The director general of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Portuguese António Vitorino, proposed mechanisms that allow African diasporas to invest in the development of the continent.
“The potential of the diaspora is enormous, as long as it is structured, organized with guarantees of investment security, but it can be an essential contribution to the development of the continent”, said, in an interview with Lusa, António Vitorino, who was in Addis Ababa at the 36th African Union Summit of Heads of State and Government, which ended on Sunday.
“We believe that there is an opportunity to mobilize African diasporas around the world to contribute and invest more actively in the development of their countries of origin,” said Vitorino.
The official recalled that “750 billion dollars is the annual value of remittances on a global scale and that this represents more than direct foreign investment and development aid combined.”
On the other hand, his presence at the summit was also aimed at accompanying the creation of the continental free trade zone.
“The African Union has a very ambitious project to create a free trade area on the continent and, for that, it is necessary to provide human mobility,” explained António Vitorino.
“You cannot separate trade from human mobility from migration,” he recalled and stressed that this was also a “lesson of the pandemic.”
So, “the world stopped and there was an economic cost to pay because people couldn’t move.”
“We often forget that 70% of African immigrants go from one African country to another African country, only 16% of African emigrants go to Europe, which means that there is great potential within the African continent in terms of human mobility and intra-African migration. contribute to the development of the free trade zone”.
António Vitorino is running for re-election in office and was confident in the support of African countries.
“In these four years in which I have been the director of the organization, IOM has made a great investment in the African continent” and Africa is “clearly the priority” of the management.
“And we did it not because it corresponded to an IOM agenda, but because it corresponded to the needs of people, particularly refugees and internally displaced persons, whether due to conflict or climate change, who are increasingly more on the basis of human mobility in Africa,” he explained.
Regarding his candidacy, António Vitorino declined to comment on the statements of support, limiting himself to saying: “I am sure that good work is always recognized.”
Source: TSF
