Migration for Inclusive African Growth Network

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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.