Yinka’s view
The African diaspora is often discussed as a vast reservoir of capital and goodwill waiting to be tapped for the continent’s development. But that may undersell its value.
The numbers are there: the broader sub-Saharan African diaspora in the US has swelled to roughly 4.8 million people, tripling since 2000, according to Migration Policy Institute data. Nearly 50% of adults hold a bachelor’s degree or higher — outpacing both the broader immigrant population and native-born Americans.
In other words, first and second generation Africans in the US could move from “diaspora engagement” to “diaspora participation,” as trade lawyer and former US government official Ufo Eric-Atuanya explained in a speech on Capitol Hill this week. The diaspora, he said, should be treated as “an economic bridge” carrying capital, expertise, and relationships between markets.
It is a useful concept, particularly at a moment when there appears to be growing impatience with the idea that Africans abroad should simply act as a cash machine for projects conceived elsewhere. Instead, diaspora professionals and entrepreneurs should play a more direct role in originating companies, structuring investments, building supply chains, and developing infrastructure.
One compelling example is the continent’s emerging space industry. A recent paper on African space programs points to diaspora engineers as a pool of expertise developed abroad and suggests remote collaboration and incentives for returning professionals to help build capabilities.
But the paper also cautions that such engagement “cannot substitute for” domestic capacity. That is where the rhetoric around diaspora participation needs to be tested. It is relatively easy to invite communities abroad to conferences, solicit investment, or ask professionals to mentor young Africans. It is considerably harder to give them meaningful roles in building institutions and infrastructure.
The distinction matters because African economies do not simply need more money flowing across their borders. They need more productive capacity: businesses that can scale, infrastructure that can support them, and institutions that can retain the talent building them.
The diaspora can help supply all of those. But the goal should not be to make Africans abroad better sources of money or expertise. It should be to make them active participants in building the capacity that ultimately makes their participation less necessary.
Notable
- Remittances sent to the continent often outweigh the foreign direct investment and developmental aid, the World Economic Forum noted in a blog post.