Nairobi — An estimated 150 million people of African descent live outside the continent of Africa, mostly in the west. A clear majority of these African descendants were forcefully taken away and exported to unknown lands during slavery. This component of Global Africa is known as the Old Diaspora.

Since World War II, more Africans have emigrated all over the world as a matter of choice. This category of African ÈmigrÈs, estimated at ten million, is collectively known as the neo-Diaspora. Its membership is comprised of individuals who are generally highly trained. In this sense their departure from Africa is often referred to as 'skills exodus'.

Until now, Africa's relationship with its Global Diaspora has been halting and tentative. First, the continent's link with the Old Diaspora has been weakened by time and space, often leading to reciprocal mistrust. But there was a time during Africa's anti-colonial struggle and the quest for civil rights in America that both sides sensed synergy, value in cooperation.

Relations between continental Africans and their neo-Diasporans have had their ups and downs. Since the early 1960s to around the turn of the century, the neo-Diasporans were openly accused of being disloyal and unpatriotic defectors. After all, their mother countries had educated them at great financial self-sacrifice but, on completion of their studies, they 'absconded' and availed themselves to the highest bidders worldwide. They then lived abroad in luxury, while their compatriots back home continued to languish in crushing poverty. From this viewpoint, the neo-Diasporans are truly a thankless lot.

To them, however, this is a deeply offensive distortion. The truth is that they are refugees exiled and dejected by political and economic circumstances of their mother countries. They find themselves demonised in their original homes and marginalised in their adopted countries; they do not feel accepted as equal compatriots. Even if they have full citizenship of their adopted countries they often think of themselves as visitors who in the end must go home, someday.

Victimised on both fronts, the neo-Diasporans dismiss their critics back home as heartless predators who have wrecked Africa into 'the uninhabitable continent that it is'.

On brain drain, they insist that it is the African leaders who have forced and kept out indigenous talents by failing to nurture 'enabling conditions' for them to return home and engage in nation building.

Were the neo-Diasporans pushed out of Africa or did they jump abroad in search of greener pastures? As is often the case, the truth is lodged somewhere between the two extremes.

What is indisputable is that Africa has experienced a massive loss of its brainpower. Whatever the forces behind the talent outflow, Africa has endured a devastating loss as it is estimated to spend a staggering US$4 billion per year to import 100,000 foreign experts.

The 21st Century has witnessed a remarkable interest in forging linkages between Africa and its Diaspora. These sentiments have coincided with the AU's 'awakening' that the African Diaspora is a willing and sympathetic reservoir of skills and investment.

As the 20th Century came to a close, it was public knowledge that remittances from their Diaspora constituted a significant portion of the GDP of such countries like Nigeria, and Eritrea. And, it is generally acknowledged that submissions of remittances through informal channels are even larger than the formal ones.

Given such eye-opening revelations, the AU has gone an extra mile to seek ways and means of co-opting the Diaspora into the continent's agenda. Indeed, it decided in February 2003 to ultimately include the African Diaspora as its sixth region in addition to the five in Africa, with the goal of inviting and encouraging full participation of the African Diaspora as an important part of building Africa and consolidating the AU.

The question that remains unanswered is how an area as huge and diverse as Global Africa can be integrated into the AU structures.