Climate Change Induced Displacement

Climate-driven mobility is now one of the most significant challenges influencing migration patterns in Africa. Environmental shocks are displacing millions, and government systems are struggling to adapt.

According to The Guardian (2023), as of late 2023, more than 35 million Africans were internally displaced, a figure three times higher than the one a decade earlier. Disaster-related displacement rose from 1.1 million people in 2009 to 6.3 million in 2023, largely due to flooding, drought, storms, and slow-onset environmental changes, as reported by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC, 2024). Severe flooding in West and Central Africa alone displaced 3.5 million people that same year, as reported by Le Monde (2023). These statistics clearly reveal that climate change is no longer a distant threat across Africa but a lived reality that is uprooting families, eroding cultures, and transforming communities. Yet, national responses remain fragmented, underfunded, and often blind to the specific vulnerabilities of those most affected.

This policy brief draws on the “Climate Change-Induced Displacement in Africa” webinar hosted by Politics4Her Africa in May 2025 and a review of recent literature. It calls for urgent, inclusive, gender-responsive, and locally informed solutions to climate-induced migration and displacement. Speakers emphasized that displacement is a complex phenomenon, primarily caused by extreme weather events, environmental degradation, and socio-economic vulnerabilities, particularly in regions such as the Sahel, Horn of Africa, and Southern Africa.

Read the full brief here.