Born in France but looking for a future in Africa

Maneka Gomis was born in France, but has decided to pursue her future in Senegal, where her parents were born.

The 39-year-old is part of a growing number of French Africans who are leaving France, blaming a rise in racism, discrimination and nationalism.

BBC Africa Eye has investigated this phenomenon – which is being dubbed the “silent exodus” – to find out why people like Mr Gomis are disillusioned with life in France.

The Parisien founded a small travel agency that offers packages primarily to Africa, aimed at those who want to reconnect with their ancestral roots, and now has an office in Senegal.

“I was born in France. I grew up in France, and we know some of the realities. There’s a lot of racism there. I was six years old and I was called the N-word every day in school,” Mr. Gomis, Who went to school in the southern port city of Marseille, tells the BBC World Service.

“I may be French, but I come from somewhere else too.”

Mr. Gomis’s mother moved to France when he was a child and she does not understand his motivation for leaving family and friends and moving to Senegal.

“I’m not just going for this African dream,” he explains, adding that it’s a mix of opportunity and responsibility he feels toward his parents’ homeland.

“Africa is like America at the time of the gold rush. I think it is the continent of the future. It is the place where there is everything left to build, everything left to develop.”

Relations between France and Senegal – a predominantly Muslim country and former French colony that was once a major hub of the transatlantic slave trade – are long and complex.

A recent BBC Africa Eye investigation interviewed migrants in Senegal Willing to risk their lives in dangerous sea crossing to reach Europe,

Many of them reached France, where a record number sought asylum last year, according to the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA).

In total about 142,500 people applied and about a third of all requests for protection were accepted.

It is unclear how many people are choosing to make the reverse trip to Africa because French law prohibits collecting data on race, religion and ethnicity.

But research shows that highly qualified French citizens from Muslim backgrounds, often the children of immigrants, are quietly migrating.

People we met told us that attitudes towards immigration in France are becoming stricter, Right-wing parties have more influence,

Since their appointment last month, Prime Minister Michel Barnier and Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau have promised to crack down on immigration, both legal and illegal, by pushing for changes to the law at the domestic and European level.

Fanta Guirassy has lived in France her whole life and runs her own nursing practice in Villemomble, an outer suburb of Paris – but she also plans to visit Senegal, her mother’s birthplace.

“Unfortunately, in France for the last few years we have been feeling less safe. It’s a shame to say it, but it’s the reality,” the 34-year-old man said. tells the BBC.

“Being a single mother and being a 15-year-old teenager means you’ll always have this little knot in your stomach. You’re always scared.”

Their wake-up call came when their son was recently stopped and searched by the police while he was talking to his friends on the road.

“As a mother it’s quite traumatic. You see on TV what happens and you see it happen to others.”

Riots broke out across France in June last year Fatal shooting of 17-year-old Nahel Merzouk – A French citizen of Algerian origin who was shot by the police.

The case is still being investigated, but the riots shocked the country and fueled years of anger over the way ethnic minorities are treated in France.

A recent survey of black people in France revealed that 91% of those questioned were victims of racial discrimination.

In the wake of the riots, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) called on France to address “issues of racial discrimination within its law enforcement agencies”.

The French Foreign Ministry rejected the criticism, saying: “Any allegations of systemic racism or discrimination by the police in France are completely unfounded. France and its police fight resolutely against racism and all forms of discrimination.”

However, according to French Interior Ministry figures, racist crimes increased by a third last year, with more than 15,000 incidents recorded based on race, religion or ethnicity.

For schoolteacher Audrey Monzemba, who is of Congolese origin, such social changes have become “very worrying”.

One morning, we joined him on a tour through a multicultural and working-class community on the outskirts of Paris.

Accompanied by her young daughter, she navigates her way by bus and train, but as she approaches the school where she works, she carefully removes her headscarf from under the hood of her coat.

In secular France, wearing the hijab has become extremely controversial and wearing the hijab was banned in all government schools 20 years ago – which is why Ms Monjemba wants to leave France and move to Senegal, where she has ties.

“I’m not saying that France isn’t for me. I’m just saying that what I want is to be able to thrive in an environment that respects my faith and my values. I want to go to work, my purdah,” says the 35-year-old man.

A recent survey of more than 1,000 French Muslims who left France to settle abroad shows that this is a growing trend.

This comes in the wake of Islamophobia reaching its peak 2015 attacks When Islamic gunmen killed 130 people in various places in Paris.

Olivier Esteves, one of the authors of the report France, You Love It But You Leave It, told the BBC that moral panics over secularism and job discrimination “are at the heart of this silent flight”.

He says, “Ultimately, this emigration from France is a real brain-drain, because it is mainly highly educated French Muslims who decide to leave.”

Take for example Fatoumata Silla, 34, whose parents are from Senegal.

“When my father left Africa and came here, he was looking for a better quality of life for his family in Africa. He always told us: ‘Don’t forget where you came from.'”

The tourism software developer, who is moving to Senegal next month, says that by setting up a business in West Africa, she is showing she has not forgotten her heritage – although her brother Abdul, who, like her, was born in Paris , Kail has not forgotten.

“I’m worried about her. I hope she recovers, but I don’t feel the need to get involved with anything again,” he told the BBC.

“My culture and my family are here. Africa is the continent of our ancestors. But it’s not really ours because we weren’t there.”

“I don’t think you’ll find an ancestral culture, or a fantasy Wakanda,” he says, referring to the technologically advanced society depicted in the Black Panther films and comic books.

In Dakar, we met Salamata Conte, who founded the travel agency with Mr. Gomis, to find out what awaits French Africans like her who are choosing to settle in Senegal.

Ms Conte swapped a high-paying banking job in Paris for the Senegalese capital.

“When I arrived in Senegal three years ago, I was surprised to hear that people called me ‘Frenchy’,” says the 35-year-old.

“I said to myself: ‘Well, yes, actually, I was born in France, but I’m Senegalese, like you.’ So first of all, we realize that we say to ourselves: ‘Hey, I was rejected in France, and now I come here and I’m rejected here too.’

But his advice: “You have to come here with humility and that’s what I did.”

As far as her experience as a businesswoman is concerned, she says it has been “really tough”.

“I often tell people that Senegalese men are misogynists. They don’t like to hear it, but I think it’s true.

“They’re having a hard time accepting that a woman can be the CEO of a company, that a woman can sometimes ‘order’ certain people, that as a woman, I’m a late driver. I can say to: ‘No, it’s not normal that you are late.’

“I think we have to prove ourselves a little more.”

Nonetheless, Mr. Gomis is excited to wait for his Senegalese citizenship.

The travel agency is going well and he says he is already working on his next venture – a dating app for Senegal.