The Mixed Migration Monitoring Mechanism Initiative (4Mi) of the Mixed Migration Centre is a low-cost and innovative practices to collect and analyse data, initially out of the Horn of Africa, through mobile phone applications and community-based reporting. Through a network of thirty locally-recruited monitors in strategic migration hubs in Northern, Eastern, and Southern Africa, Southern and Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, the 4Mi project tracks Eritrean, Ethiopian, Djiboutian and Somali people on the move.

Started in East Africa in 2014 and since expanded to other regions, the 4Mi is an innovative, cost-effective approach developed by the Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat (RMMS, which is now part of the Mixed Migration Centre as MMC East Africa & Yemen) in Nairobi to collect and analyse data on mixed migration flows , including profiles, drivers, means of movement, conditions of movement, the smuggler economy, aspirations and destination choices.

4Mi particularly fills information gaps around protection and vulnerabilities with a view to informing policy and humanitarian programmatic response as well as enhancing sector understanding and knowledge on migration dynamics. It offers a unique, regular, standardized, and potentially globalized, system of collecting primary data on mixed migration flows.