C. After traveling about 380 miles north toward the Canary Islands, the migrant boat sank off the Atlantic coast of Mauritania. Thousands of Africans risk their lives in small boats that take the dangerous and illegal route to Europe, where they hope to find better-paying jobs to send money back to their families.

Q: Money sent back from Gambians working outside the country accounts for 21% of Gambia’s economy. How many Gambians live in poverty?

A. 23%

B. 33%

C. 43%

D. 53%

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D. More than half of Gambia’s 2.5 million people live below the poverty line, according to the CIA World Factbook. With a gross domestic product of $3,000 per person, Gambia is among the 25 poorest nations in the world.

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Q: Some local Gambian fisherman have given up the fight against the foreign trawlers overfishing their waters. And, they are selling their open fishing boats to traffickers who fill them with desperate migrants. Why are Senegal and Mauritania intercepting more of these clandestine voyages?

A. Concern for migrants

B. Getting paid to stop them

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B. The European Union is paying West and North African nations, including Mauritania and Senegal, to block migrants from reaching Europe. Some of the nations getting paid use brutal tactics to stop migrants, including abandoning them in the Sahara Desert without food or water.

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Q: Policies focused on migration control instead of rescuing people from capsized boats are increasing deaths, according to a Spanish human rights organization. How many people died at sea last year while trying to get to Spain?

A. 10,500

B. 5,250

C. 2,500

D. 1,250

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A. The human rights group put the death toll at 10,500, but it could be higher because no one knows precisely how many Africans are attempting the perilous passage. African emigration is being driven by the world’s fastest population growth in some of its poorest countries.

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