Migration for Inclusive African Growth Network

The link between migration and development is well-established in theory and policy circles. However, the focus has been on migration from the global South to the global North, underplaying the importance of North-South flows and migration within the global South. These alternative flows have important implications for inclusive growth, understood as economic growth that creates opportunities for all in society and where the monetary and non-monetary benefits are fairly distributed. The Migration for Inclusive African Growth network will look at how inclusive growth is, and can be, strengthened through inward investment by migrant groups in the service sector of 4 African countries: Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Mozambique.

There are 3 factors which suggest that this is an important focus. First, the economic downturn revealed the fragility of the growth experienced by many African economies over the past decade. Too much of this growth was based on commodity exports whereas recent academic and policy analysis suggests that services may hold the key to future growth. Second, alongside growing migration within Africa, we are also seeing a rise in new migration flows into Africa, both from the highly developed economies of the global North and the emerging economies of the global South. Third, these migrant flows contain entrepreneurs and professionals who not only invest in the service sector, particularly areas of critical importance for development such as health, education, and ICTs, but also bring new finance, knowledge and social networks that have the potential to enhance local capabilities and thereby support inclusive growth.

While these new migration flows have the potential to generate more inclusive growth in Africa, our knowledge of their size, motives, organisation and impacts is fragmented and largely anecdotal. Therefore, the central aim of the network is to bring together Northern and Southern researchers, policy makers, migrant groups and business representatives to generate and share existing knowledge on contemporary South-South and North-South migration flows to and within Africa and design a research agenda to better understand these flows and how their contribution to inclusive growth can be enhanced through policy and practice.

The network assembles expertise in migration research to, from and within Africa. The co-applicants in each country have a track record in policy-relevant research and are well networked nationally and regionally with academic, business and policy actors. The network will interact through a mix of virtual and face-to-face means - what we call evidence cafés - across a 17-month programme of work. These will be organised by the African partners in Africa and supported by the Open University which has experience of organising such learning events.

Our hypothesis is that new migrant communities in Africa have the potential to make important contributions to inclusive growth and economic competitiveness in the countries and locales where they settle. In order to assess whether and how such benefits may be occurring the co-applicants in the 4 African countries first have to map existing data in order to gain a much clearer picture of what gaps exist and where our research energies should be focused. The focus will be services since this is a growth sector where migrant participation appears highest and within this the African co-applicants will identify the 3 most relevant sub-sectors in their contexts from education, health, ICTs, and cultural industries.

The outcome will be a new international research network and advice to GCRF on migration's role in inclusive growth. We will also develop a series of collaborative bids to GCRF and other funders in 2018. The network will innovate by using the evidence cafés and distributed academic and practitioner networks to meet the learning needs of migrant investors in Africa as well as local actors who engage with them.

The network will bring together researchers from multiple disciplines and non-academic stakeholders from public, private, and third sectors in Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique and Nigeria who will be the immediate target for impact activities. Learning across cases and the development of conceptual frameworks will benefit national and international policy-makers, firms and civil society organisations. The final report will set out an impact agenda for the GCRF around the potential for migration to deliver inclusive growth.

Using the Overseas Development Institute's methodology (Shaxson 2014), the inception phase and evidence café 1 will develop impact strategies for each African country as well as the UK and internationally. This will identify stakeholders and a theory of change, which will lead to a series of linked impact strategies, overseen by Mugwagwa, the OU's International Development impact champion. The likely beneficiaries and benefits are:

1) Policy-makers & African NGOs in the case study countries: The benefits will be greater awareness of new migration flows into and within Africa, a better understanding of the cross-cultural business relations involved, and knowledge about how best to realise the potential for knowledge transfer and local capacity building. This will be achieved through the evidence cafés, evening receptions, policy briefs, and video blogs during the life of the project, and builds on the deep connections all partners have in their national and regional contexts. For example, AMADPOC was commissioned by the International Organisation for Migration to produce Kenya's migration profile, NOMRA was deeply involved in preparation of Nigeria's National Policy on Migration and National Labour Migration Policy, EMU has worked with the Southern Africa Migration Project on cross border entrepreneurship, and CMS has worked with the ILO, the EU, the Ghana Government and ECOWAS on migrant labour and diaspora engagement.

2) The migrant communities and local actors in the case study countries: Experience from ESRC-funded research with Chinese migrants in Africa suggests that limitations in mutual understanding between migrant groups and local actors are barriers to successful investment and skills exchange. Through evidence cafés and receptions, the research will provide greater knowledge of how migrant entrepreneurs and professionals can invest effectively in the case study countries, not only in terms of their own businesses but also in terms of supporting the development of local capabilities. By scoping the knowledge exchange needs we ultimately intend to co-design training materials to enhance the potential of new investors in African economies. We will assemble and work with migrant associations (e.g. Overseas Chinese & Chinese People's Association, Nigeria; Lebanese Women's Association, Ghana), returnee networks (e.g. Return Migrants Association, Ghana; MoveBackToNigeria.com), bi-national chambers of commerce (e.g. Nigerian-Indian Chamber of Commerce, British Chamber of Commerce Kenya) and representatives of local government, business and employee interests, such as ministries of trade and investment, chambers of commerce, trade unions, professional associations and vocational training centres.

3) International policy-makers and NGOs: Building on the immediate impacts we intend to provide longer-term advice to policy makers working in UN organisations (UNCTAD, IOM, ILO), multilateral agencies (World Bank), regional bodies (EU, AU, ECOWAS, EAC, SADC), national organisations (e.g. DFID, Department for Business Energy & Industrial Strategy, China-Africa Development Fund), and NGOs (e.g. AFFORD, Business Council for Africa) by disseminating recommendations for how to maximise the mutual benefits of these important trends. We will also engage with researchers from international migration research and policy organisations including IMISCOE, IOM, UNRISD, ODI and Chatham House to co-develop policy advice.