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Paper short abstract:

The Africa-Europe Platform is a project that aims to improve the transnational contacts and networks among African Diaspora organizations in EU countries and thereby boost the positive impact of their development activities on the countries of origin.

Paper long abstract:

Despite this reality is not always visible, the advancement of technologies and the systematization of information on a global scale, demonstrate the increasingly important contribution of African Diasporas for the effective development of their countries of origin.

Operating progressively, in a way increasingly professional, civil society gradually reaches levels of further elaborate organization, channeling more and more concerted synergies and resources available, combining the spirit of individual mission to the collective consciousness, anchored in expertise in a transversal and strategic vision of the future.

The use of the skills and capacities of African immigrants in Europe for the development of Africa is still well below its potential. The challenges are pressing and there are several aspects that stop work from being more effectively on the ground, namely: poor visibility and exposure of their work to a wider audience; structures still inconsistent in many organizations, lack of access channels of useful information and the means of financing, and also the little networking between organizations.. This

The European Wide African Diaspora Platform for Development (EADPD) was initiated to foster the creation of a solid and viable network that considerably increases the contribution of the Diaspora to the overall development of Africa in a sustainable and systematic manner. The project is funded by the European Commission and implemented by five consortium partners, namely: ADPC in the Netherlands; AFFORD in the UK; FORIM in France; CGMD and ICMPD in Belgium and includes organizations from the 27 EU member states, plus Switzerland and Norway.

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Paper short abstract:

Returnees to Somaliland are playing a significant role in the socioeconomic, political and cultural development of the country. The aim of this paper is to highlight the political character of returnees and their active participation within the local reconfiguration of power.

Paper long abstract:

In the last two decades Hargeisa has witnessed the return of a growing number of well educated, first generation Somalilanders from abroad who succeeded to well integrate in the host country and accumulate skills in terms of language, education and networks. Once back to Somaliland, they occupy important positions, particularly within the development industry. In fact, there is a growing trend among returnees to be employed within United Nations agencies and other non-governmental organizations that offer facilities to returnees with a western background. Strategic positions within the development industry give returnees the opportunity to make claims on their personal engagement in the development of the country. Through their discourses, returnees present themselves as the only agents of change and development, those who know better than others how to restore the country.

This paper critically explores the link between returnees and development. By consider them as political actors, it argues that returnees' narratives about development and their discourse on "difference-making" can be considered as strategies applied to increase their power and legitimize their return.

The ethnographic material draws from several field studies carried out in Hargeisa from March 2009 to August 2012. Primary data are based on participant observation and in-depth interviews with diaspora members, returnees and local actors.

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Paper short abstract:

The paper aims at studying the proactive roles which African Diasporas have played in the development of the continent through remittances, etc and the different steps taken by the Nigerian government to harness and mobilize her diaspora towards the development of the country.

Paper long abstract:

Today as never before, governments of most African states have recognized the importance of the Diasporas to homeland development through its gained experience and know-how, valuable networks and access to significant technology and capital. Most African governments are therefore, poised to create the enabling environment for harnessing these human resources outside the continent by organizing the Diaspora into an effective community. Using Nigeria as a case study, this paper notes that the Federal government of Nigeria as well as many state governments in the country has appointed Special Advisers on Diaspora Matters with a view to organizing its citizenry abroad for purposes of homeland development. The Nigerian government has equally included the Diaspora in the nation's development agenda.

This paper aims at studying the proactive roles which African Diasporas especially Nigerians have played in the socio-economic development of the continent through remittances, etc. The paper discusses the different steps taken by the Nigerian government to achieve its objectives.

From an academic point of view, the paper questions the conventional belief expressed in political economy literature with regard to globalization as diminishing the powers of the state. As a result of globalization, national governments are believed to have less autonomy and authority in controlling their domestic economies. Now, the emergence of state institutions whose sole purpose is to facilitate relationships between Diasporas and their home country challenges these ideas.

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Paper short abstract:

This presentation analyses the consequences of the new political agenda on migration and development in Sub-Saharan Africa on the practices and roles of the actors involved.

Paper long abstract:

Several programs have been put in place these last years in Sub-Saharan Africa with the aim to channel migrants' actions and particularly savings towards the development of their origin countries. This presentation analyses the consequences of the new political agenda on migration and development on the practices and roles of the actors involved.

3 main questions are being addressed in this paper :

Who funds migration and development projects in West Africa?

Who gets the funding?

What kinds of activities are being developed in order to promote the link between migration and development?

This research relies on the analysis of reports and documents as well as a qualitative survey conducted in France, Mali and Senegal in 2012 (50 interviews have been conducted amongst different institutions: governmental institutions; international organisations; non governmental organisations; migrants' associations.

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Paper short abstract:

Exploring a co-development project that involved Ghanaian migrants to Italy, the paper aims to investigate how development discourses and practices are envisioned by migrants’ association and diasporic collectivities that are becoming the new development brokers.

