Diaspora, Remittances and Development

Dr Ben Page is a Reader in Human Geography and African Studies at University College London. He specialises in development geography with a particular focus on the causes and impacts of migration in Cameroon, where he spent some time working as an engineer for an international NGO. We spoke to him about the modern African diaspora and the way remittances are transforming the continent.

What drew you to study and research diaspora and remittances networks in Africa in particular?

I have been working in Cameroon in central Africa for 20 years and right from the start of that time I have been aware of the importance of diasporas and remittances. When I first started volunteering on a community water project in a rural area I saw how important it was when people who had left the village came back from time to time to offer support, encouragement and money to those still living in the village. The money they sent was crucial for paying school fees and hospital bills for family members back home. The energy of those who had left the village was crucial to getting development projects at home up and running. Later when I was living in cities in Cameroon I used to socialise with those same people who had left that village and started to see things from their point of view too – in particular I started to learn about the heavy weight of expectation placed on them as individuals when family members demanded money. It was a complicated relationship between the benefits felt by those at home and the costs for those who had migrated  that led to my research on the topic. Of course the migrants who send money gain a lot of respect and status too!

How has the nature of diaspora and remittances changed over time?

Remittances into Africa just keep on growing: they amounted to around US$25 billion in 2013; a significant amount when one compares that to a total of US$151 billion in development assistance from all the OECD countries that year. Technology has made a big difference. There are more mobile phone accounts in Africa than in North America, and this has enabled remittances to reach rural areas electronically; when I started going to Cameroon people still had to physically carry money to the village. African innovations like M-Pesa in Kenya and Tanzania have made ‘mobile money transfers’ quick, easy and quite cheap. Internationally however, things have not changed for the better – rather the reverse. Two international companies have effective monopolies over large parts of the money transfer market and Africans who want to send money home pay significantly more than any other diaspora as a result. 
African diasporas have changed too. Second and third generation migrants are increasingly influential and have a very different attitude to their parents. They tend to be more confident, more technologically savvy and more entrepreneurial. Increasingly it is this generation that will shape the relationship with Africa.

Of course, remittances are not just about the transfer of money are they?

You are right. Remittances can be household goods, jewellery or machinery. Right now I am really interested in learning more about second-hand cars. Most cars in Africa are second hand and many individuals in the diaspora will send cars home via ships for their own use or for family members. Some of the diaspora have turned this into a business opportunity by becoming experts in car exporting. Some remittances are not even material things, they are ideas. These are called ‘social remittances’ and could involve things such as how to run a business effectively for example. Some people argue that the diaspora are transferring better developed world ideas about politics home to Africa too, but I think we have to be really careful about making claims like that because it assumes that ‘our’ politics are superior and these claims are very hard to prove too.

We mostly think of remittances as being rather personal, but your research also looks at Hometown Associations (HTAs) – what are these?

Hometown Associations are ‘clubs’ whose members share an interest in the town or region they all come from. So for example we worked in a town called Bali-Nyonga in rural Cameroon. It is a small town of fewer than 100,000 people, yet the people from the town who have left to live in other parts of the world still meet up together in order to look after each other, have fun and help those who are still back home. Their hometown association is called the Bali-Nyonga Development and Cultural Association and it has branches all over Cameroon as well as in the UK, Germany and different states of the USA. The international branches have their own names and constitutions but their aim is the same: to provide a social space where people from Bali-Nyonga can come together. These associations are of particular interest to development policy-makers because they provide organisations that can be enrolled into international development projects, but the problem is they are not found all over the world. In some places like Mexico and West Africa they are common and strong but they are not nearly so widespread in Eastern or Southern Africa.

One might assume therefore that working with HTAs is more sustainable and effective than current aid international programmes. Is this a fair assumption?

Yes and no. From a development perspective there are some real strengths to HTAs such as the fact that they have a long-term commitment to the places that interest them and they provide a very cheap means of delivering development when compared to professionals in the aid industry. They are also good at holding their leaders to account if something goes wrong because those leaders are members of the community. As well as this they can have a good understanding of local needs too. The problems stem from the fact that they do not always have much experience, so for example they do not always know how to monitor or evaluate their projects and they may not co-ordinate their activities across different sectors (like health and education)  because their interventions are intermittent and small-scale. Sometimes they are over-ambitious about what they can do and sometimes they let the concerns and ideas of the diaspora members take priority over those at home. The UK Department for International Development, working with the NGO Comic Relief have a project called the Common Ground Initiative, which supports small diaspora organisations in the UK including HTAs.