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Tribalism Endangers Labour Migration In Africa

Feature Article Tribalism Endangers Labour Migration In Africa
NOV 17, 2015 LISTEN

Mr. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah is a diplomat with the United Nations (UN). He has concern to think of the scenes Africa may be contemplating in, say, 20 years, if the continent does not make a massive consolidated effort to create jobs and opportunities, especially for migrants.

Ould-Abdallah affirms in a UN summit that what is happening now in the workforce of Africa is only a tip of the iceberg, compared to what will occur if urgent solutions are not found.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO), tints that labour mobility is essential owing to the fact that it has become the chief characteristics of globalization and the global economy.

The international organisation says it is on a mission for human and labour rights with a motto suggesting that labour peace is indispensable to affluence.

The organisation informs that migrant workers earned US$ 440 billion in 2011; and the World Bank estimates that more than $350 billion of that total, the developing countries benefited it, in the form of remittances.

Kofi Annan, a former UN Secretary-General whispers in a World Economic and Social Survey, “We cannot ignore the real policy difficulties posed by migration, but neither should we lose sight of its immense potential to benefit migrants, the countries they leave and those to which they migrate.”

Tales of woes against migrants
Annan’s views on the benefits of migrants apparently are disobligingly in Africa. Just early this year, many South Africans justified killing, claiming that migrants were taking jobs from South Africans.

Migrants, who were not pummeled to the South African soil, were forced to flee for safety. Mr. Raila Odinga, who's Prime Minister of the Republic of Kenya, said in an exposition that ethnicity has roundly been condemned as the bane of Africa.

He added that it was easy to see why: In almost all African nations, so many lives have been lost in civil wars that had clear ethnic undertones.

A Political Writer-based in Zimbabawe, Reason Wafawarova said in a public presentation that the world saw what happened with xenophobic; or is it afrophobic attacks in South Africa recently.

“Tribalism has nurtured the typical African into a hating animal when it comes to outsiders, and most of us inherently consider outsiders lesser beings, even those that are clearly more successful than ourselves,” Wafawarova said.

A state government in Nigeria gave reason in 2014 why it sent internally migrant workers, who were not natives of that state, packing.

Extenuating its action, the State’s Commissioner for Information intimated that their action did not violate the constitution of the country or caused disunity.

The Commissioner added that there were States in the country that started the demeanor of sending Nigerians who were not natives of the States of their residences packing, before the Commissioner’s State did.

The disengaged Civil Servants took to protests that rented condemnation on the State. In what many said was political, the sacked non-natives were later called back to work. But the shoddy deed had been done: About 60 persons, who were among the numerous numbers of persons sacked from the Civil Service of that State, were reportedly dead.

Mr. Ben Bruce, a Nigerian businessman and politician told newsmen on November 2 2015 that tribalism, regionalism and religious intolerance were strange to post independence and early independent Nigeria.

Something prompted Bruce to say that. According to him, he was very angry on Friday, 23rd of October, 2015, when one of his Twitter followers tweeted a photo of an advertisement for a room to let.

Bruce said that what was disturbing about this ‘to let sign’ was that the landlord listed a long list of tribes that he would not rent out his premises to.

The Executive Governor of Katsina State, Aminu Bello Masari, on October 9 2015, spoke to journalists with a bias caption, "Why we don’t award contracts to non-natives."

In Ghana, the National Association of Nigerian Traders (NANTS) in September 2014 averred that the Ghanaian Government disengaged its members from Ghanaian markets.

This is a diminutive account of what migrants in search of a work, outside their places of birth, suffer in Africa. Hence, relegating the Labour Migration policies of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), to the background.

International Labour Organisation on labour migration

There are campaigns ongoing across the world by the ILO. The pigeonhole was that many analysts mistake Forced Labour for Labour Migration. ILO, however, defined Forced Labour to include debt bondage, trafficking and other forms of modern slavery.

“The victims are the most vulnerable – women and girls forced into prostitution, migrants trapped in debt bondage, and sweatshop or farm workers kept there by clearly illegal tactics and paid little or nothing,” ILO enclosed.