Paper long abstract:

By seeking to attract migrants resources, recently Ghanaian governments encouraged hometown associations in the receiving countries to fund development through various local partnership. The activities of sending states, of international organisations and community-based associations apparently converge in normalising "a particular reading of development, which is funded, as Mohan argues, on entrepreneurialism and a self-help, charitable ethos".

This paper scketches out an empirical analysis of a co-development project which involved a Ghananian migrants' association in Italy, the International Organisation for Migration and some relevant Italian economic actors. Ghanacoop, which is the name of the co-development initiative, was a cooperative company trading in fruits and so-called 'ethnic products' between Ghana and Italy and was managed by Ghanaian migrants. The company promoted initiatives and projects that dealt with health, education and sustainable development in Ghana, becoming an important development broker. Due to its entrepreneurial features, Ghanacoop succeeded in opening a new space of political negotiation with Italian and Ghanaian State institutions.

The analysis shows the complexity as well as the peculiarity of a migrants' organisation in which entrepreneurial idiom, development language and transnational identities are combined. Emphasis is given to the Italian representation of the cooperative as a tool for socio-economic development as well as to the historical path of the Ghanaian conceptualisation of the Nation and the role of people's self-help in development.

Based on an ethnographic research, the paper explores how development discourses, practices and projects are envisioned and enacted by Ghanaian migrants to Italy.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper is about the investment of the African diaspora in the development of African universities. It aims to analyze the levels, forms and rationale thereof.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the investment of North America-based African academics in the development of African universities. Its relevance is grounded in two facts. First, since independence, socioeconomic development of Africa has been subjected to the production of academic knowledge, hence African leaders' unanimous decision to multiply the number of universities. Second, as from the 1960s, an influential literature contends the relation between high education and development. For decades, this literature was dominated by a Marxist-inspired theory, which disparages the expatriation of highly educated arguing that it dooms Africa's prospect of development. In the 1990s, a new theory labelled « diaspora option » emerged. Contrary to the previous one, this theory posits that the presence of an African diaspora could become a chance for Africa, if this diaspora mobilizes for the development of the continent. Although fertile, this theory still remains mostly ungrounded and needs to be tested empirically.

This paper intends to do so. It results from a four-year research project carried out in Canada, US, Nigeria, South Africa, Niger and Ghana. 174 interviews were conducted with African academics in North America as well as with their peers and university administrators in the aforementioned African countries. The paper addresses decisive questions: What ideological factors and professional criteria draw expatriate academics to specific universities or colleagues and persuade them to help the latter thrive? To what extent nationality, research interest, the existence of local institutional support for research excellence determine expatriated academics' relations with colleagues and academic institutions in Africa?

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Paper short abstract:

The Rope of Africa is an unstable region because of almost and famines which raged for more than two decades and drain an importing mass.

Paper long abstract:

For several decades, countries in the Horn of Africa, especially Somalia and Ethiopia, have been identified as a theatre for ceaseless wars and chronic starvation.

Due to this situation a significant number of citizens from local populations have thronged to the Republic of Djibouti.

The latter has been politically stable since it became an independent nation in 1977, and hence its population has increased.

The city of Djibouti stays an important and fundamental stage on the migratory road of the Horn of Africa bound for the Arabian peninsula and also the ultimate and last stage before the boat ves the countries of the gulf in particular Yemen then towards Saudi Arabia.

Our analysis will concern to the Ethiopian and Somalian migrants in transit or living in Djibouti-city.

We shall emphasize the role of temporality (length of stay in Djibouti, the daily survival in town, time(weather) the migratory project, the migratory route(course) and its difficulties as well as the networks) in the urban practices of these migrants, in terms of welcome(reception), work, accommodation(housing) and their insertion in the urban dynamics of the city of Djibouti which groups(includes) more than 70 % of the total population of the Republic of Djibouti.

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Paper short abstract:

Malian diaspora is one of the most dynamic in the implementation of development projects in sub-Saharan Africa. This study based on empirical case analyzes the real scope and the concrete impact of development projects carried out by migrants originated from Kayes in Mali.

Paper long abstract:

Since the successive publications on the amount of Malian migrants' remittances, and the mobility of economic resources between their host and home countries, many actors began to consider them as "developers/migrants" or "development contractors". These groups of migrants are originated from Kayes, a Malian region where migrants carried out an important number of development projects during about thirty years. The present proposal analyzes the content and the concrete results of the development projects realized by these Malian groups of migrants over this long period. These practices have been oriented towards their origin village and more recently the entire region. The research exploits a field survey of four months on development projects of Malian organizations in France and Mali. The assumptions are based on semi-structured interviews and participant observation conducted within three migrants organizations. The aim is to assess the developpementalist component of these practices by identifying the projects' fields of intervention; its socioeconomic and cultural development effects in the origin village. This study implies to examine the sustainability of Malian diaspora development projects in their origin village and analyze to what extent these migrants' projects can be at the origin of the development in the Malian region of Kayes. In the case of this particular region, the effects of migrants' development projects have been crucial.