Mobility, Human Capital, Remittances, and Economic Transformation

The Oxford Handbook of Africa and Economics

Yaw Nyarko

Migration and its related remittances is now an important feature of many economies, both the source countries and many destination countries. The flows are big in numbers and in economic significance. This paper is a distillation of research that has been and continues to be conducted in and around the question of migration, the brain drain, skills accumulation, remittances, and economic transformation. The chapter shows that the combination of incentives to skills accumulation, remittances, and the return of better skilled workers home result in many benefits and the potential for economic transformation in the source countries. This chapter will focus on Africa, although examples will also be drawn from the Arab Gulf states and Asia.