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Diaspora

Migration and Trade Go Hand in Hand for Africa and the US

Submitted by Sonia Plaza on Wed, 03/28/2012 - 14:56

A recently introduced bipartisan legislation entitled, “The Increasing American Jobs through Greater Exports to Africa Act of 2012 “ will promote the increase of US exports to Africa. On March 22, U.S. Rep. Bobby L. Rush (D-IL) jointly with U.S. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) presented a bill to improve the competitiveness of U.S. business in Africa, including African diaspora businesses. The bill also proposes to explore ways to utilize diaspora remittances to Africa for development purposes.

Increasing interest in diaspora bonds

Submitted by Dilip Ratha on Mon, 10/03/2011 - 10:02

The side event on diaspora bonds organized during the annual meetings of the World Bank and the IMF attracted significant interest. Senior officials in the Bank considered forming a task force to implement diaspora bonds, while the governors of the central bank of Kenya and that of Bangladesh argued in favor the importance of the diasporas as a source of remittances and investments for their countries. Kenya has issued a new series of infrastructure development bonds and is marketing it to retail diaspora investors until February. The governor of the Bank of Bangladesh also expressed strong interest in issuing a diaspora bonds. Separately, Nigeria's finance minister also issued a press release that Nigeria is going to issue a diaspora bond.


More information on this side event is now posted at http://go.worldbank.org/WC69CPEP60.

Enlist the diaspora – and remittance service providers – for fighting malaria

Submitted by Dilip Ratha, co-authors: Sanket Mohapatra on Thu, 08/11/2011 - 14:56

Diaspora members and remittance service providers (RSPs) can potentially help the global fight against malaria and other diseases. It is well known that migrants send extra money home for buying medicine and medical services. But medical care for the family members alone is not enough to keep them safe from malaria and other communicable diseases that can spread from elsewhere in the community. Migrants, therefore, may be willing to contribute to fighting diseases at the community level. Only there isn’t an easy way for a diaspora member to contribute to such efforts.

The ECA diaspora can contribute to development

Submitted by Sudharshan Canagarajah on Wed, 06/08/2011 - 15:37

At approximately 46 million, the diaspora population originating from the ECA (Europe & Central Asia) countries is the largest of all the development regions. Over ten percent of the population of the ECA countries currently lives outside their home countries, a much larger share than the 3 percent of the world’s population who are defined as migrants. Even if some immigrants choose to fully assimilate in the recipient countries, there is still a significant number who maintains active links to their countries of origin. The flow of remittances in ECA coming from this Diaspora is also quite significant, more than 30 percent of GDP in some ECA countries. This financial contribution has led to a dialogue on potential Diaspora Bonds to attract much needed investment for capital projects (see Dilip Ratha’s work).

Launch of Africa migration report

Submitted by Dilip Ratha on Sun, 03/27/2011 - 18:58

We are launching the report of the AfDB-World Bank Africa migration project on March 30, 2011. The main report is titled Leveraging Migration for Africa: Remittances, Skills, and Investments. World Bank's Infoshop is organizing a book launch/panel discussion on March 30, 2011 at 3:00pm.
 
This report will be accompanied by two edited volumes, Diaspora for Development in Africa, and Remittance Markets in Africa. On the same day, we will also post on our website (www.worldbank.org/migration)  primary data collected from 6 household surveys involving migrants.

Can the Diaspora contribute to the creation of jobs in the Middle East and North Africa?

Submitted by Sonia Plaza on Mon, 03/21/2011 - 14:58

Recent attention has shifted from analyzing the impact of skilled migration on sending country labor markets to a broader agenda that also considers the channels by which diasporas promotes trade, investment, innovation and technological acquisition. Several developed and developing countries are increasing their ties with their Diasporas to take advantage of these transfers beyond remittances. It will be important to assess what could be the potential of strengthening the linkages with their Diasporas for countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Can these countries tap into their Diasporas as a source and facilitator of innovation, research, technology transfer, trade, investment and skills development?

