On one of the most" mobile " continents in the world - Africa - migration flows are changing. The usual image of male migrants who went for a long time from the countryside to cities or neighboring countries to earn money is blurred. The family and women stayed at home. O. B. GROMOVA, Candidate of Historical Sciences Of course, African women were not completely isolated from the developing migration processes. Even during the colonial period, in some parts of West Africa, women were sent to urban settlements, where they began to actively engage in" commerce " - small retail trade. African women participated in short-term, seasonal, but recurrent migration, as did Ghanaian women in neighboring Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso in the mid-1980s.1 The predominant type of" permanent " migration to cities was accompanied by an increase in family migrations in the 70s and 80s, as well as an increase in the number of women who wanted to reunite with the head of the family and start a new life in the city. As early as the mid-1990s, this was the main motivation for up to 60% of all Ghanaian rural migrants who went to the city with their husband, other family members, or on their own2. Since the end of the 20th century, significant changes in migration processes have been associated with negative trends in the development of African countries, especially in the 1990s. ("the lost decade") and at the turn of the century, as permanently economically, socially, politically and environmentally unstable. Over the past 1.5 - 2 decades, a significant increase in the level of mobility of the female population has been observed in all sub-regions of the continent. The migration of African women is increasingly seen as a self-made decision to leave home, mainly in search of employment and economic benefits. In Africa in the early 2000s, women accounted for 47% of the total number (17 million) of migrants (inter-country and, less often, outside the continent) .3 Despite the positive developm ... Read more