More than one in three Africans have considered emigrating, researchers for Afrobarometer say.
Their continent-wide survey also found that young and educated people were more likely than others to want to leave their home country.
For those who do leave, it is not to Europe or North America that most go to, but another African country.
Finding jobs, escaping poverty and economic hardship were the biggest factors for wanting to emigrate in almost all of the 34 countries surveyed, accounting for 44% and 29% respectively.
Having family and loved ones abroad could influence that decision too.
Afrobarometer found that one in five depend at least “a little bit” on cash payments sent to them from another country. A quarter of those surveyed say someone in their family has lived in another country during the past three years.
The most popular destinations are not in Europe or North America but within Africa.
People who say they are considering emigrating mostly want to stay within their region (29%) or go elsewhere in Africa (7%)
People in southern African indicate the strongest preference for staying in the region (58%) while this feeling was weakest in North Africa (8%).
For those saying they want to leave the continent, Europe (27%) and North America (22%) were the next biggest destinations.
Around half of all young adults and highly educated citizens say they have considered leaving their country at least “a little bit”.
“Thoughts of moving abroad are about equally common among the relatively well-off and the poor”, according to Afrobarometer’s report.
More men (40%) than women (33%) say they are considering emigrating, and researchers found the desire to leave is stronger among people living in town and cities (44%) than rural areas (32%).
One of the survey’s most striking findings is that 37% – more than one in three Africans – have considered moving abroad. Just under half of those say this is something they have thought about “a lot”.
What barriers to travel do people face?
Freedom of movement across international borders within the local region should become a reality, 56% of survey respondents have told Afrobarometer.
But the same proportion say they find it difficult to cross borders to work or trade in another country.
But citizens of African countries still need a visa to travel to more than half of the continent’s 54 countries, protecting borders drawn up by European colonisers more than a century ago.
“Somebody like me, despite the size of our group, I need 38 visas to move around Africa,” complained Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote in an interview in 2016.