Nolland and Pack (2007) have analyzed whether Arab-communities in North America and Europe can play a similar role as countries in Asia (China, India, South Korea and Taiwan, China) in revitalizing the Middle East. The authors also indicated that “given the limited extent of manufacturing activity in the Middle East and the lack of equivalents to the Indian Institutes of Technology, it would make difficult to benefit from this option.”

"Homeward Bond" - New York Times Op-Ed on diaspora bonds

Submitted by Dilip Ratha on Mon, 03/14/2011 - 09:41

The New York Times published an opinion piece on diaspora bonds over the weekend. In this piece, Ngozi and I highlight the potential for mobilizing diaspora wealth for financing infrastructure investments in Africa and other developing regions.

At a time when donor countries are facing fiscal difficulties, new sources of funding and innovative ways to leverage available donor funding are required for meeting the financing needs in developing countries. Indeed, innovative mechanisms for channeling investments to dynamic developing countries may even provide a way out of weak demand and excess capacity prevailing currently in the developed countries. As highlighted by Justin Lin, "a global push for investment along the line of Keynesian stimulus is the key for a sustained global recovery; however, the stimulus needs to go beyond the traditional Keynesian investment....By far the greatest opportunities for productivity-enhancing investments are in developing countries..." (see here ).

Passions Fuelling Interests: A Portfolio Approach to Diaspora-Home Country Projects

Submitted by Yevgeny Kuznetsov on Fri, 02/25/2011 - 11:01
Photo:Istockphoto.com

For 20 years, BP Agrawal led research and development at such companies as General Dynamics, ITT, GTE, and Hughes, helping take new technologies from lab to marketplace. US-based Agrawal and his diaspora peer had a number of discussions on how they can make an impact in home country (India), and concluded that it is not their financial contributions that would make a difference but rather new commercial models of public service provision. In 2006, he won Development Marketplace awards for River from the Sky, a system of community water provision in draught-stricken areas and in 2007 for, Clinics for Mass Care, a system of mobile, kiosk-based clinics.

Recognition of the poor as a major market opportunity has produced bottom-of-the-pyramid innovation, the hallmark of which is global search for home-grown solutions. Diaspora members are natural vehicles for both global search and diffusion in the local context. In reality, diffusion is all that matters. Thanks to Agrawal’ patience, perseverance and persistence, he was able to enter into partnership with a local government which significantly speeded up the diffusion.  

Preliminary estimates of diaspora savings suggest potential for diaspora bonds

Submitted by Dilip Ratha, co-authors: Sanket Mohapatra on Tue, 02/01/2011 - 23:12

It has often been said that the diaspora of developing countries possess considerable wealth that can be tapped – via issuance of diaspora bonds – for the origin countries’ development. We have just released a Migration and Development Brief where we present some preliminary estimates of the annual savings of the global diaspora from developing countries.

As outlined in chart 1, there are three broad elements to estimating savings of the diaspora from developing countries:  (a) the size of the diaspora stocks in the different host countries, (b) the average income of the diaspora members, and (c) their propensity to save. However, lack of comparable data on migration and migrants’ income across host countries, the undocumented status of many migrants, and differences in the concepts used for income and savings across countries make this exercise especially challenging.
 

Chart 1: Diaspora savings and potential market for Diaspora bonds.
Click here to see a larger version of this chart.

Whatever happened to Nepal's diaspora bonds?

Submitted by Dilip Ratha, co-authors: Ani Silwal on Wed, 01/19/2011 - 20:14
Kathmandu, Nepal. Photo: © Simone D. McCourtie / World Bank

You might recall that the finance minister of Nepal announced in the annual budget in July 2009 that the government would issue a diaspora bond to raise funds for infrastructure development. Indeed Nepal Rastra Bank followed through in June 2010 by floating a “Foreign Employment Bond”. Although the initial goal was to issue Rs. 7 billion (about $100 million), Rs. 1 billion was floated in the first round. Nepali workers in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Malaysia could buy the bond from one of seven licensed money transfer operators in denominations of Rs. 5,000 (about $65).

Data are hard to come by, but the funds raised have been minuscule, nowhere near target. Apparently, the name of the bond had nothing to do with its unsuccessful launch!