Within Africa’s continental limits, some authorities believe that Africa is the continent with the most mobile population in the world today. That is, a higher proportion of its population lives at some distance from its place of birth or follows a pattern of seasonal or semiannual migration than do populations on any other continent. Whether this estimate is measurably the case is uncertain. According to the author, no one has made a careful quantitative comparison, and demographic data from Africa are so scarce and inaccurate that it would be hard to place much faith in comparative data, even if they were assembled. In any event, Africans in the late twentieth century are among the most mobile people in the world.
