Public Goods and Free Movement of Refugees in Africa

In recent years, the campaign for regional integration and development has dominated debates and discourses in various African contexts. As a result, the push for the free movement of Africans within Africa has gained traction, culminating in establishment of the African Union Protocol on Free Movement in 2018. This development follows on the heels of previous measures implemented across African subregions to facilitate free movement of people, including the 1979 Economic Community of West African States free movement protocol in West Africa, the East African 2010 common market and free movement protocol, and the 2005 Southern African Development Community free movement protocol in Southern Africa. It could then be said that free migration for Africans has been identified by the various states as public goods, which has the potential to generate and consolidate the government’s efforts towards providing public goods. Moving a bit away from this, post-colonial Africa has been ravaged by violence and conflicts, which has led to a huge humanitarian crisis with a high number of displaced persons and refugees on the continent. This phenomenon has received scholarly and policy attention, ranging from advocacy for refugees’ rights to formulating and implementing policies that would ensure that adequate attention is given to refugees on the continent. However, because this issue requires a multi-stakeholder approach, it comes with a setback. This is because the actors involved have different dispositions to the various migration patterns. Taking this further, this chapter delves into the growing concern for refugees in Africa through the prism of the theory of public goods. Noting that the refugee crisis tends to have a spillover effect, which could quickly give it a regional face, it is important for African states to see this as a crisis that requires a collective approach to tackling it due to its short and long-term effects.