BY SOLOMON DIBABA
In his recent speech at a fundraiser dinner conducted for the diaspora community, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed underscored on the institutionalization of diaspora engagement in Ethiopia and noted that although there is a startup process, more is to be done in the future.
In this contribution, institutionalization is defined as a process of structuring and staffing a legally established institution with well-defined objectives and functions that are technically sound projections on the relationship between input and output results.
It is generally estimated that more than 2.5 million Ethiopians live abroad engaged in various form of activities. Today, this number has galloped to 5 million. The influx of Ethiopians to foreign lands particularly North America and Europe and the Middle East was at its peak in the early 1970s and 1980s triggered by the repressive measures taken by the Derge regime which resulted in huge number of influx of refugees who fled the country.
According to Tariku Raga Lencho (2017, Dire Dawa University) the emigration from Ethiopia is a recent phenomenon that began in the 1970s with the outbreak of Ethiopian revolution of 1974, which led to two decades of conflict and large refugee out flows from the country. In the 1980s, refugee crisis in the horn of Africa was the largest in the world with over one million Ethiopian refugees residing in the neighboring countries of Sudan and Kenya (Kusch minder and Siegel,
2010:2). The majority of these refugees were got asylum in the United States and Europe though Some of them returned to Ethiopia in the 1990s. Currently, emigration from Ethiopia has continued with both low and high skilled migrants because of political and economic reasons (Tewabech, 2011). Opposition party members, bloggers and journalists have migrated to different developed countries because of unfavorable political environment in the country and young Ethiopian women have also migrating to Arab countries in search of better employment opportunities.
In this contribution the term diaspora refers to Ethiopians and Foreign citizens of Ethiopian origin residing abroad. A report issued by the National Bank of Ethiopia in 2019 indicated that foreign remittance from the Ethiopian diaspora amounted to 4.5 billion USD constituting 5 % of the GDP for the same year. In 2020.21 alone Ethiopians in the diaspora sent 3.6 billion USD.
Quoting Ethiopian Diaspora Agency Director-General Selamawit Dawit earlier in the year noted that in this Ethiopian fiscal year the Ethiopian diaspora have contributed a lot to their nation. They have contributed about 192.1 million Birr for the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), more than 30 million Birr for Dine for the Nation, about 282.8 million Birr for Covid-19, about 600 million Birr for Ethiopian Defense Forces and to support rehabilitation efforts in Tigray
State. Furthermore, around 103 million Birr for voluntary services, and over 1.1 billion dollars as remittance. They have been also fighting against foreign intervention in Ethiopia via different mechanisms.
Due to the brain drain and the quest for employment abroad and as the result of years of political and economic crisis the engagement of the Ethiopian diaspora population was limited to sending remittances and some engagements in voluntary health services and provisions of gifts in kind to the needy population in their country.
Prior to 1913 Ethiopia failed to come up with some kind of diaspora policy and an agency that would follow up on diaspora activities in the country. On March 1991 however a Diaspora Agency was established under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs followed by the promulgation of a diaspora policy in 1913.
Since then, a considerable number of the diaspora communities have carried out multiples sets of investments in the country contributing to the economic development of the country. In 2021, 83 diaspora owned projects were already operating in the country.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched a Diaspora Trust Fund requesting the diaspora community to donate 1 USD each day which instantly added up to 4 million USD. The efforts made by the government and the diaspora community to link up for the overall development of the country.
The merit of institutionalizing diaspora engagement in Ethiopia rests on a win-win approach in which both the diaspora community and the people of Ethiopia can benefit from accelerated cooperation in sector economic development for the country in a more sustainable manner.
Moreover, it is also important to link the plan envisaged in Ten years Home Grown National Economic Plan with the development programs in which stakeholders in the diaspora can shoulder some basic responsibilities in accomplishing the ten years plan.
The potentials in diaspora engagement are very huge and diverse. Prime Minister Abiy forwarded some suggestions on which the diaspora community can participate in the sphere of eco-tourism in some of the newly started projects and the tourist sector in general.
