2.4 Analysing migration and inclusive growth data: quantitative

In Week 1, you looked at some quantitative data from the World Bank and other international organisations to understand some global trends in growth and how far they were ‘inclusive’ or ‘non-inclusive’. Week 1 also covered the need to combine data to get a fuller picture of what sorts of growth were occurring in any given context. In this and the next section, we want to put some of those general observations into practice by analysing some data on migration and inclusive growth drawn from the MIAG project.

Broadly speaking, the MIAG project sought to understand what role migration played in Africa’s inclusive growth. As discussed in Week 1, ‘big’ data can help us to understand trends at the national level and patterns of growth and inequality between nations. Likewise, data on migration can get a sense of the numbers of migrants in a country, as well as the net flows in and out of that country. We call this macro-level data. Of course, all this ‘official’ data only counts what can be counted, or what a nation state is able to count, so it is never fully accurate. For example, some states have weak capacity and so do not routinely collect some data, or when it comes to flows of migrants, many may enter a country illegally – which means they won’t get counted in formal immigration records. Despite these limitations, big data can help us understand some general trends.

But if we wanted to understand, for example, how migrant businesses recruit labour and what sorts of labour they prefer, it’s very difficult to get this information from national-level data. Equally, if we wanted to know about the skills levels of women migrants, we can’t get that from an international database. Because MIAG sought to understand migration’s impact on growth outcomes, we had to use other data-collection methods to get at these micro-level issues, such as:

• a business survey with immigrant businesses in the four African countries
• a survey of a smaller number of non-immigrant businesses to see if one type of business was more or less likely to bring about IG
• semi-structured interviews with various kinds of participants, such as migrant associations, leading figures in a particular migrant community, or officials with a responsibility for immigration and business matters.

MIAG sought to collect different sorts of data and combine them to help us analyse the complex links between migration and development. These data-collection methods break down crudely into quantitative and qualitative approaches. You don’t need to worry about understanding these methodological approaches in detail, but Table 2.1 summarises the key differences.

The semi-structured interviews are a qualitative approach, and the analysis of the macro-data is a quantitative approach. The surveys lie somewhere in the middle. A survey can generate quantitative data with factual or closed questions, such as ‘How many people do you employ?’ But a survey could have more open-ended questions or a spectrum of possible responses, like ‘What was the biggest barrier to setting up your business?’ In our survey, we combined both sorts of questions

Now you can try analysing some quantitative data.

You may have come up with different potential relationships and tentative explanations. What this activity shows is that big data can help us look at trends, but when it comes to definitive answers about whether immigration has caused such trends we can only speculate. This speculation is helpful to an extent, because it points in certain directions that need more investigation. Certainly, we need to know more about whether immigrants bring new investment into the country and whether they create businesses that help reduce the vulnerability of employment. And it is here, as we will find out, that micro, qualitative data can help.

Activity 2.6: Linking immigration to inclusive growth in Africa

Timing: Allow approximately 25 minutes

Now watch Videos 2.6–2.9, where the country experts for Kenya, Mozambique, Ghana and Nigeria try to explain some of the trends in the data, given their local expertise.

As you watch, use the space below to make notes in response to the following questions:

• How has immigration in each country changed over the last 30 years?
• Has this immigration been driven by any changes in the opportunities within each country?
• To what extent has this immigration in turn driven changes in each country’s development?
• Are there any common trends across the four countries?

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Transcript: Video 2.6 Immigration trends in Kenya.

Giles Mohan:

So could you give me a sense of how has immigration to Kenya changed over the last 30 years or so?

Linda Oucho:

There’s more immigration out of the country in the ’90s due to the political and economic situation in the country. So many people are looking for opportunities outside. From 2000 to 2010, we saw a change in the policies in terms of economic opportunities, and we saw an influx of immigrants to the country.

Then in the past ten years, we’ve seen an increased influx of diaspora and immigrants to the country. But the only thing that has remained constant has been the inter-regional migration: so, migrating between Kenya and Tanzania and Uganda. That has been always on the increase. So it has always been on the constant, since 30 years, even 40 years ago.

Giles Mohan:

And could you give a little more information about how some of those migration trends have been driven by changes in opportunities? So have more people come to Kenya as a result of economic opportunities? And if so, what kind of things has been happening in the Kenyan economy that has drawn people in?

Linda Oucho:

In terms of immigrants from outside of the region or the continent, we have seen more immigrants coming to take advantage of growing sectors, like manufacturing, infrastructural development, agriculture, and also oil and gas. So we see that the trend is based on existing and growing sectors that are in the region.

