The deaths of African migrants in the Mediterranean, the torture in Libya, the thirst in the Sahara—these are not just the fault of the outside world. They are also symptoms of our own broken systems. Across Africa, leaving home has become more sensible than staying to fight. Young people choose the risk of drowning over the certainty of poverty, corruption, and violence. Human rights are crushed. Ethnic hatred burns. Institutions that should protect people instead destroy them.
So we are not only victims. We are also participants in our own crisis.
Yes, Western countries use immigration for their own political ends. They blame migrants for their problems. But we cannot use their prejudice as an excuse for our own failures. For too long, we have looked outward—for aid, for intervention, for a way out—instead of fixing what is broken at home.
The West sells its image well. Through Hollywood films, pop music, and prestigious universities, it paints itself as a land of endless opportunity, fairness, and freedom. Young Africans grow up watching these images and believing that the streets are paved with gold. But when they arrive, the reality is brutally different. They are met with suspicion, lower wages, cramped housing, and the quiet hum of everyday racism. They are overqualified for the jobs they are given, underpaid for the work they do, and often made to feel like unwelcome guests rather than equal human beings. The West invites them with one hand and pushes them away with the other. This hypocrisy is not accidental—it is a deliberate mask. And too many of us have fallen for it, again and again.
This is a generational failure. And the heaviest blame falls on those who left long ago.
Think about it. For decades, Ethiopians, Ghanaians, Nigerians, and others have migrated to Europe and America. Many succeeded. They built houses, earned degrees, sent remittances, and gained status. But what did they do for their home countries? Too little. They enjoyed the wealth and learning they gained abroad, but they rarely used it to push for real change back home.
As Frantz Fanon warned, many long-term immigrants wear their success like a mask. They show the world their money and education, but they hide the ugly face of racism they face every day. They know what it means to be denied opportunities because of their skin. They know the humiliation of being treated as second-class citizens. Yet they did not come together to demand better governance in their homelands. They adapted. They survived. They forgot.
Worse, some sent their children back home to be raised—while they stayed in the West. That tore families apart and created a new generation that feels foreign in both places. So the older generation did not just fail to fix the country. They also failed to raise a generation with a strong sense of belonging and duty to that country.
But the new generation is not blameless either.
Today's young migrants are also running. Not because they hate their homeland, but because they see no future there. That takes courage. But it also takes courage to stay and fight—and too few choose that. Instead, they pour their life savings into the hands of smugglers. They risk death for a dream.
And that dream is often a lie. The West is not a land of milk and honey. It is a place of low-paying jobs, cold loneliness, and quiet racism. Many young migrants discover this only after they arrive. They traded one kind of suffering for another. The hopelessness they felt at home was real. But the image of the West as paradise was also a myth. Both things are true—and both have kept us from fixing our own house.
Yet we must also give credit where it is due.
Not every immigrant turned away. Many have given enormously to their home countries—sometimes at great personal cost. They have built schools and clinics. They have funded scholarships for poor children. They have invested in local businesses and created jobs. They have sent remittances that keep millions of families alive. They have used their voices abroad to campaign for human rights and democracy. They have organised diaspora networks to pressure corrupt governments. Some have even returned home permanently to teach, mentor, and serve.
We owe these people our deepest gratitude. They are the exceptions who proved that distance does not have to mean detachment. They kept their hearts at home even while their feet walked foreign soil. They refused to let exile become indifference. Their example shows us that it is possible to be both a citizen of the world and a patriot of your birthplace.
But they were too few. And they worked mostly alone. The collective effort—the organised, sustained push for real political change—never materialised. That is the failure we must all own, together.
And we must be honest: many have chosen not to take part.
Too many immigrants, both old and new, have turned their backs entirely. They have convinced themselves that their homeland is beyond saving. They have buried their memories, changed their accents, and raised their children to look only forward—never back. They have chosen comfort over conscience. They have chosen silence over solidarity. They have watched from afar as their countries burned, and they did nothing.
This is not said to shame, but to wake us up. If we are honest, we know this is true. We all know someone who has forgotten where they came from. We all know someone who has stopped caring. And we have all, at some point, felt the temptation to do the same.
But we cannot afford that luxury any longer. The cost is too high. The suffering is too great.
We must fix this—and continue the fight even while we are abroad.