Nonetheless, people would not ordinarily be leaving their native homes or countries in search of a livelihood elsewhere. According to the ILO, globalization, demographic shifts, conflicts, income inequalities and climate change, were amongst the factors that motivate people to cross borders.

With about 110 million migrants working in places that are not their birth places, ILO said that with the trend of changing events, many more people will be migrating with their families in search of work.

Africa meets for Labour Migration
Under the patronage of the African Union Commission (AUC), the International Labour Organization (ILO), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and the Regional Economic Communities (RECs), there have been meeting upon technical meeting to discuss computing of data and synchronization of labour migration statistics for the African region.

There was a roundtable on intra-regional migration and labour mobility in Africa, which started on March 23 2015. The motive was that development and regional integration tale of Africa is crucially the story of internal (intra-state) and external (inter-state) migration patterns.

“It is imperative that the African Union develops a Protocol on free Movement of persons, the Right of Residence and the Right of establishment as provided for in Article 43 of the 1991 Abuja Treaty,” said Dr. Khabele Matlosa, who’s African Union Commission (AUC) Director of Political Affairs.

What some African countries that disengage non-natives from their workforces do not take into cognizance was that ILO had found out that the migrant workers contribute to growth and development in their countries of target.

Benefits of Labour Migration
The UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their Families came into force in 2003.

“Together, Africans and Europeans, we have a duty to dismantle the illegal immigration networks, behind which hides an appalling and mafia-like traffic,” the now former French President Jacques Chirac told the France-Africa Summit in Mali in December 2005. “Together, we must encourage co-development and enable Africans to enjoy decent conditions for living and working in their own countries.”

Apart from migrants making money from states and countries of their destinations for their upkeep, ILO found out that they also contribute immensely to the economic growth and development to their host states and countries.

“When properly managed, labour migration has far-reaching potential for the migrants, their communities, the countries of origin and destination, and for employers.

“While job creation in the home country is the preferred option, demographic, social and economic factors are increasingly the drivers of migration.

“As a result, a growing number of both sending and receiving countries view international labour migration as an integral part of their national development and employment strategies,” contained ILO.

The group added that labour migration relieves unemployment pressures on the countries their citizens are emigrants.

“On one hand, countries of origin benefit from labour migration because it relieves unemployment pressures and contributes to development through remittances, knowledge transfer, and the creation of business and trade networks.

“On the other hand, for destination countries facing labour shortages, orderly and well-managed labour migration can lighten labour scarcity and facilitate mobility,” ILO said.

Improving on Labour Migration
The 2005 Addis Ababa-based UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) recommended that the Agricultural sector must be top priority in countries policies for job creation.

Experts and NGOs are of the suggestion that migration receives the assistance of large spectrum of the media such that happens in the Europe and USA, with foreign workers in those continents making headlines whenever there was a mishap.

"Only few social topics invoke as much opinionated coverage and outspoken criticism in European papers. The continual debate is disproportionate to the facts about immigration.

“In a way, the situation in West African media is similar: while there is much less coverage about migration, reports are often not sufficiently comprehensive or struggle to relay the voices of migrants – especially women – and their families.

“Such flawed media coverage influences the public debate on migration management," reported International Centre for Migration Policy Development.

A source added, “Governments should work to minimise regulations to private, domestic and foreign investment, provide infrastructure and promote political systems that allow the majority of citizens to become involved, ECA notes in its Economic Report on Africa 2005.

“Currently, jobs being created in agriculture are in the informal economy, at low levels of productivity, the ECA notes. These cannot provide workers with enough income to pull themselves or their families out of poverty.”

However, checks have it that every country believes that it has a limit of the migrants it can take, to enable it control its national employment, unemployment and underemployment rates to avoid underutilised labour as was the case in France and Italy where “underutilised labour reached 21 per cent in 2004, up from 17 per cent in 1994.”

The International Centre for Migration Policy Development in a different foray, said, “There is need to strengthen the capacity of African Media practitioners and journalists to provide information on migration in West Africa, encourage public debate on issues linked to migrations in the targeted countries and, support co-operation and knowledge transfer between African media and journalists, to produce and exchange balanced and quality information on migration.”

Odimegwu Onwumere is a Poet/Writer; he writes from Rivers State, Nigeria. ([email protected]). Tel: +2348057778358.

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