CONAKRY: Abdoul Aziz Balde sobbed as he spoke of his son Idrissa, who left Guinea in search of a better future, but has not been heard from since capsizing off the Moroccan coast.
“I know that the boat my son was on sank, but we haven’t been shown his body, so to say that the boy is dead, I just don’t know,” the desperate father told AFP.
Thousands of young undocumented migrants in Guinea have disappeared along migration routes in recent years, leaving their families in a state of uncertainty and helplessness.
Although it affects families across west Africa, the problem is particularly bad in Guinea, which has become one of the main departure points for those heading to North Africa and Europe.
One day they are in touch; the next seemingly gone forever.
Some disappear after boarding overcrowded boats, others after crossing the desert with smugglers who have been known to abandon migrants.
Still others have gone missing following police raids in North Africa, due to imprisonment in Libya or even once in Europe, disappearing voluntarily out of shame over having failed in their dream.
Families are left to scour Facebook or watch macabre WhatsApp clips showing young people in morgues or corpses after shipwrecks.
The Guinean Organization for the Fight Against Irregular Migration (OGLMI) has pioneered a way to help families by collaborating with migrant aid associations around the world over the last year.
The NGO estimates the number of missing Guineans to be in the thousands.
“Out of 100 migrants who leave, at least 10 will never return,” OGLMI executive director Elhadj Mohamed Diallo told AFP.
“People have been missing for a long time but the issue has never been discussed at the civil society, government or international institution level,” he said.
AFP accompanied Diallo as he navigated the streets of a Conakry suburb on his motorcycle to visit the parents of Idrissa, who disappeared more than a year ago.

- ‘Left to save us’ -

The Balde family lives in a house shared with other tenants where the poverty is striking.
With every family, it is the same ritual when Diallo visits: Idrissa’s parents scrolled through WhatsApp to find the last virtual trace of their child.
One of the last photos was a smiling selfie.
“He left to save us, and to save his little sister. But God didn’t want it to be,” Balde, a 62-year-old driver, said, breaking down in tears.
Despite being bright at school, Idrissa — who would now be 29 years old — saw no opportunity in Guinea, a recurring theme among many young people.
From 2023, he made three unsuccessful attempts to migrate to Europe, reaching as far as Morocco. Each time, his father tried to stop him.
Last year, his parents financed his Master’s studies in Senegal, but he was lured by others who did manage to reach Europe and left for Morocco again.
In August last year, his father received a fateful phone call: “Are you Mr.Balde? Do you have a son who is in Morocco?” the voice on the other end asked. “My deepest condolences. They boarded small boats... they drowned.”
Balde said he was “devastated” and had to break the news to his wife. “The whole family wept,” he told AFP.
They were able to contact a young girl on the same boat but she had lost consciousness when they were hit by a wave and did not see what happened to Idrissa.
“Is he dead? Is he not dead?” Balde asked, his voice filled with anguish.

- ‘Abandoned’ -

Between 2014 and 2025, at least 33,220 migrants died or went missing in the Mediterranean and 17,768 in Africa, according to the International Organization for Migration’s Missing Migrants Project.
However, the figures are likely underestimated. In 2024 alone, the Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras recorded 10,457 people dead or missing at sea on the western European-Africa border.
Guinean researcher Mahmoud Kaba is working on a study to shed light on “the large-scale phenomenon” of families who have lost loved ones during attempts to migrate from Guinea.
Some “suffer strokes upon hearing the news, others experience insomnia and amnesia,” he told AFP.
Families feel isolated due to increasingly restrictive border policies and controls in Europe, general indifference and the criminalization of migrants.
Abdoulaye Diallo, 67, told AFP he felt “abandoned.” His eldest son Abdou Karim, who would now be aged 25, went missing two years ago.
“He stopped communicating with me in March 2023 which was unusual for him and that’s when the worry set in,” Diallo said.
The family found some of Abdou’s last traces of life on Facebook.
He had already left once, in 2018, barely aged 18, reaching Morocco, Tunisia and Libya, where he was imprisoned, but ended up back in Conakry.
On a second attempt, while working in Rabat he told a friend he was leaving for Tangier and then on to Spain.
Just east of Tangier, the massive Gourougou forest has become a base for thousands of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa seeking to enter the nearby Spanish enclave of Melilla illegally.
Moroccan authorities often carry out raids to dislodge them.
“There is violence against migrants in Morocco, especially from the security forces. It’s a country where lives are senselessly lost,” Diallo said, breaking down in tears.
One of Abdou’s brothers said he received information that he was in a detention center in the Tangier region.
Diallo said he tried to contact the authorities to inform the Guinean embassy in Morocco but had received no news.
There is “no shame” in being the parents of a young migrant who has gone missing, he stressed.
“It’s a wind that has swept through every home in Africa because of bad governance,” he said.

- ‘Political failure’ -

OGLMI has set up WhatsApp groups in local languages to connect Guinean families, as well as a support group.
Even when relatives try to report their child’s disappearance, there is often no follow-up, Diallo said.
Guinea’s ruling junta, which took power in 2020, is reluctant to allow public discussion of illegal migration.
“Admitting that we are losing our citizens at sea is also admitting a political failure and that we are not doing enough for our citizens,” Kaba, the researcher, said.
But head of the Directorate General for Guineans Living Abroad Mamadou Saitiou Barry told AFP that the term “disappeared” should be used with “great caution.”
He said there were “many situations” other than death that could cause a migrant to disappear.
They include “those who have not succeeded and refuse to communicate, those who are hospitalized, those who are under arrest or detained,” the director general said.
He added that Guinean authorities had helped families of shipwreck victims that they know about, often the few that gain media attention.
“Families have the right to the truth and to file a complaint, the missing have the right to be searched for, and the deceased have the right to be buried with dignity,” Helena Maleno, founder of Caminando Fronteras, told AFP.
“But getting states to recognize this is very complicated,” she said.
After receiving a report of a disappearance, OGLMI contacts relatives and creates an identification file, including the migration route.
The information is transmitted to associations in North Africa and Europe and to activists as far away as Mexico, Argentina and the United States.
The search might even involve visiting unmarked graves in the migrant sections of cemeteries or morgues.

- ‘Must not forget’ -

Some families do manage to trace their loved one, such as Tahibou Diallo, 58, who had no news of her son Thierno for two years.
AFP went along with OGLMI’s Diallo when he met Tahibou for the first time.
The mother became visibly distraught as she recounted how she had helped fund Thierno’s journey to Spain.
“He told me he was going to study there,” she said, explaining he instead went to France then disappeared.
In October, OGLMI was able to locate the young man, alive but homeless in the western city of Nantes.
He was not doing well but his mother was able to speak to him and re-establish contact.
However, other families who have sought the NGO’s help are still without news after more than a year. “These families must be helped to grieve,” Diallo said.
“We must not forget all these missing people.”