Transcript Nigerians in Diaspora 1st Town Hall Meeting

Strategies for Mobilizing the
Diaspora Community in
National Economic
Development
Talk presented at Town Hall Meeting of
Nigerians in the Americas on November
20, 2004, Washington, DC; Sponsored
by NIDO Americas and Nigerian
Embassy by
Dr. Ola Kassim, NIDO-A Chairman
Objectives of Town Hall Meeting
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Meet with a Diversity of Stakeholders: Engage the
leadership of Nigerian organizations across the Americas
Generate Input: Listen to your perspective and
insights. Critical inputs from the Nigerian community to
better define and address challenges and opportunities
ahead are needed.
Build Bridges: Work with various Nigerian
organizations in the Americas to better organize the
community and realize shared opportunities in home
country, as well as host countries.
Invite Others: Work to increase interest and
participation, and build a critical mass of support among
Nigerian professionals.
Forum Process
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Introduction of Discussion Topic: Moderators frame
topic, and open up interactive discussion among
participants.
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Discuss Challenges: Articulate and define challenges
and issues related to forum topic. These represent
opportunities for action.
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Propose Actions and Prioritize Focus: How can WE
respond to the challenges identified? What are the most
practical solutions to address them? Which are the most
important among these?
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Identify Opportunities for Collaboration: What
actions are YOU willing to commit to and champion with
the Embassy, NIDO, and other Nigerians and Nigerian
organizations?
Mission and Objectives of NIDO
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Accelerate Knowledge and Skills Repatriation:
Harness Diaspora skills and expertise for Nigeria’s
development to turn “Brain Drain” into “Brain Gain”
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Build “Info”structure for Skills Pipeline: Build and
operate database of skilled Nigerians for benefit of public
and private sectors in Nigeria
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Strengthen Collectiveness: Mobilize vast support,
and promote cooperation and networking among
Nigerians in Diaspora
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Promote Opportunities in Nigeria: Enhance image of
Nigeria to strengthen business, travel, and investment
opportunities
Strategies for Mobilizing the Diaspora
Community in National Economic Development
Definition of DIASPORA (G. Scheffer):
 “Modern Diasporas are ethnic minority groups of migrant
origins residing and acting in host countries but
maintaining strong sentimental and material links with
their countries of origin-their HOMELANDS.”
 The term Diaspora comes from the Greek words “to
sow” and “over”, as in the scattering of seed, and for
them it meant the “seeding” of Greek colonies in distant
lands.
 Diaspora implies a settled community, rather than a
group of temporary immigrants with the intention and
ability to return to their country of origin.
8 Major Impacts of Diaspora on
Home Countries Identified
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Remittances
Foreign Direct Investment
Market Development (including outsourcing production)
Technology Transfer
Philanthropy
Tourism
Political Contributions
Intangible Flows:
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Knowledge
New attitudes
Cultural Influence
NB: The quality of information, much less data, about Diaspora influences in
these dimensions is in general very poor, posing a serious challenge to
policy development.
Generalizations about Diaspora are
perilous given the variation in…
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Historical Experience
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Relations with Authorities in their Home Country
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Levels of Prosperity and Education
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Religious background and Ethnicity both within
and among Diaspora Communities
Overview of Home Country Policies
and Practices Toward Diaspora
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Varying Attitudes:
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Warmly Embracing to Coolly instrumental
Active Engagement to Indifference
Mobilization to Hostility
Increasing Courting Trend: The policies and practices
of countries of origin reflect these diverse views, but the
clear trend is for homeland states to court their nationals
who are living abroad.
Countries that actively court their Diasporas do so
in a variety of ways and with different priorities:
China, India, the Philippines, Mexico, Eritrea, Taiwan,
Argentina and Ghana illustrate eight contrasting
patterns.
China
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Strong Diaspora, Most Economically Thriving: Today, overseas
Chinese communities exist in virtually every country in the world at
an estimated strength of 35 million people.
Focus on Diaspora Investments: The People’s Republic of China
relies less on encouraging remittances from its Diaspora and focuses
more on encouraging investments from her citizens who live abroad.
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Since the start of economic reform and adoption of capitalism, the
boom in China’s economy has been led mainly by peoples of Chinese
descent living in Hong Kong, Taiwan and its Diaspora from the
Mainland.
The volume of remittances into China is small in relation to the size of
the Diaspora---$8 billion (1991-98)—which is only 1/7th the volume of
remittance from India’s 20 million strong Diaspora.
According to You-tien Hsing: “the campaign of attracting overseas
Chinese capital escalated after the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, when
many non-Chinese foreign firms led China.”
China
Other Key Highlights:
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It is estimated that about half of the $48 billion in
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) that flowed into China in
2002 originated with the Chinese Diaspora.
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Ethnic Chinese also have an impact on the volume of
bilateral trade between the PRC and their countries of
settlement.
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Chief motive for Diaspora investment in China: PROFIT
India
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Embracing an “Open-Door” Policy: India has moved from a
position of somewhat disapproving indifference toward the
worldwide Indian Diaspora to one of actively seeking their
involvement in the nation’s development.
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Resurgent India Bonds (1998): Launch of a huge sale of 5 year
bonds guaranteed by the State Bank of India and available only to
non-resident Indians (NRIs) immediately after the India’s first
nuclear tests.