Being away from home does not mean being free of duty. In fact, being abroad gives us a unique advantage. We have access to education, platforms, and networks that our fellow citizens at home often lack. We have the freedom to speak without fear of arrest. We have the ear of the international community. We have resources that can be channelled into real change.
So we must use these gifts. We must organise. We must fund opposition movements, support independent media, and back civil society groups. We must lobby foreign governments to stop propping up dictators. We must write, teach, and speak out. We must mentor young people back home. We must invest in local enterprises. We must return—even if only temporarily—to share our skills and knowledge.
The fight does not stop at the border. It continues wherever we are.
Every letter written, every donation made, every protest attended, every conversation started—it all matters. It all adds up.
We need to break this cycle—together.
The courage that migrants show on dangerous journeys is extraordinary. They risk everything for a chance at dignity. Now imagine if that same courage were applied to demanding transparency, justice, and reform at home. Imagine if the money spent on smugglers were invested in local businesses and schools. Imagine if the energy spent on escape were spent on organising, protesting, and voting.
An Ethiopian does not leave because foreign humiliation is easier than local suffering. They leave because our political culture has never taught them to be active citizens. We are raised to obey, not to question. We pay taxes, but we never ask where the money goes. We fear authority instead of challenging it. As Haddis Alemayehu wrote: “A farmer may go without food, but he never fails to pay what he owes.” That is not pride—it is a tragedy. It shows a culture that values silence over rights.
A people who do not know their rights cannot defend them. When life becomes unbearable, they do not organise. They give up. They withdraw. They flee. But emigration is not a real solution. The real question is: how do we change the conditions that push people away?
The answer starts with all of us—old and new, at home and abroad.
Teachers, writers, elders, and young professionals must step up. They must teach civic awareness. They must show that rights and responsibilities go together. When the right to life is ignored and people accept it without fighting, the problem is not just political—it is cultural. Ignorance keeps dictators in power just as much as bullets do.
Young Ethiopians do not leave because they reject their country. They leave because a society that does not teach citizenship leaves them with only three choices: submit, break, or run.
The long-term fix is not just about money or elections. It is about raising citizens who know their rights—and are ready to defend them. If immigrants of all ages, from all backgrounds, commit to this work, they will not only educate the next generation. They will help rebuild the nation itself.
The drain of our people can stop. But only if we finally decide—together—that we are tired of running.
It is not too late. For those who have already given so much, we honour you. For those who have chosen silence, we invite you back. For those who are just leaving, we ask you to look back—and to promise that you will not forget.
Let us fix our country. Not from a distance, but with our full hearts. Not as an afterthought, but as our life's work. And let us do it together—wherever we are, whoever we are, and however long it takes.
That is the only way forward. That is the only way home.
- At least 8,938 people died on migration routes worldwide in 2024, with 2,452 deaths documented in the Mediterranean — the deadliest year on record. iom.int IOM — Missing Migrants Project, March 2025
- Migrants in Libya subjected to systematic killings, torture, sexual violence and trafficking within a “business-as-usual” model of impunity. ohchr.org UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) & UNSMIL, February 2026
- More than 3,400 migrants died or disappeared across the Middle East and North Africa in 2024, including over 900 along desert land routes. mena.iom.int IOM — MENA Missing Migrants Report, May 2025
- Immigrants entering OECD labour markets earn about 34% less than comparable native-born workers, and are widely over-qualified for the jobs they hold. oecd.org OECD — International Migration Outlook 2025
- Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (Peau noire, masques blancs, 1952) — on colonialism, racial consciousness and the masks worn by the colonised. britannica.com Encyclopædia Britannica
- Smugglers profit from migrants' desire to move — charging extortionate fees and exposing them to violence, exploitation and death along the routes. unodc.org UNODC — Global Study on Smuggling of Migrants, 2018
- Remittances to Sub-Saharan Africa reached about US$54 billion in 2023, a vital source of external finance for millions of families. worldbank.org (PDF) World Bank — Migration and Development Brief 40, June 2024
- Alemu Alene Kebede, “A Short Political Biography of Kibur Ato Haddis Alemayehu” — peer-reviewed biography of the novelist and diplomat (1910–2003). academicjournals.org African Journal of History and Culture, 7(1), 2015 — author reference; quotation not located in this source, pending verification