POLICY BRIEF Rethinking Africa’s Migration Governance for Climate Adaptation and Resilience Building Executive summary Climate-related hazards displaced 7.8 million people across Africa in 2024, continuing an upward trend driven by floods, storms, and droughts. 1 Extreme weather events are converging with conflicts, socioeconomic and structural inequalities to reshape human mobility patterns and deep­en vulnerability. While the industrialised nations have a historical responsibility to cut down greenhouse gas emis­sions, fund adaptation and pay for loss and damage in vul­nerable developing nations, the issue of responsibility for the people being forced to migrate because of extreme weather events remains out of discussion. Human mobility is a generic term covering all the different forms of move­ments of persons, such as internal and cross-border migra­tion, displacement, labour mobility, diaspora, planned relo­cation, and so forth. 2 In this brief, migration and mobility are used interchangeably. Migration, both internal and cross-border, is already a widespread coping and adaptation strategy in Africa, allowing households to diversify income, withstand climate shocks, and sustain livelihoods. 3 While majority of cli­mate-related migration is internal, due to continuous loss of agriculture-related livelihoods and growing economic pressures, some young Africans pursue international migra­tion, particularly to the Middle East countries and some­times to Europe and the United States. 4 Yet migration remains largely absent from climate adaptation policies, and climate risks are equally absent from migration poli­cies. This gap limits the potential of migration to strength­en resilience for climate vulnerable individuals and com­1  Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. Global Report on Internal Displacement. 2025. https://www.internal-displacement.org/global-report/grid2025/ 2  International Organization for Migration. Glossary on Migration(International Migration Law No. 34). 2019. https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/iml_34_glossary. pdf 3  Melde, S., Laczko, F.,& Gemenne, F.(Eds.). Making mobility work for adaptation to environmental changes: Results from the MECLEP global research(Report No. 42_17). In­ternational Organization for Migration. 2017. https://publications.iom.int/system/files/pdf/meclep_comparative_report.pdf 4  Nyberg Sørensen, Ninna. Trespassing Legal and Moral Boundaries: Ethiopian Domestic Workers Returned from the Middle East. In Governing Climate Mobility in Africa: Ex­plorations of Adaptation in Ethiopia and Ghana, edited by Ninna Nyberg Sørensen, Lily Lindegaard, and Neil Webster. Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press. 2025. https://doi. org/10.56687/9781529245417-014. Rethinking Africa’s Migration Governance for Climate Adaptation and Resilience Building 1