THE African Diaspora has grown to
become such an important source of foreign exchange for Africa to the extent
that the African Union (AU) has designated it as a sixth development "zone"
(Rita Edozie: The Sixthe Zone: The African Diaspora and the African Union's
Global Era Pan Africanist, Journal of African American Studies, 2012), the
other zones being West
This article addresses important
questions such as: what exactly is the volume of this important source of
income to Africa, how do we compare remittances from Africans in the Diaspora
to development aid from non-Africans, and what steps can African governments
take to sustain and enhance this most reliable African development agency that
is the African Diaspora. Some of these issues are analyzed based on empirical
research on Africa's newest Diaspora: Africans in China. We conclude with the
idea that Diaspora African contributions are better than foreign aid funds from
mostly western donors who may exert negative external influences on Africa's
sovereignty and future development.
To answer the first two questions,
what is the volume of this remittance and how does it compare to the volume of
development aid from non-African donors, let us sift systematically through
some statistics over a number of years. No one really knows the exact amount of
remittances Africans send back home, particularly since not all of this goes
through official banking and remittance channels. But the figure is believed to
have gradually increased over the years. Historical figures from the IMF
indicate that remittances have increased gradually from US$15 billion from 1998
to about US$20 billion in 2003.
Solome Lemma in her Oct 22, 2012 Blog
article at http://africansinthediaspora.org/blog/redefining-remittances/
indicates that Africans send home 40 billion each year, which is far more than
the 7.7 billion that the US sent to Africa as development aid in 2010. Indeed
Lemma confirms that between 1960 and 2003 total foreign aid to Africa was only
600 billion dollars but remittances from Diaspora Africans during that period
were double the foreign aid amounts. Already in 2007 according to Lemma,
remittance to Africa by Diaspora Africans was 200 billion US dollars, which is
far more than foreign aid to Africa in that year by non-Africans. The latest
figures about Diaspora African remittance show that in 2012, despite paying far
more remittance fees than most other areas in the world, Africans still sent
back home to Africa a whopping 60 billion dollars. What all this demonstrates
is that the more than 30 million Africans outside are remitting far more money
to Africa than the development aid funds that are accorded the continent from
international donors.
The figure is bound to continue
increasing because of the formation of new Diasporas in economically fast
developing areas of the world like China, Russia, India and Brazil. Figures
obtained from Africans in China during fieldwork for writing my book, Africans
in China (Cambria Press 2012, page 228) indicate that Africans send home
anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 yuan or more per person annually. More
specifically, the Chairman of the Guinean Association of Guangzhou writes in an
email response (of Feb 27 2013) to my request for remittance figures:
“Hi Professor, the amount sent home is
often a function of many factors: - how much the person is getting here on
average, - how the person's family is organized back home, etc... In general,
an adult [male] Guinean in GZ has a wife (or wives) and kids back home in
Conakry, the capital (or another big town), and his parents and other relatives
(his and his wife/wives' relatives) staying in the villages. It is normal for
all these people to be supported by the adult living in GZ. Moreover, it is the
ambition of each Guinean in the diaspora to build a house (where he can return)
and start a business (shop or plantation, etc...) while still abroad. So, a
guessetimate for average remittances between 25,000Rmb and 150,000Rmb per year
is in place.
If all the half a million Africans
plying their business in China were doing this, Africans in China would be
sending anywhere between 5 and 50 Billion yuan a year or more and this doesn't
even include the value of all the merchandize that they buy from China and send
back to Africa for sale, which even if not countered as remittance, still
constitutes a good contribution from Diaspora Africans in terms of trade, another
area Diaspora Africans could be performing far better than foreign actors.
The above section has shown that even
just staying with official remittance channels, which is only part of the
remittance story, the figures we get indicate that African Diaspora remittance
far exceed the foreign aid that comes from non-Africans, especially traditional
donors in the West. Next we argue that not only is this Diaspora remittance
more substantial, it is indeed better than foreign aid. The greatest advantage
that foreign remittance funding has over foreign aid funding is that these
remittance funds go directly to the remittance targets, the recipients most of
the time. Family members know the financial situations of their families all
too well and often remit appropriately and on a timely manner. Of course, there
have been cases in which family remittance monies have been wasted or
misappropriated. But this is nothing compared to the legendary inefficiencies
in the foreign aid industry.
Overseas Development Assistance (ODA)
and other types of foreign aid funds have been known to be misappropriated at
all levels, including governmental and non-governmental levels. Dambisa Moyo in
her book Dead Aid has already listed myriad inefficiencies related to foreign
aid and even pointed to the magnitude of official corruption that can be
involved in foreign aid funds management. There are estimates showing that in
some cases less than 10% of ODA funds actually get to benefit the most
vulnerable populations, the 90% or so entering the pockets of government
officials and even foreign aid workers who are sometimes paid huge sums to make
them live like kings in the midst of the poverty they are supposed to
eradicate. A second advantage of remittance funds over foreign aid funds is that
they are devoid of conditionalities for the most part. Diaspora African
remittances are gifts of love to family members meant to bring about the
development of the family and hence the nation in a way that these grassroots
citizens of the nation want. These include paying school fees, building houses
and structures of all kinds and growing businesses.
Foreign aid funds, on the other hand,
are not free gifts. In most cases they attract an interest even if low. But
more importantly a lot of conditionalities are imposed by donors, such as the
need for structural adjustment programmes, public sector deregulation,
privatization, and even demands for overhaul of the country's political system
before further funds can be disbursed. Foreign aid in all likelihood could thus
be used as a neo-colonial tool to influence the socio-economic and
socio-political decision making processes of the recipient countries by the
donor countries and agencies. Even though remittances are used mostly for
family consumption while foreign aid funds such as ODA are used for public
service delivery, remittances go a longer way to improving on the general
welfare of the citizens than foreign aid, given the latter's dismal record in
funds mismanagement.
In conclusion, given the above clear
advantages of African Diaspora remittances over foreign aid funds, it is
surprising that African governments do not seem to have robust policies and
their implementations towards attracting African Diaspora remittances over and
above foreign aid. One way to draw more remittance funds to Africa is to
involve Diaspora Africans more in the political system of the countries towards
improving good governance. African governments must not pay lip service to the
incorporation of these development agents and financiers that these Diaspora
Africans are in the governance and national decision making process.
Very few Africans abroad are even
allowed to vote in African elections, let alone consulted over vital economic
decision making processes. The AU's “Sixth Zone” policy cannot just be
something on paper alone; it must be implemented so that by the year 2020
African governments can hopefully eliminate the need for foreign aid
(especially from donors who are themselves finding it hard to run healthy
economies), and rely more on Diaspora African remittances to speed up African
development in the 21st Century.
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