see a reverse migration wave.

And it will also be a win for the world that, if nothing changes and if are not highlighted the latest available lands are African lands, may live in twenty years, chronic famine state.

France, for its history and its values, must lead the way. France, whose president, Emmanuel Macron, was in Senegal in February and Burkina, posed in new terms the question of cooperation between the two continents can get the ball rolling.
Why not a COP on Africa and the issue of migrants? Why not, in Paris, a general assembly of the new migrations, with the participation of political, African and European entrepreneurs, funders and government agencies (FOII, French Office of Immigration and the integration), would open the major project of the development of what will be tomorrow, the future breadbasket of the world?

For States to create the framework: the entrepreneurs will do the rest! They define the terms of a new intercontinental social contract uniting the forces of the two continents: entrepreneurs will commit. They help us debunk the myth that the famous “African Risk” whose pounding has the effect, for decades, to climb to prohibitive interest rates borrowed from African countries due to alleged “instability” and we, the entrepreneurs will work to create this small local entrepreneurship that is lacking so cruelly to Africa.

It’s like this and like this only that the double evil of the great migration and poverty can be processed at the root.

Abbas Jaber, president of the association Patrons Without Borders.
Article published ins Le Figaro on 06/04/2018