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Why is the regime so actively courting the Togolese Diaspora?

Togo - Opinions
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Politically Ostracized and yet the Best Sponsor of the Homeland Economy

Why is the regime so actively courting the Togolese Diaspora?


Soiliou Daw Namoro

Why is the regime so actively courting the Togolese Diaspora?

Politically Ostracized and yet the Best Sponsor of the Homeland Economy:
Why is the regime so actively courting the Togolese Diaspora?


Soiliou Daw Namoro

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Contents

1. Introduction.
2. The importance and the economic power of the Togolese Diaspora.
2.1. The early years of trans-border population movements.
2.2. The size and the economic power of the Togolese Diaspora
3. The motivations behind the political ostracism of the Diaspora.
4. The charm offensive of the government of Togo.
5. Our right to vote.
6. Conclusion: Change is what we need to invest in.

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1. Introduction.
Although Togo has always had a Diaspora of high economic potential, the importance of these men and women scattered overseas around the world has only recently become a matter of national interest and a topic of development policy. As of 2010, Togo has become one of the top recipients of remittances in Sub-Saharan Africa, in terms of the remittances’ share of the GDP. Because these monetary transfers are made by individual workers who are largely, if not exclusively motivated by personal goals, their merging into a gigantic financial flow is not readily observable by individual members of the Diaspora, unlike the government of Togo (henceforth, GOT), which enjoys rapidly growing fiscal receipts, thanks to a continuous inflow of investment capital from the Diaspora. The GOT also welcomes with a sense of relief, the direct alleviation of poverty by remittances from abroad.

In an attempt to redirect the remittances toward more government-controlled uses, the GOT initiated in 2010 a program called the “Diaspora Program” (DP), the official goal of which is to promote developmental projects in collaboration with the Diaspora, and to encourage the transferring back to the homeland of the Diaspora’s knowledge and know-how.

In the pursuit of these wishful goals, the GOT faces the big challenge of how to institutionalize its relationship with the Diaspora, an exercise that will require an inclusive dialogue with the Diaspora. However, a salient and constant feature of the regime’s policy towards the Diaspora has been to systematically exclude the latter from national polls by failing to organize external voting. This policy operates as a political ostracism upon the Diaspora (whence the title of this paper) and has always been denounced by it. Diaspora organizations have constantly demanded that the GOT and the election management institutions allow expatriates to cast absentee ballots in countries and regions where they live.

This paper’s objective is to shade light on the issues raised by the recent charm offensive of the GOT towards the Diaspora. We seek to stress not only the factors that have generated and fueled the regime’s apparent fear of the country’s Diaspora, but also the rationale for the GOT’s “new” attitude towards the Diaspora, and we discuss the DP’s chances of success.

We present and discuss in Section 2, the available evidence on the economic power of the Togolese Diaspora, as well as the relative strength of each of the geographically dispersed components of the Diaspora. We examine in Section 3, some of the possible reasons behind the longstanding negative attitude of the regime toward the Diaspora. In Section 4, we discuss the recent charm offensive of the regime towards the Diaspora, by placing the GOT’s initiative in the general context of development policies that focus on remittances as a major source of investment capital. More specifically, we provide a brief review of some country experiences in the area of Diaspora bonds, inside and outside Africa, following which we offer a discussion of the DP’s chances of success. In Section 5, we argue that even though in the light of the examples considered in Section 4, there is no apparent link between a country’s financial tie with its Diaspora and the provision of external voting, the Togolese Diaspora should make its financial cooperation with the GOT conditioned on its full participation in national polls. We nevertheless recall beyond the contribution to the homeland economy, the fundamental considerations which justify the Diaspora’s demand of external voting. We conclude the paper by arguing that a change in governance (through a peaceful change of regime) is what the country urgently needs. All Tables and figures are to be found in the appendix.

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