[Africa] Migration has potentials to reduce poverty - Researcher

from Radio Gold

Research has revealed that migration, though had negative consequences for sending countries, could in the long run lead to economic development by reducing poverty at the household level, through remittances.

Dr Peter Quartey, a Research Fellow of the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), said what was needed was for sending countries to develop mechanisms to mitigate, as much as possible, the negative effects of “brain drain” and to encourage the return of qualified nationals resulting in “brain gain".

He said Ghana was on course in encouraging voluntary return migration citing instances of people coming in the form of short visits to families and permanent return with the aim of settling down to establish business enterprises after long periods abroad.

Dr Quartey said what was needed was for the Government to create avenues or investment opportunities for such migrants to channel their remittances into productive investments to help to build the entire economy.

He said that such endeavours, if taken more seriously and policies formulated to guide migrants, would, in the long run, benefit the whole nation.
Dr Quartey was speaking at the ISSER-Merchant Bank Development Seminar Series 2006 at the British Council Hall on Wednesday night on the topic: "International Migration and Poverty Reduction."

The seminar has the theme: “Does Globalisation Hurt or Enhance National Development? Ghana's Experience In The Last Two Decades."
He said although migration and development had been a growing area of interest, the focus of current debates had skewed towards the negative impacts of migration on development.

"While some have argued that underdevelopment is a cause of migration, others hold the view that migration causes developing countries to lose their highly skilled nationals.”

Dr Quartey said although there was a measure of truth in each of the assertions, properly managed international migration held enormous potentials for the development of the countries concerned.

Citing a case of nurses, he said the United Kingdom Nursing and Midwifery Council alone registered 1,326 Ghanaian nurses and midwives between 1998 and August 2005 with their net benefit amounting to 580.9 million pounds.
"But the net benefit of nurses’ migration from Ghana will be negative if one could cost it in terms of deaths due to staff shortages,” he said.

Dr Quartey said the wage disparity between nurses working in Ghana and their counterparts in the UK explained the exodus of Ghanaian nurses to the UK.
Touching on remittances, he said a survey carried out in Ghana in 2006 revealed that remittances formed a significant proportion of recipients' income.

Whereas 40 per cent of the sampled stated that migrant remittances were the main source of income, 60 per cent stated they had other main sources of income.
Of these two categories 20 per cent of respondents lived solely on migrant remittances, hence improvements in their general welfare.

Dr Quartey, therefore, concluded that migration of skilled labour overall significantly reduced poverty, since it had positive net private benefits.

Ms Elizabeth Adjei, Director of Immigration Service, said migration was a non-stoppable issue and that there was evidence across the world that some countries that once had high incidence of migrations had developed fast through remittances to become centres to which people now migrated.
She, however, cautioned would-be migrants to be wary of the dangers of living outside their countries.