The Bretton Woods institutions (the IMF and World Bank) and western governments are interested in these Africa-bound billions. According to many official reports, this money is a more reliable source of finance than private sector investment or even official development aid – and, for some African countries, remittances are the equivalent of 750% of foreign aid.

The money sent home by Cape Verde’s diaspora provides 25% of its economic activity. The national bank of Ghana estimates that remittances home equal 20% of the value of its exports. These migrants may not have travelled far: 30% of Lesotho’s gross domestic product comes from nationals working in neighbouring South Africa (the chief destination for inter-African migration).

The phenomenon is most clearly seen in Nigeria, home to the continent’s best and worst. One in five African migrants is from Nigeria. They lead a commercial and entrepreneurial network from São Paolo to Houston, London to Dubai, Delhi to Hamburg. In the last decade, Nigerians living abroad have sent $28bn to family and business associates back home. In 2007 more than $3bn was wired home, according to the World Bank. Nigeria receives 30% of the funds transferred via Western Union in sub-Saharan Africa.

 

First Bank, which holds the Western Union franchise in Nigeria, has opened more than 200 agencies there, dedicated primarily to transferring funds. “Business is hectic from the moment we open in the morning to the moment we close,” says Bola Adebanjo, a branch manager. “It is definitely our bank’s principal activity.” Keen to mine this, other Nigerian banks have teamed up with money transfer companies, as the United Bank for Africa and the US company MoneyGram did in 2007.

A collective strategy

“Africa must develop a collective strategy for engaging the diaspora [and] Nigeria has a special role to play in this enterprise,” says the former US ambassador to Nigeria, Howard Jeter. “There is a wealth of financial, technical and intellectual expertise in the diaspora. Africa needs to exploit these human and material resources to help tackle the challenges of development, environmental degradation, food security, energy supply, HIV/AIDS and equitable economic growth”. The message is clear – that migrant workers can best help their home countries. But the West, which has the wages of these workers circulating through its banks, makes countries pay for their own development and pockets a percentage.

A joint report by the African Development Bank (ADB) and the French finance ministry published in January 2008 studied five countries “that share strong historic and migratory links with a developed country – France.” The survey of 2,000 African households, which looked at Senegal, Mali and the Comoros among others, found that in 2005, $600m had been sent in remittances to Senegal (19% of GDP and 218% of ODA). Mali received $394m (11% GDP, 79% ODA) and the Comoros $94m (24% GDP, 346% ODA). Households that got the money had a higher standard of living than the national average.

But do these remittances have any real impact at the macro economic level? The renewed interest in African remittances obscures a fact obvious to Jean-Pierre Garson, a migration specialist at the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development): “Their impact on development is unclear, especially if one considers the loss of manpower that emigration means for these countries.” Remittances do help to lift those left at home out of extreme poverty. But they also foster a state of dependency. Only a small proportion of these funds goes into wealth-generating activities. According to Ravinder Rena: “Remittances fail to enhance development because they are not spent on investment goods but mostly spent on unproductive purposes – housing, land purchase, transport, repayment of debt, or to a smaller degree wasted on conspicuous consumption, or saved as insurance and old age pension funds”.

Daily living expenses can take up 75 to 80% of remittances and the rest goes towards the dream goal of building a house. In Ghana this feeds property speculation, according to researchers: “Purchases by emigrant workers cause prices to spiral and means local people with modest means have less access to property… landlords are more inclined to sell to those living abroad than to locals, especially since migrants can pay higher prices, and in cash”.

Productive use of money

Redirecting remittance funds towards long-term investment projects, encouraging a “more productive” use of this money, is one of the declared aims of France’s new development and immigration policies. The French government believes channelling remittance funds into projects in health, education and business will encourage would-be immigrants to stay at home (an objective of France’s July 2006 immigration law). Savings banks will offer a special “co-development savings account” benefiting from a 25% tax break, open to all immigrants with a French residence permit who want to invest in their home countries – starting a new business, reviving an old one or buying one out, acquiring premises, investing in the rental market, or micro-finance. Another initiative, the co-development savings book, will “allow immigrants to set up a savings account, on which they will enjoy tax relief if they use the funds for investment purposes”.

Armand Adotevi, a legal expert from Benin, mocks the duplicity of the authors of these proposals: “They realise there is a bonanza to be reaped and invested for the short or medium term, for the benefit of the French economy. They try to con us with talk of tax exemption, and doubling or tripling of interest accrued on savings, and lecture us on what is good for us. In this way they circumvent their own responsibilities for aid and development. Have you ever seen African governments telling private European citizens, operating legally in Africa, how they should spend the substantial profits they repatriate to Europe?”

These proposals perpetuate the inequalities of the global financial system, while providing an excuse to those who won’t fund development aid. They free international financial institutions and the dominant powers from responsibility for the world’s ills by placing the burden on the poor. Poverty will not be eradicated by the remittances of migrant workers, merely reduced. And the financial crisis may sharply reduce remittances anyway.