POPULATION: African Union Courts Africans in Diaspora

By Farah Khan Reprint | | Print |

MAPUTO, Jul 11 2003 (IPS) - Through the centuries, Africa’s story has been one of outward migration – from the era of slavery to the present era of migration where hardship and a lack of opportunity have seen many people from the continent seek their better lives elsewhere.

Migration officials doubt whether this net brain drain can be reversed to a brain gain, but the leaders of the African Union (AU) want to harness the energy of the African diaspora to help the continent.

This week, African leaders, who have gathered in the port city of Maputo in Mozambique for the second summit of the African Union, have called on Africans across the world to invest their time, skills and capital in the reconstruction and development of their motherland.

”We must speed-up our work of strengthening our relations of co-operation and solidarity with the African Diaspora,” said South African President and outgoing chair of the African Union, Thabo Mbeki.

The African diaspora is a substantial and influential body of people. The World Bank estimates that the continent lost one third of its executives between 1960 and 1987 because its private and public sectors shrunk, leaving them with few opportunities for jobs and development.

The brain drain is costing the continent 4 billion U.S. dollars a year to replace them with expatriates from the west, according to a recent study by the University of Natal in South Africa.

It says about 23,000 qualified academic professionals from Africa emigrate each year in search of better working conditions.

The diaspora refers to Africans who have left the continent to settle in other parts of the world. The term is used both historically and to describe contemporary migrants.

President Mbeki revealed efforts were underway to bring the Caribbean diaspora into the African fold.

For Mbeki, diaspora links are also an attempt to fix the bonds that slavery and colonialism rent asunder: he extended an invitation to the AU leaders to join Haiti’s bicentenary celebrations of the end of slavery in Jan. 2004.

”In 1804, Haiti became the first black republic in the world, having defeated the armies of Napoleon that sought to maintain Haiti as a slave colony,” he said.

But diaspora links are increasingly vital financial relationships for developing economies. India and China have pioneered emigrant links with their homelands to encourage their ancestral and contemporary migrants to invest both time and money in the two countries.

Despite reservations on the part of some intellectuals living in Africa – who believe those Africans living in other parts of the world have lost touch with the realities of the continent – its leaders are determined to tap the skills and resources of the diaspora.

The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) – a programme to kick-start the social and economic development of the continent – details an initiative to ”enlist the support of Africans in Diaspora (AID) in the effective mobilisation of resources by way of investment.

The programme’s architects see the diaspora as an essential part of the partnership: there are significant numbers of migrants and people who claim ancestral links to Africa in the United States, Europe and the Caribbean.

”NEPAD will put in place adequate incentives for regular and substantial transfers by the diaspora, especially as a means of boosting the volume of private investment in Africa. Furthermore, Africans abroad can and should be encouraged to play a significant role in terms of advocacy for their countries and the continent at large,” says a NEPAD policy document.

Primarily, this involves marketing that which is good in Africa to counter the continent’s ubiquitously dark image in the North, where major investment, aid and trade decisions are still made.

It is also about material assistance. Already, remittances (the term for migrant payments) to Africa accounts for more than donor aid flows to the continent.

In Eritrea, for example, remittances account for 83 percent of exports. In Mali, payments from migrants account for a staggering 20 percent of gross national product.

For several years, the Institute of Migration, a United Nations agency, has studied ways in which the diaspora can become a more formal development partner by linking migrants more formally with projects in their communities.

The institute also says remittances should be reflected in the national accounts. Currently, transfers are largely unchecked and no exhaustive studies have been carried out to determine their macro-economic value.

One part of the diaspora programme is to get Africans to come back home. Vincent Williams of the Southern African Migration Project in Cape Town says African leaders will have to study ways to get skilled people back.

Africa’s first task, he says, is to draw up databases to get an accurate sense of the number of people in the diaspora. ”It requires an understanding of why people leave and often it is not just about money. If you understand why people leave, you can address those issues,” he says.

To get migrants to come back requires a huge marketing drive, says Williams. And it should be complemented by incentives. ”(Calling on) their patriotism alone is not enough. There must be practical programmes and the potential to do better,” he says.