MIGRATION,REMITTANCES AND

DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA

Yves CHARBIT Professor at Paris Descartes University

Director of the CEPED1

AN IMPORTANT ISSUE

Do remittances contribute to rural development?

1. A brief summary of the migration situation in Africa

2. The macro-economic dimension

(aggregates and indicators)

3. The micro-economic dimension

(family poverty)

I. A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE MIGRATION SITUATION

SOUTH-NORTH or SOUTH-SOUTH

MIGRATION?

TWO-WAY MOBILITY

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION

INCREASED BY

INTERNAL MIGRATION

AFRICA IS UNDERGOING RAPID URBANISATION

Total population x 3.3 in 45 years

Urban population x 10 in 45 years

The rural exodus:80 million West Africans

PROJECTIONS FOR WEST AFRICA

15 % city-dwellers in 1960 60 % city-dwellers in 2030

Factors offsetting the imbalance?

A less isolated rural worldMobile phone subscribers in West Africa

Fixed line subscribers

II. THE MACRO-ECONOMIC DIMENSION

(AGGREGATES AND INDICATORS)

Are remittances a source of local wealth and development?

THE PROBLEM ASSOCIATED WITH DATA

1. No shortage of case studies on remittances to the rural world

2. But no global balance sheet available 3. Analysis by analogy (Charbit, 2009)

Two indicators:

• Remittances per inhabitant• GDP per inhabitant

What is the correlation?

A fairly low correlation

R2 = + 0.33 (for 19 countries)

Interpretation?

A result which is both

predictable and desirable

III. REMITTANCES, FAMILIES, LOCAL DEVELOPMENT

(MICRO-ECONOMIC DIMENSION)

SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

Situation:

• Remittances mean that health, education and housing costs can be met

• Thus benefiting the families, but also the rural communities

CHANGE IN FAMILY

STRUCTURES

Male migration:

almost 40% of women are heads of households in Africa (Lesotho)

A PROBLEM NOT SUFFICIENTLY STUDIED

Feminisation of poverty connected to emigration?

Female heads of household suffer serious disadvantages

• Illiteracy.• Widowhood (or youth in the case of the

husband’s migration). • Non-working, or involved in insecure, low-

productivity work.• More dependents and non-working members.

More acute poverty?

In Senegal, female households are less exposed to cash poverty than those headed by a man (Charbit and Kébé, 2007)

Two accumulative factors 

1/ Income from migrants is higherin households headed by women

• emigration of the husband to Europe or the USA

• internal emigration in the other households

2/ Mobilisation of social networks

IV. CONCLUSION

Remittances contribute to development:

• at the macro-economic level (country) • at the micro-economic level (families)

• They exacerbate the urban/rural imbalance

among many other factors,

• all connected to structural development, the urbanisation of Africa

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION

Yves CHARBIT

Professor at Paris Descartes University

Director of the CEPED 30