Current estimates are that there are 244 million international migrants globally (or 3.3 per cent of the world’s population). It is estimated that 24.7 million international migrants are in Africa, more than 80 per cent of which migrate in search of employment.
For decades, Rwandans have been migrating into different parts of the world for socioeconomic reasons. As a result, Rwanda has an important diaspora community in various countries across the world, with major concentrations in neighbouring countries, Western and Central Europe and North America.
Since the mid of 2000s, the government of Rwanda paid attention to Migrants’ economic integration and aligned its policy to migration to reach to its economic development goals.
Attracting foreign investments and immigrant workers with valuable skills as well as facilitating the return of the diaspora could be one of the key strategies to meet Rwanda’s development.
The ILO-OECD Development Centre project report released last year indicates that the presence of foreign-born workers has benefited the employment opportunities of native born Rwandan workers. It reveals that the presence of foreign workers can be positive.
This report further shows that foreign-born population contributed between 10% and 11% of total revenue towards the government’s fiscal balance in 2012, while the value of their net per-capita contribution greatly exceeded that of native born individuals.
Rwandan diaspora living abroad send home $ 181.9 Million in 2016/2017 in remittances and investments-an increase of 17% on the previous year, according to the Rwanda central Bank figures.
The money is sent to relatives of Rwandans living in other parts of the world. But Rwandans abroad are also closely linked with real estate development and business at home.
Rwandan diaspora also support vulnerable communities within the country such as: One Dollar Campaign (2008-2010), No Rwandan Left Behind (2016) and participation in the One Cow Per Family (2006-2015) initiative
Based on the sectoral distribution of workers and their productivity, the immigrant workers are estimated to have contributed between 10% and 12.7% of the gross domestic product (GDP), which is much more than their share employment of 4.7%. Such positive contributions to the economy in part results from the large differences in skill levels between immigrant and native-born workers.
Recently, Rwandan Community and friends abroad for your contribution of Rwf168,666,034 to the #CanaChallenge, resulting in installation of solar home systems in 12,044 households.
The Express News
