 External voting has become widespread in Africa, where nearly three quarters of countries allow citizens residing abroad to vote. This spectacular development makes Africa one of the places with the widest experience of external voting. Countries of the Maghreb were among the first African countries to adopt external voting provisions in the 1970s and 1980s. It is in the mid-2000s that external voting spread throughout Africa in a third wave that saw it become the rule rather than the exception. A new frontier of citizenship, external voting represents a largely unexplored topic of research. The study would contribute to better understand how migrant communities tend to reproduce abroad the social and political divides of their homeland while also being influenced by their new environment.