Africa: What's Diaspora Got to Do With It?

10 January 2012
analysis

It's fast becoming commonplace to say Africa is experiencing a renaissance. Many of its countries, once bywords for hopeless basket cases, have made a sharp turn away from skid row onto Prosperity Avenue, their booming economies, growing populations and returning diasporans celebrated. But should the last be a cause for celebration?

For a long while, Africa's diaspora have been a trump card afro-optimists have wielded against the pessimists despairing about the future of the continent. Rather than a symptom of a 'brain drain', they saw in this large pool of skilled professionals the brightest and best of Africa, who fled the detritus of the failed states of the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and became the vanguard that would transform said basket cases into shining examples of functioning market democracies.

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