Samia Yaba Christina Nkrumah calls on the Ghanaian government to engage the Diaspora as development partners”.

Samia Yaba Christina Nkrumah has called on her skilled compatriots in Diaspora to come home and help accelerate the country’s rapid development to middle income status by 2020. Samia accepted that the huge inflows from the skilled labour that Ghana lost in the 80s and 90s help the economy to stabilise as well as help those left behind, however she said “the time has come when we desperately need our skilled labour home to help in our own development”. She said “we cannot afford to continue to lose our bright skilled graduates to other countries” and directly appealed to her countrymen and women to stay and help the homeland. The contributions of Ghanaian Diaspora to the country’s development have been acknowledged in the past decade and Samia said Diasporas’ role in stabilising the economy towards the end of the last century cannot be under estimated. During the early 1990s Ghanaian Diasporas’ contributions through remittances, which average £2 billion dollars per annum, help stabilise the economy. Yaba Christina Nkrumah said “during those “heady days” remittances from the Diasporas became an important source of external capital which surpassed the amount of money Ghana receive in overseas development aid”. She said Ghana is still dependent on foreign aid and stated “the time has come when we need to take our own destiny as a nation in our hands and forge ahead in unison in the development of our homeland Ghana”.

Yaba said a number of Diaspora groups have become involved in development efforts through their own initiative by investing in community projects in their place of origin. She praised the various professional associations, especially the Doctors and Dentists, the Nurses and the Ex-servicemen Associations as some of the groups heavily involved in supporting the work of their colleagues in Ghana. She said those in the health profession must consider temporary return to help their colleagues home. She also praised the collective investment in community projects in various parts of the country by the “Homeland Associations” and said “the rational behind our hometown associations to improve the conditions of those left behind emanates from our strong sense of patriotism to our homeland Ghana”. Yaba said “throughout my time in Diaspora I never doubt or question my allegiance to my homeland Ghana, as a matter of fact I was at the forefront of African Diaspora in continental Europe to reconnect with the home continent, both in investment and capital development”. Samia called on the government to set clear policies where the country can tap into the huge poll of skilled first and second generation whose relatives migrated several generations previously, but who nonetheless identify with “our homeland Ghana”. Yaba said she met many of these first, second and even third generation migrants in Europe and North America who still retain links with the “home” country.

Yaba said groups included under the “generational” definition are quite heterogeneous and called on the government and policy makers to re-conceptualise initiatives that can take advantage of the transnational connections that the Diaspora groups possess. She cite the first and second generation of Chinese, Vietnamese and Malaysian Diasporas and their role in the development of their homeland and said Ghana has a very unique opportunity, like the Asians, to implement policies that would strengthen relationships with these groups who want to play a role in the development of their “home” country. She mentioned schemes such as skills exchange programmes which many Diasporas encourage their “host” countries to implement to the benefit of Ghanaians home. Samia said the potential benefits of such programme exchange to the poor, especially in the health sector, are enormous. Samia Yaba Nkrumah said mobilising the Diaspora for development of the homeland through skills transfer, Diaspora bonds and temporary return are some of most effective ways of taping into the large Diaspora’s wealth for the development of the country. Yaba said in the past Diaspora bonds have been used by Israel and India to raise over $35 billion of development financing and said several countries are considering (or have issued) bonds to bridge financing gaps. Yaba Nkrumah said beside patriotism, investing in Ghana by Ghanaian Diaspora is an Obligation of every citizen. She called on the NDC government to set up a new “Diaspora Development Bond” through Ghana Commercial Bank which will offer a favourable interest rate. Yaba said this could attract a large number of Ghanaians nationals to invest in the homeland