African Union Headquarters, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
The event was organized by Ecuador’s Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) 2019 Chair, in partnership with IFAD and the African Institute for remittances. Han Ulac Demirag, IFAD Country Representative delivered opening remarks, along with H.E. Santiago Chavez, GFMD 2019 Chair, H.E. Amira Elfadil, Director for Social Affairs, African Union Commission, and H.E. Mohammed Arrouchi, Ambassador Permanent Representative of the Kingdom of Morocco to the African Union and UNECA, and Chair of the African Regional Forum on Sustainable Development.
With over 258 million people globally living outside their respective home countries, most migrants maintain a profound connection with their families and communities back home through remittances.
In 2018 alone, an estimated US$528 billion were sent to developing countries by migrants abroad. The trend for remittances marks a steep growth and suggests remittances will exceed US$8.5 trillion by 2030. In the African context, the data is just as impressive. Migrants’ remittances to and within Africa exceeded US$85 billion in 2018, benefitting over 200 million households.
Approximately 60 per cent of remittances are estimated to be sent to the 55 per cent of the population who live in rural areas. For millions of families across the world, remittances represent a vital source of income, allowing them to prosper and move out of poverty, improve household nutrition, health, education, as well as housing, water and sanitation. In other words, they themselves are contributing to achieving the SDGs. Evidence shows that remittances also represent a major source for savings and investment, which help create jobs.
The current question is how to make remittances count more, and how to help make them more catalytic for development. A number of global initiatives facilitate these discussions from commitment to action, including:
- the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which sets the target to reduce the cost of sending remittances from currently 10 per cent to three per cent by 2030 (SDG 10.c)
- the 2015 Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference for Financing for Development, which recognized the positive contribution of migrants for inclusive growth and sustainable development in their respective countries of origin, as well as in transit and destination countries
- the 2018 Intergovernmental conference in Morocco on Global Compact for Safe, Regular and Orderly Migration (GCSROM), which reaffirms the role of migration in promoting faster, safer and cheaper transfer of remittances and foster inclusion of migrants (Objective 20).
The conference highlighted that remittances are crucially relevant part of IFAD’s work, representing a major opportunity for fostering job creation and supporting entrepreneurship in rural areas. IFAD’s work over the last 12 years on the development impact of remittances focused on making these flows count more where they are received. With more than 50 projects in 60 countries, IFAD explicitly aims to leverage the development impact of remittances to benefit recipient households and their communities. This year, with the support from the European Union, IFAD has launched PRIME Africa– the Platform for Remittances, Investment and Migrants’ Entrepreneurship in Africa. PRIME Africa will contribute for fostering viable local investments in rural Africa by helping to maximize the impact of remittances for millions of families.
The event provided a platform to exchange good practices and present new initiatives, foster synergies and discuss challenges and opportunities of migrants’ engagement in the countries of origin with all relevant actors in the African remittance market. To that end, achievements were presented towards SDG 10.c and Objective 20 of the GCSROM.
The outcome of the event will contribute to future discussions and bring forward the global debate on the contribution of migrants to sustainable development in Africa through better access and use of the remittances they send back home. The upcoming GFMD Summit in Quito, Harnessing migration for rural transformation and development is one such platform. IFAD is also organizing a Global Forum on Remittances, Investment and Development in June 2020 in Nairobi as a platform to build strong alliances for innovative solutions.
Read more: IFAD and remittances