I think manufacturing is mostly dominated by a lot of the Indian nationals, because we’ve seen them work in the sector for some time. In terms of retail – this can even include hospitality – we saw a mix of both British and Indians as well, but it was mostly dominated by British nationals.

In terms of infrastructure development, we saw a lot of the Chinese that have actually dominated that sector, and that includes building of roads, houses. And in terms of trade of like small goods, if you’re looking at trade of food, clothing – second-hand clothing – or just African material, we found that with the migrants from the region in Tanzania and Uganda. We also saw a lot of Nigerians and West Africans in the ICT and banking sector in Kenya. And that, I think, has been in the past ten, 15 years.

Giles Mohan:

Can you give us a sense of what development impacts or inclusive growth impacts we might have seen, if any?

Linda Oucho:

We’ve actually seen the sectors change because they were very rigid before. A lot of different sectors are embracing new types of products. There’s an aspect of skills transfer because they obviously hire locally, so they have to teach them how do the work that they’re doing. So there’s this aspect of they could be creating job opportunities on a long-term basis and not just temporary for that particular sector.

And also, their presence has created competition. Because when there’s competition, people need to be able to give you good-quality products or results or services, and that [leads] businesses in this sector to change the way they do business in Kenya.

End transcript: Video 2.6 Immigration trends in Kenya.

Video 2.6 Immigration trends in Kenya.

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Transcript: Video 2.7 Immigration trends in Mozambique.

Giles Mohan:

Could you just give us an overview of some of the main trends in immigration into Mozambique over the last, say, 20 or 30 years?

Inês Raimundo:

Mozambique is no longer a transit country. Now it’s been a receiving end, because in the previous 30 years it was really a transit country, people coming from northern Africa even before the great invasion of Africa. They were just using Mozambique as a transit to reach South Africa, but now what we are witnessing in Mozambique is a reversal of the process.

For many reasons: from one side, the xenophobic attacks in southern South Africa. That country is no longer a friendly country, which means that people are no longer willing to go to meet or to work in South Africa because of that situation. Since 1992, after the Civil War that we had in Mozambique for 16 years, it means that the conditions of peace were already there and also the investment in country was open for foreign investment.

And behind this investment, of course, we can find migrants. Migrants, those are coming from the countries that are investors, but also the other people that are seeking the opportunities in Mozambique. So actually what is happening: we can see there’s already changes in the city, within the city of Maputo. Twenty years ago or 30 years ago, hardly you could see Muslims people here. Hardly you could see people wearing these long dresses, which means that now we are receiving people, more and more Muslims, and also we are receiving people who, in terms of the way that they’re dressing, are completely different with the normal, all the city-dwellers of Maputo.

But beside Maputo, also up north – if you go up north of Mozambique, also you’ll find a lot of people – migrants – because there are opportunities in the mining sector, forest sector. When I’m talking about mining sectors, I mean the gold mine in the western part of Mozambique. Unfortunately, gold mining is where we find looting in the other regions there, the mining, et cetera.

Because of these investments, the economy is boosting, which means there’s also the infrastructure. The building sector is growing in Mozambique in terms of housing, in terms of roads and including bridges.

Giles Mohan:

Infrastructure obviously is one benefit that these new migration flows have brought, especially with the Chinese. Are there any other benefits that immigration has brought, or is it mainly that area of infrastructure investment?

Inês Raimundo:

We have other categories of migrants. In fact, they are not involved in this big investment or big business. These migrants are formed by Africans. The Africans, of course, they’re coming – opportunities – and the Africans who tried to continue their journey to South Africa, but they didn’t get that opportunity. And they settle here.

The local people, they feel that the Africans give more opportunities to local Mozambican. Even Nigerians, a Nigerian health story. At least one or two Mozambicans, but these big companies, they don’t hire Mozambicans because the argument is Mozambicans are not skilled. They need highly skilled people.

They just find that they came because of bilateral agreements between the government picking the local language. They pretend that they don’t speak the language. The Chinese, they bring even the lowest skilled person. They bring here, not hire the locals Mozambicans. Their own way of doing things.

End transcript: Video 2.7 Immigration trends in Mozambique.

Video 2.7 Immigration trends in Mozambique.

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Transcript: Video 2.8 Immigration trends in Ghana.

Giles Mohan:

How has immigration to Ghana changed over, say, the last 30 years?

Joseph Teye:

Ghana has a long history of immigration, actually it dates back to even the colonial period, where a lot of people migrated to Ghana from the West African subregion to work, in those days, in the cocoa and the mining sectors. And then there were mass expulsions in the 1960s and the 1970s, where a lot of people left Ghana as a result of the mass expulsions which characterised migration governance in West Africa in the 1960s, ’70s, and the early 1980s.

