By Seid Hassan and Minga Negash | April 4, 2014
Ethiopia claims that it has enjoyed double-digit real economic growth for about a decade and that it is a stable nation. But the massive outmigration of its people points to a different reality
IN OUR 19 December 2013 article entitled ‘Explaining the Ethiopian outmigration: incentives or constrains’ we alerted readers and policy makers in Ethiopia about the push, pull and mediating factors of outmigration in general and outlined the factors as they relate to Ethiopia. In this short article we aim to discuss further the incompatibility between macroeconomic growth and outmigration and close the piece by outlining potential mitigation strategies.
By the end of 2013 and early 2014 the world witnessed yet another shame of Ethiopians. Voices of men, women and children in Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Libya, Southern Europe and Southern Africa are instantly being transmitted across the globe through the use of advanced information technology. Saudi Arabia alone deported at least 165,000 Ethiopians within the span of few weeks. Demonstrations were held in Kuwait and Israel against African immigrants. The European Union has erected various forms of fences against immigrants from Africa. AsEmnet Assefa of Addis Standard, a journalist in one of the local newspaper noted, “[o]ver the last few years, news of young Ethiopian men and women found dead inside jam-packed containers loaded on heavy duty trucks has become a routine media exercise both locally and in many parts of the continent.”
Abuses, abductions, disappearances and killings of Ethiopians in theMiddle East, North Africa, and Gulf States has become common. On Thursday 20 March 2014 the (U.S. based) National Public Radio (NPR) ran a heart-wrenching story of an Ethiopian young woman who took unbelievable levels of risk andinvestments to reach the shores of the United States. While outmigration is the history of mankind, as indicated in the holy books, for example, modern day migration, particularly migration into the Middle East, is documented to be associated withcalamities.
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