Europe Fund to Tackle African Migration ‘Not Enough’

The $1.9bn (£1.2bn) European fund to tackle African migration is not sufficient, several African leaders have said after crisis talks with their European counterparts.

It was one of several measures European and African leaders agreed to reduce the flow of people into Europe.

The leaders said their aim was to “address the root causes of migration”.

The Europe-Africa meeting was planned after around 800 migrants died when their boat sank off Libya in April.

Senegal’s President Macky Sall, who currently heads the West African regional group Ecowas, told journalists on the sidelines of the summit that the money pledged was “not enough for the whole of Africa”.

Later, at the closing press conference, he said he was pleased with the trust fund, but said he would like to see it “more generously financed”.

Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou echoed the Senegalese president’s sentiments and added that “reform of global governance” was also needed, to make world trade fairer, Reuters news agency reports.

While Somalia’s Prime Minister Omar Abdirashidali Sharmatke told the BBC: “What Africa needs today is not charity, but investment.”

EU Council President Donald Tusk said the summit had agreed “a long list of very concrete actions to be implemented by the end of 2016”.

These include setting up a joint European and African team in Niger to tackle people smuggling and increasing the number of visas available to st

udents and researchers.

“We are under no illusions that we can improve the situation overnight but we are committed to giving people alternatives to risking their lives,” Mr Tusk said.

BBC

Posted by Editor on November 13, 2015. Filed under AFRICA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry