With a determined look hardening her sun-kissed face, Safiatou has made her decision: she will leave behind her young children and her day-to-day survival to try to save their future and migrate to Europe from the Guinean coast, a new clandestine and very perilous migration route emerging in West Africa.

Thousands of young Guineans have attempted clandestine migration in recent years, discouraged and lacking economic opportunities and hope for the country: a migratory "hemorrhage", in the opinion of the Prime Minister himself.

The recent strengthening of maritime controls in Senegal, Mauritania and Morocco has led to a shift in the departures of pirogues to the Canary Islands towards the south, further lengthening the time spent at sea.

For the first time, while Guinea had not previously been a departure point, at least eight boats have left this country since the spring, each carrying more than a hundred people, according to specialized NGOs.

Despite the risk of shipwreck, this route is a way to escape the dangers and violence suffered by exiles on the roads in Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria.

Married at 18 to a 60-year-old man who, at 75, is unable to provide for his family, 33-year-old Safiatou Bah is struggling to make ends meet. "I'm the one raising my children alone," she told AFP.

She left her village for Conakry, tried to work in the NGO sector but it didn't work out. Finally, she started a business to earn some money and "go there" (migrate).

Safiatou describes the lack of future prospects felt by many young people in this poor country, which has been ruled by a junta for more than four years.

Her heartbreaking decision to leave behind her three children, aged 11, five, and six months, is firm.

"I'm leaving because I'm suffering here. You fight and there's no one to help you," she says. "I'm going to leave my children with my mother. It's a difficult decision but I have no choice..."

- New road -

"I was told that there are pirogues leaving for Kamsar," referring to this northwestern coastal city, the starting point of this new route.

The Canary Islands are the main gateway to Europe for exiles from Africa, forced to migrate clandestinely because of increasingly restrictive visa policies in European countries.

The Spanish NGO Caminando Fronteras, which monitors the flow of migrants, confirmed to AFP the existence of this new route and the scale of the number of Guineans involved in the migration.

Guineans are now the leading African nationality - and the 3rd country in the world behind Afghanistan and Ukraine - to apply for asylum in France, with 11,336 applications in 2024, according to the Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (Ofpra).

Mamadou Saïtiou Barry, Director General of the Directorate General for Guineans Living Abroad, confirms that "several thousand" Guineans enter into clandestine migration each year.

"We are aware of this, because it is we who are losing our sons and these young people..." he laments. Police measures have been taken to try to stop the phenomenon of departures from the coast.

Elhadj Mohamed Diallo, director of the Guinean Organization for the Fight Against Irregular Migration (OGLMI), interacts with these young people daily. "When you tell them that the road is dangerous, most of them reply that 'where we are, we are already dead in fact... It's better to try...', he reports.

The difficulties in accessing employment despite their studies also undermine many young people.

- "Almost died" -

Abdourahim Diallo, a charming young man and father of two, like Safiatou, no longer has any hope for a future in Guinea, where he cannot find work.

AFP met him at a gathering of dozens of young people in the suburb of Yattaya T6, in a shack without electricity that serves as their cafe.

"Here we have more than 150 young people and none of them have a job," says Ibrahima Baldé, head of an association.

Abdourahim is adamant: "I have a lot of family who are counting on me... but there's nothing for me here." He is preparing to migrate for the fourth time. His attempts, which have left him with physical and undoubtedly psychological scars, span 13 years between 2011 and 2024, taking him through Mali, Algeria, and Morocco.

He spent five years surviving in Morocco's Gourougou forest, which overlooks the city of Nador and the Spanish enclave of Melilla. Thousands of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa seeking entry into the enclave eke out a living in this forest and the surrounding woods.

To reach the forest and "escape the police", you have to jump from a moving train, according to Abdourahim. "Some break their feet, others die."

On December 30, 2011, he said he was injured in the head after attempting, along with hundreds of others, to scale the Melilla fence, the fortified line separating Spain from Morocco. On another occasion, "we almost died in the water" when his pirogue capsized off the Moroccan coast.

He has "lost count" of the arrests in Morocco, the extortion by police officers in transit countries, the thefts by "Tuaregs in Mali and Algeria".

He lost a lot, but resolved to sell his recently deceased father's vehicle to try, one last time.

Right next to the café, 30-year-old Mamadou Yero Diallo is bent under the hood of a car in his garage. "We manage, we earn a little for food, nothing more," he says. He insists he's ready to leave illegally this year.

Safiatou's voice is less steady when she confides that she spoke "with boys who have come back." "There are so many risks..." she whispers, saying she is aware of rapes committed against migrant women. "But I'm still going. I ask God to protect me."