The British magazine, The Economist , said that about 205,000 Lebanese live in West African countries, and although it is difficult to know the number of people who have moved there in recent years since the start of the economic crisis in Lebanon in 2019, several indicators confirm that their number is large. Already.
A pilot of Lebanese origins living in Togo told the magazine that his flights are teeming with Lebanese heading to the western countries of the continent. The Lebanese embassy in Nigeria also confirmed a noticeable increase in the movement of Lebanese newly arrived in this African country.
Gita Hourani, director of the Center for the Study of Migration at Notre Dame University in Lebanon, says her office has received countless calls from Lebanese seeking advice on how to track down relatives abroad, including in Africa.
The Economist indicated that many Lebanese came in the 19th century to the west of the brown continent and disembarked (some say by mistake) from ships that were heading towards the United States, and the new arrivals proved remarkable success, first in their work as commercial brokers between the local population and the colonial authorities, and then in what After some of them became merchants of goods and entrepreneurs.
Some assert, for example, that the Lebanese control many companies in Côte d’Ivoire specialized in coffee and cocoa exports.
Conflict, famine and successive crises over a century have scattered the Lebanese in all parts of the world, but some of them have found in recent days that obtaining visas to destinations in West Africa is much easier than obtaining visas to America or European countries.
Jobs and schools
It is also easy – the magazine adds – to get jobs in these African countries, as confirmed by Karim Makki, a Senegalese of Lebanese origin, who says that “in these countries there is always someone who knows another person who has a path to reach a job opportunity.”
Moreover, skilled workers are often well paid in these countries, which also host Lebanese churches, mosques, and schools.
The British magazine confirms that some of the Lebanese who have recently come to West Africa are planning to stay for a longer period, including the young mechanical engineer Ibrahim Chahine, who left Lebanon last year.
Shaheen told the magazine that the process of obtaining a Canadian visa was very stressful for him, and similar requests he submitted to the Gulf countries remained pending and were not answered, so when he was offered a job in a company run by Lebanese in Nigeria, he never hesitated and moved in less than two weeks to the capital, Abuja, and now expects – As he says – to stay in this African country for the next 10 years.