The Future of Immigration Policy in Europe & Africa
The New Reality of Labor Migration
In July 2025, Ghana and Serbia announced a groundbreaking labor deal where Serbia will provide 100,000 work permits for Ghanaians. Here’s a video below:
Many immigration restrictionists expressed anger over this on social media.
Also, many Africans and African diasporians complained that African countries should be doing more to keep their people in their countries.
Frankly, if these two sides are upset now, they'll be more upset over time. Deals like this, signal a demographic, mathematical reality that no amount of wishful thinking can change.
This isn't an isolated case—it's part of a broader transformation reshaping European immigration policy.
Germany has signed agreements with Nigeria, Kenya, Morocco, Tunisia, and Ghana to streamline migration and recruit workers in the service sector.
Italy has signed labor agreements with Tunisia, while France imports tens of thousands of seasonal workers from Morocco.
In 2023, Spain signed seasonal agricultural labor deals with Senegal, modeled after its 2001 deal with Morocco. Currently, Ethiopia is trying to promote “emigration as an export” to send Ethiopian nurses to Norway, while Tanzania is negotiating migration deals with eight different countries as of 2025.
The Driving Forces: Two Sides of the Same Coin
These aren't policy preferences—they're demographic necessities. Europe's aging crisis and Africa's youth explosion create complementary pressures that no political rhetoric can resolve.
Europe's Demographic Crisis
Right now, parts of Europe are in Stage 4 or Stage 5 of the demographic transition. Stage 4 is characterized by low birth & death rates, where births exceed deaths, but the total fertility rate is below replacement rate. Stage 5 is when deaths exceed births.
Demographics is brutally predictable. We know exactly how many ethnic Greeks, Spaniards, or Italians will be 50 years old in 2045 because they're currently 30 years old in 2025.
European women average 1.4 children—well below the 2.1 replacement rate needed to maintain population stability. Not a single European country achieves replacement-level fertility.
Serbia, France, Ireland, and Denmark have stabilized their birthrates to 1.5-1.6. Italy, Spain, and Finland have their birthrates as low as 1.2-1.3. The United States has a TFR of 1.6 kids per woman, which matches France and beats 80% of European countries. Look at the TFR rate below:
The Median ages tell the story starkly:
In most European countries, the median age is early to mid 40s.
Many countries have tried family-friendly, pro-natalist spending programs, but no country in the developed world has spent their way back to above replacement rate fertility. For a perfect example, let’s look at a European country that has tried harder than any other: Hungary.
A Deep Dive into Victor Orban
Victor Orban has tried since 2010, a string of pro-natalist policies to reverse population decline without relying on immigration.
2010 - Orban introduced tax incentives for families with children. Orban allowed parents to deduct a fix amount per child from their taxable income, reducing their total tax owed. The more children you had, the larger the deduction. The deduction increases for 3+ kids.
2015 - Family Housing Allowance Program which gave large cash grants and interest free loans for families buying homes based on their number of children.
2019 - Lifetime income tax exemption for Hungarian women with 4+ kids. Subsidized car purchases for large families, and a baby loan program of ~$30K in interest free loans for women under 40 having their first kid. Hungarian women will get partial loan forgiveness if more babies are born. Also subsidies for daycare and grandparents are paid for childcare leave.
2020-2022: Orban gave fathers longer paternity leave, full exemption from personal income tax for Hungarian workers under 25 to support early marriage and childbearing & increased maternity support in rural areas.
After 15 years of policy, we can see the effects below:
In total, Hungary’s family spending policies made Hungary among the top 5 OECD countries in family spending. Equivalent to 6% of Hungary’s GDP is spent on family policies in direct outlays, subsidized loans, and forgone tax revenues… After this massive investment, Hungary still has a lower TFR than the United States which doesn’t pursue any of these policies.
In short, after over a decade of intense spending and social engineering, Hungary's fertility still remains well below replacement. The demographic reality hasn’t changed—just the debt levels.
The harsh reality: No developed country has successfully spent its way back to replacement-level fertility. Not Hungary, not Sweden, not Norway, and not Denmark which are all below replacement & below the United States, despite family friendly policies.
