MIAG

Overview

The Migration for Inclusive African Growth (MIAG) network is an international collaboration between UK and African partners to establish a substantial research and impact agenda that makes innovative contributions to two priorities highlighted through the UK Governments Global Challenge Research Fund: Foundations for Economic Growth and Migration.

This research examines how migration can foster inclusive economics across four African countries; Kenya, Nigeria, Mozambique and Ghana. We are interrogating the potential that migrant communities offer Africa in generating economic growth to address poverty, while also identifying possible emergent inequalities both within migrant and non-migrant populations that migration might generate.

African economies have grown over the past decade. There is evidence that Africa is attracting a new wave of international investment and some new, global ‘emerging powers’ are seen as the vanguard of a quest for natural resources and markets. This has created substantial new ‘South-South’ migration flows to Africa. In parallel, the economies of the global North have been stagnating and Western governments have been incentivising entrepreneurs to invest in Africa and increasing numbers of unemployed European citizens are seeking opportunities to work there. African diasporas based in Europe are returning to Africa to set up new businesses. As such we are seeing new South-South and North-South migration flows that may have the potential to generate inclusive economic growth.

With migrants recognised as a way of promoting international trade and investment as well as the transfer of technology, skills and knowledge, migration to Africa has important implications for the economic competitiveness and development of both sending and receiving countries. However, our knowledge of the size, motivations, organisation and impacts of recent flows and how they are reshaping more established communities of co-nationals is largely anecdotal. This research is filling this gap in knowledge by investigating how and to what extent contemporary migrant communities are taking advantage of, and contributing to, new opportunities for development in Africa.

Central to this research is the role of migrants and the need for integration by bringing together researchers from multiple academic disciplines and non-academic stakeholders from public, private, and third sectors in Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique and Nigeria to: (a) understand how different migrant groups contribute to inclusive growth and (b) enhance this contribution by identifying practice and policy lessons and co-designing knowledge exchange tools for migrants.

The role of IET

IET are leading Evidence Cafes as a form of learning and knowledge exchange between migrants and other relevant stakeholders, including government officials and policymakers.