But then there have been increased inflows of migrants again since the year 2000. So you will realise that although the figures on immigrants are not really reliable in the sense that the number of people moving to Ghana through unapproved routes, and those ones are not recorded, the figures shows that. The former figures show that the number of immigrants move from 190,000 to, in 2000, to about 420,000 as of 2017. So it tells you how the figures have been going up in recent years.

So the peak was from 2000. We are increasingly seeing more people from especially Asian countries who are coming to invest in Ghana. They are largely migrants that are investing in the agricultural sector, in the mining sector, in the manufacturing sector and then in also IT sector in Ghana.

Giles Mohan:

Is there anything, I mean, that you can point to that’s happened in the last 15, 20 years, around that 2010 period onwards, that explains that growth? Is it political stability? Is it new opportunities in the economy? Are things going on in Ghana that we can help explain some of those inflows?

Joseph Teye:

So the major thing here is the oil production. So as you see, Ghana found oil in commercial quantities in 2007, and then oil exploitation became dominant from 2010, 2011. And you realise that in the year 2011, Ghana’s economy grew very high. It was one of the highest in the world, growing by 14% in the year 2011 alone. And so because of the oil sector development, new opportunities emerged. That is, also, in addition to investment opportunities that were created.

As early as 1985, Ghana then implemented a new investment promotion code, which sought to give tax exemptions and other tax holidays to foreigners that have come to Ghana to invest. But that did not achieve remarkable results in the 1990s. But in 2010, 2011, when the oil fight and the oil petitions started, it also expanded opportunities in these sectors, as well as existing opportunities in agriculture and the trade sectors. And that is why we have more people moving into Ghana.

The economy has also moved to what is called a low- and middle-income economy with more opportunities for business. We do have a lot of political problems in the West African subregion, and Ghana appears to be more stable. So since 2000, we have an increasing number of people fleeing conflicts in some of the countries into Ghana, and that also accounts for the increased number of people in Ghana.

Giles Mohan:

Do you think these new immigration flows are driving positive changes in Ghana’s development in terms of things like job creation, investment, demand for other supplies and things like that? Or is it a less inclusive form of growth?

Joseph Teye:

Thank you so much. So, the issue is slightly complicated. On one hand, the companies that are coming to Ghana are creating jobs, especially if you are talking about the oil and gas sector. In the oil and gas enclave of the Western region, Takoradi area, some of our earlier researches have shown that new jobs have been created for Ghana. So you have both direct jobs – that is, people who are employed directly by these companies – but you also have indirect jobs, those industries that is trying to provide services to these people.

So, on one hand, jobs have been created and that is good for Ghana. Then there is also increased revenue, revenue in the form of both the taxes that have happened and the royalties that the government gets. So, apart from the oil and gas sector, many of the foreign-owned companies or firms pay taxes, and even the people they bring to Ghana to work also pay taxes, so those are positive.

But having said that, here is also the other side of the development that we need to look at. There are sometimes some Ghanaians feel that foreigners are competing with them for jobs. So the last three companies that had tried to employ Ghanaians, but when we have individual migrants migrating to work in the informal sector, like from China or from Nigeria, there have been agitations from the Ghana trade unions, that these people are competing with them for jobs. So they are seeing the presence of immigrants as negative. So it means they are thinking they are not able to sell their goods, and which is why some of them are out of a job.

The other side that has also come out clearly in the public arena is the environmental consequences, which, if you are looking at inclusive growth, you may also want to look at the effect of the activities of the migrants on the environment. And that has also come out, clearly, especially when you are looking at Chinese in the mining sector of Ghana.

End transcript: Video 2.8 Immigration trends in Ghana.

Video 2.8 Immigration trends in Ghana.

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Transcript: Video 2.9 Immigration trends in Nigeria.

Giles Mohan:

Could you tell us a little bit about the kind of main immigration trends in Nigeria over the last 30 years?

Aderanti Adepoju:

The Nigerian migration architecture has changed dramatically over the past 30 years – 50, 30 years. And the changes have been associated either directly or peripherally with changes in political systems and the economy. 30 years ago, Nigeria was a vibrant economic-based country that had a lot of employment opportunities, particularly for highly skilled persons in petrochemical industries, and manufacturing, and so on.

And that attracted a number of immigrants, semi-skilled and skilled, from across the world. Salaries were highly paid, infrastructure was functionally doing well, and it was an icon of development in Africa then. And it was attracting workers of all categories from neighbouring countries to fill the gap that the nationals couldn’t do.

