The European Union on Wednesday announced the start of a $2 billion initiative to curb illegal migration from Africa, an ambitious program that aims to tackle the root causes of a historic flight of Africans to Europe.

The first $325 million in projects introduced Wednesday include efforts to increase employment in the migrants’ home countries and to tackle human trafficking in places such as Ethiopia and Somalia.

Much of Europe’s attention has been focused on the nearly 800,000 Syrian, Iraqi and other asylum-seekers who have entered Europe this year via Greece. But the number of people from sub-Saharan Africa crossing the Mediterranean has jumped, too: About 130,000 made the journey in 2015, compared with about 70,000 last year, according to the International Organization for Migration. They were driven from their homes by poverty and conflict, and attracted by the opportunities to reach Italy from nearby Libya, whose Mediterranean coast has been virtually unpatrolled since the 2011 overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi’s government.

The $2 billion E.U. Emergency Trust Fund for Africa was created last month to “address migration, mobility and forced displacement through concrete action,” said the E.U.’s commissioner for international cooperation and development, Neven Mimica.

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