By GERSHOM NDHLOVU
LEADERS who gathered for the 2010 Africa France Summit which ended in the French city of Nice last week have decided to place the African Diaspora living in France at the centre of strengthening synergies between migration and development strategies.
According to the final declaration of the 25th Africa France summit to which over 40 African leaders were invited by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the strategy would promote the involvement of the African Diaspora living in France in the economic and social development of their countries of origin.
This would be by means of co-development of programmes, encouraging migrant business projects and mobilizing their savings for social and productive investment.
The leaders welcomed the decision by financial operators and insurance firms to reduce the costs of remittances and offer new services suited to migrants’ needs and the needs of their countries of origin.
Nicolas Sarkozy
They also commended the arrangements that France has made with financial operators to improve the co-development savings mechanism to make it more attractive and more suited to investment projects in the countries of origin.
They recognized the need to support the development efforts of African States in order to prevent illegal migration flows and stressed the need to regulate the activity of intermediaries of migrants’ remittances.
Zambia’s President Rupiah Banda has in the last two years of his administration set up a Diaspora Desk in his office to encourage and co-ordinate dialogue with Zambians living abroad, but it is not clear how this would fit in the proposals for Africans living in France.
The summit stressed with concern Africa’s growing needs, especially regarding development financing to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 and beyond.
“To this end, they provided their support for the idea of holding an African conference on innovative financing and for the adoption of an African declaration on transparency of financial governance and fighting illegal capital flows,” the declaration stated.
It was agreed that these two initiatives could generate significant added value ahead of the 4th United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries scheduled for the second half of 2011 in Turkey and could help mobilize additional, stable and predictable resources to supplement official development assistance and development financing efforts.
The declaration stated that France announced the creation of the African Agriculture Fund, an investors’ fund to support the development of agricultural projects in Africa and food distribution projects. The fund would initially raise US$120 million which would eventually reach US$300 million.
This was after Heads of State and Government stressed the vital importance of food security on the African continent and called for the sustainable management of African fish, subsistence and agricultural resources.
They agreed to work together on a mechanism, under the French presidency of the G8/G20 and beyond, to combat volatile agricultural commodity prices and strengthen food security.