Ironically, at the same time, nationals also were emigrating out to engage in training and capacities to equip themselves with additional skills to match the demand at home. People were going for educational ventures, learning in technology and medicine, and in allied [industries]. Sadly, that trend didn’t last for too long.

Due to political changes and the intervention of the military that rules in Nigeria for several decades – four or five decades – most of the developmental trends were completed. And that also affected the perception and the flow of people that came to Nigeria to work.

Salaries, one, slowly started a little bit. Labour strikes were unusually common. Universities closed shop severally. And there was contentment in the economy, in the society and equality. In particular, in equality. And that generated not only a stop in the inflow of migrants to Nigeria, but stalled outflow for people that thought they had economically viable credentials to be able to secure employment internationally, because they were marketable internationally then.

Secondly, the currency, the naira, was particularly strong – some people would say overvalued. But it was so strong that people who migrated were able to send money home and invest in business ventures, industry, home construction and so on. People were economically viable and they profited from the ventures.

Thirdly, the Nigerian military developed all kinds of strategies that were not sustainable for the economy. Migration outflow, particularly of qualified personnel, took a very rapid turn. And this meant manpower leakages. Nigeria gradually turned almost dramatically from a labour importing to a labour exporting country.

Giles Mohan:

Would you say of the last few years, has that been reversed? I mean, are you seeing some of those people that left, say, in the ’80s to pursue careers and lives in the UK or in the US –, are those people beginning to come back to Nigeria now? Or is it still a case of net outflow?

Aderanti Adepoju:

The workforce has become largely unemployable. Universities have been on strike. Sometimes a course that can take four years now takes about seven years because of regular, sporadic strike. And the output of graduates are largely unemployable. And that’s a very terrible aspect of the Nigerian labour markets.

End transcript: Video 2.9 Immigration trends in Nigeria.

Video 2.9 Immigration trends in Nigeria.

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Discussion

Kenya

The trends, opportunities and impacts of migration on Kenya are as follows:

• Trends:
  • Political instability led to emigration in the 1990s
  • More recently there have been changes in policies, meaning diaspora return and immigration to Kenya
  • Intra-regional mobility is a constant
• Opportunities:
  • Existing and growing sectors
  • Manufacturing (Indians)
  • Retail and hospitality (Indians and UK)
  • Infrastructure (Chinese)
  • Trading (regional)
  • ICT and banking (Nigerians)
• Impacts:
  • New products
  • Skills transfer and hiring locally
  • Job opportunities
  • Competition

Mozambique

The trends, opportunities and impacts of migration on Mozambique are as follows:

• Trends:
  • Mozambique is no longer a transit country
  • It now receives migrants
  • South Africa is no longer friendly
  • There is peace in Mozambique
  • There are more Muslims in Maputo
  • Migration is not just focused on Maputo
• Opportunities:
  • There is peace in Mozambique
  • The country is open for investment
  • Mining
• Impacts:
  • Buildings and infrastructure
  • Africans are given more opportunities than locals

Ghana

The trends, opportunities and impacts of migration on Ghana are as follows:

• Trends:
  • Long history of migration from colonial period
  • West African region
  • Expulsions in the 1960s and 1970s
  • Immigration has increased since 2000 from 190,000 to 420,000
  • Immigration from Asian countries is increasing
• Opportunities:
  • Mining
  • Agricultural
  • IT
  • Oil discovery in 2007
  • Other investment opportunities following investment policy change
  • Lower and middle income status
  • Political stability
• Impacts:
  • Jobs in some sectors, such as oil and gas
  • Service jobs more indirect
  • Taxes and revenues
  • Competition for jobs
  • Environmental consequences (such as Chinese in mining)

Nigeria

The trends, opportunities and impacts of migration on Nigeria are as follows:

• Trends:
  • Nigeria used to be a vibrant economy
  • Emigration for education and training
  • Military rule undermined development
  • Lots of emigration and reduced immigration
• Opportunities:
  • Nigeria has lots of immigrants, especially from neighbouring countries
• Impacts:
  • Skilled people left
  • Local employment is tight

In terms of common trends, political stability emerges as critical: it has brought inward migration flows in Ghana and Mozambique, whereas political instability in Nigeria and Kenya has led to emigration.

In most cases, immigration is driven by one or two economic sectors, such as oil or mining. Africa’s place in the global economy has largely been as a supplier of raw materials, so these trends are to be expected.

But there are some signs of diversification, with ICT appearing to be a growth area. Chinese migration also seems common across all four cases – as the Chinese economy has grown there has been a growing need for raw materials, while competition in China has forced many Chinese to seek a living overseas.