Not Just low TFR, also low Demographic Momentum
Even if Europe were to miraculously raise fertility rates to the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman tomorrow, it wouldn’t be enough to reverse population decline. Why? Because the problem isn’t just low birth rates—it’s also demographic momentum.
Decades of below-replacement fertility have already shrunk the number of European women of childbearing age, meaning that even if each woman has more children, the total number of births will remain low for decades. The age structure is already too old-heavy. This makes demographic recovery extremely difficult—even with aggressive family policies. See Serbia’s demographic pyramid below:
To understand the severity, we can look at two key indicators: the crude birth rate (CBR) and crude death rate (CDR), which measure births and deaths per 1,000 people. A positive gap means a growing population; a negative gap means decline.
For a country like Norway, they have 9 births per 1K people but 8 deaths per 1K people, giving them a net of 1 birth per 1K people.
In Belgium, Denmark, and United Kingdom, birth and death rates are roughly equal.
For Netherlands, Serbia, Austria, Slovenia, Czechia, Finland, Poland, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Russia, and others the death rate exceeds the birth rate, signaling natural population decline.
In short, Europe’s demographic decline is already baked in. Fertility alone can’t reverse it quickly. There isn’t enough European women of child bearing age to grow the European population. Unless there’s some massive cultural shift, Europe has used up their demographic dividend.
What is the Demographic Dividend?
Have you ever heard the phrase “growing old before getting rich?”. That phrase is implicitly referring to the demographic dividend.
The demographic dividend refers to the accelerated economic growth that can occur when a country experiences a bulge in its working age population (especially of 20-40 year olds) have jobs, take on debt, and spend money.
In this phase, the country reaches a “sweet spot” where a huge proportion of the population is in the productive age with very little old age dependence since there isn’t many children and there aren’t many old people. In Europe, this “sweet spot” occurred roughly from the 1960s to 2000s, peaking as post-war baby boomers left the workforce.
That age is over, its an era of borrowed time because when those working age people (boomers) start retiring, you don’t have enough youth to replace them.
Young People for the Ponzi Scheme
Developed countries have old age retirement systems. These systems were made when the populations were young and had fast population growth. Back then, there was a seemingly never-ending supply of young workers who had taxable incomes to pay for old age retirement who were a relatively low proportion of the population. These retirement systems are unsustainable as the working population drops and the retiree population increases.
The first retirement system was made in Germany during the age of Otto Von Bismarck in 1889. He set the retirement age of 65 because very few people lived that long back then. So the state barely paid for the retirees since they usually died before benefits were doled out. See graph below:
When Bismarck made the social security system at age 70, he made it during a time when German women on average lived up to age 45 and German men lived up to age 40.
Today's equivalent in America would require a retirement age over 100 years old… In other words, most people wouldn’t receive the benefits.
Across the developed world, all of their old age retirement schemes are based off pay-as-you-go systems. We now live in an age where instead of people dying before reaching retirement. We now live in an age where advanced countries have two decades of retirement funded by shrinking workforces.
In order for European countries to fund two decades of retirement for pensioners, the governments would need to borrow more, cut spending in other areas, raise taxes, and increase the retirement age.
All of these are already happening in Europe. Even retirement age increases.
In 2025, Denmark just pushed the retirement age to 70 years old for people who are 55 or younger. For Italy, Belgium, Greece, Spain, and Netherlands it is or will be 67. For UK the current pension age is 66, but it will increase to 67 for people who are currently between the ages of 21 to 65. It will also increase to 68 for anyone under the age of 21.
In France in 2023, Macron, used the 49-3 clause to force through a law raising the retirement age from 62 to 64. Unsurprisingly, it sparked riots and protests in France.
Even with these solutions which are politically difficult, none of these square the circle of the golden metric of demographics — the age dependency ratio, which is the number of people aged 65+ divided by the number of people of working age between 20-64.
In Portugal, Italy, Finland, Greece, and Germany, for every 10 people working, they are supporting almost 4 retirees (~40% old-age dependency ratio).
In Denmark, Czechia, and Sweden, 10 workers support 3 retirees (~30% old-age dependency ratio).
By 2050, the ratios will be over 50%. That’s why European countries are constantly taking in migrants. It’s just math. You need a growing population of workers to support old people.
