African Union (AU) says it’s keen to address the migrants issue and is putting measures in place. CCTV’s Girum Chala sat down with the AU Director for Social Affairs,Dr Mustapha Sidiki Kaloko , to discuss the AU strategies.
Dr. Kaloko, AU Director for Social Affairs: Where you cannot manage conflicts there will be forced migration …where there are religious or political persecution there will be migration.So the challenge of managing migration is the case…yet migration in the context of development has far far benefits than they are often perceived negatively.so for us at the African union yes we want to see we want to see migration in the context of development and we also increasingly try to increase capacity of our member states to be able to manage migration and of course the consequences of irregular migration…
Question – Time and again the African union has called on its member states to pursue policies to keep their youth at home. Do you see those policies being implemented across the continent?
Dr. Kaloko, AU Director for Social Affairs: The definition of keeping them at home at continental level means keeping them in Africa.not just keeping them in Ethiopia, in Nigeria, Egypt or South Africa ….keeping then at home is keeping them in Africa.And how do we do that Yes we need to create jobs but Africa economy has been doing well there is a tendency to say there has been growth without jobs it’s not so there has been growth with jobs all over the place.Can the African economies do more …of course we need to create more to keep up with our youth bulge…so that we can have the benefits of demographic dividend.But when we consult with the youth while developing agenda 2063 the youth told us to remove barriers in the continent to allow mobility …so AUs contribution is how do we enhance mobility on the continent.
Question –what is AU’S prediction for the African migration in 2016 should countries fail to provide the right policies and other recommendations that you have made for the youth to remain in the continent?
Dr. Kaloko, AU Director for Social Affairs: We have the African institute for remittances based in Nairobi,we want to continue to make sure that the institute work to bring down the cost of remittance fee..This part of managing migration for development.we realised that in 2014 we were able to account for 64 billion US dollars in remittance flow to the continent but measurement is still very poor …that is about a third we will account for.we want to move many of them to the financial system.