The aim of the bond which was launched with ‘patriotic fervor’ was to
help offset the impact of economic sanctions imposed immediately after
the nuclear tests.
 The bonds were set at 2% above the US bond market rates!
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India
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Diaspora Identification Initiative
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September 2000: High Level Committee on the Indian Diaspora
was tasked with the responsibility of analyzing the location,
situation and potential development role of the estimated 20
million non-resident Indians (NRIs) and Peoples of Indian Origin
(PIOs).
The report was released with fanfare in January 2002 with one
key recommendation: “a new framework for creating a more
conducive environment in India to leverage these invaluable
human resources.”
The analysis reflected in the Report looks at the question why
FDI from the Indian Diaspora have been low relative to the
Chinese. The 20 million Indians abroad generate an annual
income equal to 35% of India’s GDP, yet have generated less
than 10% of India’s rather modest $4.4 billion of FDI in contrast
to the Chinese who have contributed half of China’s $52 billion.
Mexico
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Top Remittances Destination: Mexico is the second
largest recipient of remittances in the world. Mexico’s
Diaspora is unusual in that it is heavily concentrated in
one country, the United States.
Enhancing Homecoming: Launch of Paisano Program
and the Program for Mexican Communities Living abroad
(PCMLA) in 1990— focusing on improving the treatment
of returning migrants at the hands of Mexican border
and customs officials and on improving services to
Mexicans in the United States.
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The PCMLA also helps channel remittances to local development
projects in Mexico
Mexico
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Supportive Government: In 2000, President Vincente Fox
referred to Mexican migrants as HEROES and in 2001 established a
Presidential Office for Mexicans Abroad;
Innovative Action Initiatives: 2002: Launch of 3 for 1 program.
Every dollar remitted by Mexican Home Town Associations (HTAs) is
matched with one dollar from the federal government, one dollar
from the state government and one dollar from the local
government, thus providing considerable leverage to Diaspora fund
raising efforts.
Strong Outcomes: Mexico’s Diaspora’s relations have been
developed from the bottom up with individual migrants continuing
to support their families with the world’s second largest stream of
remittances. The volume of individual remittances still dwarfs by a
large measure the remittances from collective efforts of the HTAs.
Taiwan
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Leveraging Skills and Knowledge Capital to Address Skills
Gap: Taiwan has focused less on attracting investment from its
Diaspora than on making use of their skills acquired abroad through
networking and through migration.
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Strong Government Commitment: Examples of this
commitment include:
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The government established a database that tracked skilled migrants
and matched them with job opportunities in Taiwan
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The government systematically invited scientists, professionals and
highly skilled technicians back to Taiwan to teach and to network with
Taiwanese counterparts.
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Government-sponsored national development conferences bring many
overseas Taiwanese to participate at government expense and
contribute to the formation of multinational networks oriented toward
building Taiwan’s business and technological advantages.
Philippines
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Leading the World in Remittances: The
Philippines is the number one per capita
recipient of Diaspora remittances in the world.
Approximately 17% of Philippine families receive
remittances from abroad.
Human Capital as Export Commodity: The
government of the Philippines has
institutionalized the training of skilled and semiskilled workers such as nurses, physicians,
nannies specifically aimed for export to different
regions of the world.
Argentina
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Towards a Knowledge Economy: The government of Argentina
has focused largely at mobilizing its highly skilled Diaspora towards
the development of a Knowledge Economy in its efforts to diversify
its resource intensive mainly agrarian economy.
Recent Survey Aimed at Assessing Opportunities: In 2003,
the government sponsored a poll of 200 Argentinean professional
Diaspora with a view to answering the following questions:
What lessons can one learn from other Diaspora's experiences?
 Is it possible to utilize the Argentinean professional Diaspora as a key
resource to develop knowledge based economy in Argentina?
 What are the conditions for that to happen?
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How interested is the Argentinean Diaspora in playing an active role?
What is its potential?
 What are the main problems for the Argentinean Diaspora?
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Developments in Africa
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Eritrea. The government of Eritrea has been
encouraging its Diaspora to increase remittances
back to the homeland. However recent steps by
the government enforcing direct investment of a
proportion of remittances are viewed with
suspicion by its Diaspora.
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GHANA. In 2002: Conference of Diaspora based
Organizations (DBOs) held in Accra aimed at
organizing and mobilizing the economic might of
the Ghanaian Diaspora.
TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS OF
EXPATRIATE PROFESSIONALS
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Virtual Global Network: A number of schemes and types of
transnational networks of expatriate professionals have emerged
that can be tapped to enable their effective and productive role in a
home country’s development—even without any physical temporary
or permanent return.
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Illustration: The United Nations Development Program supports
major initiative in this field called TOKTEN (Transfer of Knowledge
Through Expatriate Nationals).
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Country Specific TOKTENS involve databases of people and assisted
visits of skilled expatriates to engage in various development projects in
their countries of origin.
TOKTEN---A Possible Opportunity for NIDO Americas?
Clearly, Broad Forum Topic with
Many Possible Areas to Explore…
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Best Practices
 China,
Israel, India and their Diasporas…What can
Nigeria and Diaspora Nigerians learn from them?
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Partnerships
Database
Resource Pooling
Business/Policy Climate in Nigeria
Others
…For more information, please visit
http://www.nidoamericas.org
Email: [email protected]
or call
Tel: 202-986-8400 Ext 1023
Fax:202-273-1078