Italy, Poland, Romania, Greece, Hungary and other European countries have had decreasing populations for some time now. Look at the line graph on the right below to see the decreases from peaks.
In short: Europe is exiting the demographic dividend and entering an era of population aging, labor shortages, and rising old-age dependency. The boom was real—but now comes the bust.
The African Side
This is where African countries come in. They are filling in the labor shortages. They are unfortunately doing the “3D” jobs, which are dangerous, demeaning, and dirty. They work as farmers, caregivers, waste collectors, warehouse workers, and bus drivers. They are doing jobs that Europeans don’t want to do. Here’s an example of a Ghanaian bus driver, who left his wife and kids to become a bus driver in Lithuania. He sleeps 3 hours a day, while working hard to make a living.
Not all Africans are doing low-skill work, some are IT professionals or nurses.
Why are Africans migrating? Why are African countries promoting “labor exports”? In short, these countries have too many people, but not enough jobs. As of 2025, for every 15M Sub-Saharan Africans that enter the labor market, there’s only 3M formal jobs are created….
Most of Sub-Saharan Africa remains in Stage 2 of the demographic transition — death rates have plummeted thanks to modern medicine and aid, but birth rates remain high. This creates rapid population growth and extremely young age structures.
Even today, South Sudan, which has the worst infant mortality rate on earth of 73 deaths per 1K infants, is still safer to live in than Britain in the 1850s which had 100 years of industrialization by that point. In Victorian Britain, infant mortality was 150 deaths per 1K births. Thanks to NGOs, missionaries, and foreign aid, places in South Sudan have access to antibiotics, vaccines, malaria prevention, and oral rehydration therapy.
Even if these technologies aren’t universally accessible in South Sudan, their partial penetration into rural clinics and NGO facilities make a massive difference compared to Victorian Britain, where none of these existed.
Youth unemployment and underemployment is a big issue in African countries (South Africa: 60%, Botswana: 46%, Tunisia: 39%, Gabon: 36%, Rwanda: 18%, Mozambique: 12%, and frankly South Africa has much better data collection than Mozambique). Firms can’t scale due to weak capital markets, inhibiting the growth of big companies and preventing more hiring.
Due to poorly designed regulations, firms prefer staying informal, which prevents scale. There’s many other factors I could mention which inhibit business activity in African countries, but that’s for another day.
When looking at average income per person in US dollars, many of these countries are either poorer than they were 10 years ago (see Nigeria, South Africa, or Angola below).
Or, even if the country is growing, their growth isn’t fast enough.
Rwanda’s income per person went from $720 USD to $1040 over 10 years. Impressive growth, but the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) is still 3.7%. If Rwanda continues to grow that rate, Rwanda will be at $2170 by 2045, which is still less than where Ghana is at 2024. For my country Ghana, the CAGR has been 2.4%.
(Note: Some may argue to use PPP instead of market exchange rates, but the core story remains—growth needs to be higher in Africa. And since African countries import food, fuel, and fertilizer in USD and borrow in USD, using market exchange rates still provides a meaningful measure…)
While growth is happening in many African countries, 2% to 4% growth rates in dollar terms are not fast enough to reduce their youth unemployment issues.
People like my cousin in Ghana finished university, but he can’t find a job. So he’s moving to Canada since he found a job there as a software engineer. Nigeria has coined “Japa”—meaning "leave"—reflecting this exodus..
Africa's Unique Position
Other countries in Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America are filling in these gaps in Europe as well, but the difference is those other regions are aging rapidly. Mexico now has a lower TFR than the United States. The median Chinese is now older than the median American. Even Vietnam, Tunisia, Brazil, Turkey, and Colombia have below-replacement birth rates.
Africa stands alone with sustained high fertility, above-replacement birth rates, and massive young populations seeking opportunity.
In countries like Central African Republic, Niger, and Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the median age of an African isn’t even 16 years old as of 2025.
In more functional African countries like Kenya, Ghana, or Botswana, these countries are starting their demographic dividend and the median age is slightly over 20 years old.
In African countries like South Africa, Cape Verde, Morocco, and Egypt the median age is closer to the late 20s.
African countries will continue to have a large pool of labor that they cannot absorb for a very long time. As a result, Africans will leave their countries. The question is will their trek be sponsored or unsponsored?
