The President of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, has called on African countries to allow Africans in the Diaspora to cast their votes in their home economies.
Adesina said this at the Global Community of Practice (G-COP) policy dialogue being hosted by the bank in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.
The dialogue is tagged “Development without Borders: Leveraging the African Diaspora for Inclusive Growth and Sustainable Development in Africa”.
The event was organised by the AfDB in collaboration with the African Union Commission, the International Organisation for Migration, and the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat.
He said: “The value of remittances from the African diaspora doubled from 37 billion dollars in 2010 to 87 billion dollars in 2019 and reaching 95.6 billion dollars by 2021.
“If they can send money that powers their home economies, they should also help decide the future of the economies of Africa.”
The AfDB boss said that Egypt and Nigeria were among the top-ten remittance recipients globally, with Egypt receiving 31.5 billion dollars and Nigeria, 19.2 billion dollars in 2021.
He further said: More than 20 years ago, Africans living outside the continent doubled to about 20 million, the most significant number of African migrants reside in Europe with 11 million.
“This is followed by Asia with 5 million and North America with 3 million, so, the African diaspora has become the largest financier of Africa.
“It is not debt, it is 100 per cent gifts or grants, a new form of concessional financing that is the key for livelihood security for millions of Africans.
“Remittances have helped to meet financial, food, education, and health needs, as well as serve as counter cyclical sources of finance and social protection”.
He observed thaat in spite of the huge remittances, official development assistance to Africa in 2021 was only 35 billion dollars or 36 per cent of the remittances from the diaspora.
He said practicable measures should be put in place to invest more of the remittances on ventures that would ensure overall growth.
Adesina said in view of the fact that the flow of remittances to Africa was high, rising and stable, it offered huge opportunities to serve as collateral to secure financing for African economies.
According to him, besides remittances and investments, the diaspora could offer a lot more in terms of skills, knowledge, know-how, exposure to the world of business and investments, science, arts, and technologies among others.
He said that Africans in the diaspora were “streams from Africa, carrying precious assets, that made their ways to become rivers, seas and oceans that reach all parts of the world.
He called on the more than 20 million Africans living in the diaspora to continue to contribute their quota to the development of the continent.
Adesina further said, “at the recently held African Investment Forum which the African Development Bank and its partners, over 31billion dollars of investment interests were mobilised for Africa in less than 72 hours.
“These investment interests are from over 1,800 participants, project developers and investors from all over the world.
“What is it that they are all seeing in Africa? They are seeing a continent that is increasingly sure of itself”.
Adesina said African Continental Free Trade Area would make Africa the largest free trade zone in the world with an estimated GDP of 3.3 trillion dollar.
He also said Africa had the highest population of youth in the world, adding that it accounted for 42 per cent of the global youth by 2030.
He said the youth population had made Africa ‘the ripe place globally for innovation and entrepreneurship, and the outsourcing for skills for industries and services.”
The President urged African countries to beyond their youth population, take advantage of their agricultural strength to make impact in the world.
“Africa has 65 per cent of the uncultivated arable land left to feed the world, therefore how Africa develops its agriculture will determine the future of food in the world.
“Across Africa, we must turn cocoa beans into chocolates, cotton into textile and garments, coffee beans into brewed coffee.
“That is why the African Development Bank is investing 25 billion dollars in agriculture across the continent to transform the agricultural sector.
“Africa has an abundance of natural resources, oil, gas, minerals, and metals, as well as extensive blue economy that must be rapidly industrialised,” he said.
On brain drain, Adesina said, the African Union estimated that 70,000 skilled professionals including doctors, nurses and scientists migrated from Africa every year.
According to him, it was estimated in 2015 that the number of African-trained medical graduates practising in the United States alone reached 13,584.
“Clearly, Africa must learn from India. We must put in place programme that support African medical doctors in the diaspora to connect back to Africa,” he said.
Adesina said AfDB and the World Health Organisation would partner on to drive the “Africa Connect” initiative.
He said the initiative would help to tap into Africa’s physicians in the diaspora to invest in quality health infrastructure in Africa, including for the establishment of first-rate medical facilities.
“This will be part of the African Development Bank’s plan to invest 3 billion dollar in quality health infrastructure for Africa,” he said.
The president said the AfDB was ready to partner with Africans in the diaspora to transform Africa.
On the milestone reached by the AfDB, Adesina said the bank was ranked as best multilateral financial institution in the world for 2021.
He further said the bank was rated as the 2022 Most Transparent Institution in the world by Publish What you Fund.
He also said the African Development Fund, the concessional financing institution of the AfDB was ranked as the 2022 second-best concessional financing institution in the world, ahead of all 49 concessional financing institutions.
(NAN)
