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Diaspora dialogues
International Organisation for Migration (IOM)
Circa August 2007

http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/cache/offonce/pid/1674?entryId=14916

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Diaspora: refers to any people or ethnic population forced or induced to leave their traditional and ethnic homelands and the ensuing developments in their dispersal and culture. The word originally referred to a scattering or sowing of seeds. The good thing about seeds is that they grow. The better thing yet is that they spread. And the best is that once spread they grow again. The Fertile Crescent's seeds allowed humanity to grow, develop and expand.

This statement is even truer in the context of the brain drain, depriving Africa of its most precious human resources, its most fertile seeds. With 70 million migrant workers and their families both inside and outside the continent, the potential for African growth is exponential. Much the same can be said of the scattered seeds of the diaspora. They are constantly tapped for their money. The remittances, private fund transfers that account for more money than all international development aid put together.

Indeed, they are of great worth, but they come at a price, experts know it as the remittance burden, migrant workers who are caught up supporting themselves abroad and their families at home on small salaries in their host countries, unable to explain to their families that they are nowhere near as wealthy as they seem.

It comes at the price of making receiving countries dependent upon these private funds to maintain their nation's precarious stability. And, in focusing on the product, on the temporary aspects, we forget the biggest wealth found in the diaspora, its human potential, its ability to plant seeds that will grow where they are most needed: in their home counties.

There are numerous Africans in the diaspora community working towards their home country development. Associations of diaspora members are bringing back home the skills and knowledge they have gained abroad, promoting education at home; allowing their fellow nationals to benefit from their experience and exposure.

Against this background and the already existing partnerships between developing and developed countries, and following upon the Migration for Development in Africa (MIDA) programme leading to transfers of skills and diaspora resources to Africa, IOM has suggested creating Dialogues. These are meetings between Africa's active diasporas and their counterparts in governments at home as a basis for long-term development projects, providing self sustainable solutions and long-lasting partnerships between diaspora associations, their home country and their host country governments.

By way of videoconferences, IOM has connected African governments with their most qualified and dynamic nationals abroad. These dialogues build upon the diaspora's immense potential, the private development projects they have initiated in their home countries and their government's openness and dedication to strengthening their country's structure.

This publication covers the first five dialogues initiated by IOM. The first meeting in London with Africa Recruit on the topic of health in Africa, the Dialogues with the health-profession diaspora from the Congo and Sudan, respectively, from Brussels and London, the Dialogue concerning the increasingly dire ecological situation in the Sahel between Paris, Geneva and Senegal, the development of the private sector through the Tanzanian diaspora in the US and, finally, the means to ensure a solid education system in Africa to stem the brain drain by investing diaspora resources in home country capacity building among Geneva, Paris, Dakar and Princeton University in New Jersey.

The Dialogues and their outcomes demonstrate how, if properly channelled and focused, the diaspora can indeed live up to its definition cited at the outset of this paper. It requires efforts on both sides of the migrant equation: work by the diaspora and, just as importantly, on the governmental side. After all, you reap what you sow . . .

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