The Migration Issue
Although most Africans flee to other African countries, it is still noticeable and significant when Africans flee to Europe.
There’s also a series of unresolved conflicts in many African countries:
Jihadist Insurgencies:
Civil Wars:
Rebel Movements:
Due to sluggish economies and conflicts, many Africans trek the dangerous journey through the Red Sea, Sahara Desert, the Atlantic Ocean, or the Mediterranean without the required paperwork or having secured employment beforehand.
Crossing “the Mediterranean Route” into Italy is one of the deadliest migrant crossing routes in the world, but also increasingly the only option for migrants hoping to seek a better life. There are many shipwrecks of migrants dying on the route to Italy.
Migration is a reality. It is happening, it won’t stop, and as long as African countries cannot produce enough jobs while having growing numbers of unemployed people, some Africans will move to Europe.
Since migration is a reality, the question is, how can migration from Africa to Europe be managed so it can benefit everyone? (Everyone meaning: The People who migrate, The country of origin, and The host country).
What are the Implications?
Because Europe is aging while Africa is young, there are jobs Europeans avoid that many Africans are eager to take. Spain’s farming program with Senegal allows Spain to curb illegal migration while plugging labor shortages in its farming sector.
Unfortunately, African migration will undoubtedly increase nativist politics in Europe.
The previous wave of nativism in Europe was caused by the issues in Syria and other developing countries.
In Syria, due to Assad using chemical weapons, bombing civilians, and besieging cities against his own population during the Syrian Civil war, DAESH/ISIS slaughtering people, Hezbollah murdering Sunni Syrians, and more, over 6M Syrians fled the country seeking refuge in Turkey, the Middle East, and Europe. The Syrian migrant crisis was the world’s largest refugee crisis since the partition of India in 1947. 1.3M Syrians sought refuge in Europe in 2015 alone, the largest refugee wave to the continent in a single year since WWII.
Europe’s eagerness to end refugee protections for Syrians was clear: after Ahmed Al-Sharaa took power from Assad, many countries quickly suspended asylum applications or began reviewing whether Syrians could be sent home.
If 1M Syrians and other migrants from Libya, Uganda, and more, triggered nativist backlash, expect intensified nativist politics as African migration increases, whether legal or illegal.
Is Immigration an Actual Solution?
Immigration is really a “bandage solution” to the population crisis. But it’s the easiest tool European governments have, even though there will be backlash and an even larger rise in nativist politics.
A gradient between two poles usually happens with immigration to Europe:
The immigrant population can assimilate into the host country’s culture, and then the immigrant fertility converges with the host country over time. We see this with African and Maghrebi data in France (even though France doesn’t officially track race statistics).
Or, the immigrant population doesn’t assimilate, forms an enclave, and becomes relatively unproductive. The migrant group may have higher fertility, but it creates fertile ground for ethnic and cultural conflict even in Scandinavia.
The TLDR
To be blunt, Europe needs immigrants so their pensioners can retire for nearly two decades. Europe needs more workers, and increasingly those numbers are coming from the African continent. As long as African countries can’t grow their economy fast enough for their rising, working-age population, expect more African-European labor deals like the Serbia-Ghana one, expect more migration challenges, and expect more nativist politics in Europe.
The other lever is productivity growth, which has stagnated in Europe compared to the United States. Maybe AI and robots are the solutions to demographic challenges? We should all be watching China to see if they can solve their demographic issues with productivity enhancements.
I agree. I think Biden's staff allowed 10M migrants to come on purpose to plug in labor shortages and help the economy. I think they were completely shocked with the backlash people had. They also thought they could blame Trump for why Republicans blocked Biden's border bill.
Thanks for touching on this highly emotional topic. An obvious point of agreement between nativists and immigrants (at least those that are already in) should be to provide full labour rights and protections to workers, be they legal or not. Would take off downward pressure on wages, and facilitate success of migrants and their kids in their new country. But that would be counter the interests of business that have come to rely on near-slave labour to exist or keep profits high. So there is definitely a dimension of business vs the people, or rather business vs. the peoples, to the immigration issue. MAGAs and other nativist turn around this issue, with anti-immigrant and anti-establishment rage mixing together, but never ever focus on this obvious solution - tribal instincts are easily conned to scapegoat the wrong target.