Institutionalization of diaspora engagement is also linked with widening the participation of the diaspora in various sector including critical sectors like finance and banking, education health, foreign trade, media development, agriculture, industry and mining sector. Institutionalizing the participation of the diaspora in these sectors will help to organize their participation in a more planned and well-structured manner.
The Ethiopian diaspora participation needs to be taken as part of the national plan for economic self-reliance and easing possible pressures from other countries who wish to tune in the country in line with their own national interests.
The Great Ethiopian Home Coming Challenge has become a major forum for the diaspora on the current situation in the country and what is to be done in terms of their role in taking shared responsibly for the development of their homeland. Institutionalization of diaspora support can not only increase the number of homecoming Ethiopians and citizens of Ethiopian origin but also enable them to invite Africans and Afro Americans as well as other US citizens to visit Ethiopia and appreciate world and Ethiopian tangible and intangible heritages in the country. The home coming challenge should be organized in a business manner so that all stakeholders in the country and abroad can benefit from the program and add value to the development of Ethiopian economy.
Support for the rehabilitation of war ravaged areas of Amhara and Afar region, rehabilitating the IDPs in the two regions must be given priority for rapid normalization of daily life in the concerned regions.
In areas of cultural education the Ethiopian government and the Ethio-American Development Council can arrange cross cultural educational visits for Ethiopian children in the diaspora so that they can be able to inherit the cultural values of their country and appreciate the roots of the history of their own country. Promotion of quality education in this country across all levels of educational institutions is another important area in which the government of Ethiopia and Ethiopians and foreign nationals of Ethiopia origin can work together in a more structured and institutionalized manner.
In its bid to destroy the health service delivery system in the two regions of Ethiopia, the terrorist organization has looted and vandalized the health institutions in both. The government of Ethiopia and the diaspora community need to work together is enabling the existing health service delivery systems to provide optimum services for the population in areas temporarily occupied by the terrorist group.
The other important area of the contribution which has already shown good results is a truth based counter propaganda response to the false propaganda that terrorist TPLF is still waging on Ethiopia even if its current effort to release doctored video footages to major international media outlets have totally failed.
It appeared that the terrorist TPLF and its international supporters have had the upper hand in misinforming the international community and the UN systems on the reality in Tigray and the rest of Ethiopia. There is therefore more to be done in this respect. Institutionalizing diaspora engagement would help to repulse and show the world the difference between falsehood and reality in Ethiopia.
It is highly appreciable that the Ethiopian government and Ethiopia American Development Council have started to work together to focus on issues of national importance in which the diaspora community can be mobilized to ensure the socio-economic and political development of this country.
On the other hand, despite the divisive plots by terrorist TPLF, the diaspora community members in different parts of the world have been able to remain united paving the way for institutional arrangements for sustained contribution to the development of Ethiopia.
Institutional approach will help to promote joint planning and evaluation of activities to maximize project outputs in a more organized and scientific manner. On the other hand joint partnership in ownership and implementation of projects will be useful to conduct projects in a cost sharing manner benefiting the diaspora communities. The transfer of modern technologies and skills to Ethiopia by the diaspora can bring about the desired results only when it is accomplished in a well-organized institutional approach.
Institutionalization will help to strengthen the reciprocity between the diaspora programs and the quest for economic integration in the Horn of Africa in which Ethiopians, Eritreans and Somali citizens can cooperate to create joint ventures for regional economic development.
This would also help to promote not only political but also economic pan-Africanism to fight of foreign economic dependence and neocolonial machinations in Ethiopia and the rest of African countries.
As mentioned in the deliberations mentioned above institutional approach in diaspora engagement is a key element in the nationwide quest for sustainable, participatory and equity in engagements on issues of national significance.
The basic requirements for institutionalizing diaspora comprehensive engagement need to be fulfilled in a more accelerated manner to avoid being bogged down by unnecessary red tape.
Editor’s Note: The views entertained in this article do not necessarily reflect the stance of The
The January 20/2022
