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Traditional global migration patterns are being challenged by the economic recession. Usually, people from poor countries flee to the West in search for jobs and opportunies. Now, unemployed young Europeans are beginning to migrate to the fast-growing economies of developing “Third World” countries.

A deep economic crisis in European countries characterized by overwhelming debts, rising unemployment, drastic spending cuts has sparked emigration among its frustrated youth.

According to International Business Times, thousands of young Portuguese have migrated to Mozambique in recent years – reportedly as many as 120.000 in 2011 alone. It is estimated, that 25 percent of the Portuguese youth (between the age of 16 and 25) are unemployed.

Portuguese in Mozambique

In contrast to the dire prospects in Portugal, the economy of Mozambique is growing. The former Portuguese colony saw a growth of nearly 8 percent in 2011. Once solely an agricultural economy, the country’s vast natural resources are now being exploited for development.

Despite the economic growth, most Mozambicans remain very poor. According to the World Bank, the average life expectancy is only 48 years and about half of the population live in poverty, the majority of these in rural areas.

Thus, if Mozambique is to truly establish and sustain a prosperous society – the kind that can attract large numbers of highly-skilled immigrants that want to stay for generations, it needs to spread the wealth more widely and ensure jobs for locals.

The exodus of the skilled and well-educated

In the past decades, we have witnessed the desperate measures of people in conflict areas, such as Somalia, in their attempt to flee violence and insecurity. Thousands of Somali refugees have put their lives at risk in order to escape to Yemen, Saudi Arabia or Europe.

Now, young, skilled and well-educated European citizens are willing to migrate to these same conflict areas and former colonies in search of jobs and opportunities. It is a historic role reversal.

In Denmark, unemployment rates are not quite as high as they are in Portugal, but still I find myself applying for jobs abroad and seriously considering whether working as a journalist in Somalia is a good career move or not. I am seriously considering to return to the country my family left behind 22 years ago – in search for work and opportunities.

Sources:

International Business Times

BBC News

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Coca-Cola has been in Africa since 1929 and is now present in all African countries. It is the continent’s largest employer with over 160 plant and nearly 70,000 employees. Its market share in Africa and the Middle East is 29 percent, which adds up to 9.1 billion liters of Coke a year. In comparison, Pepsi’s share is 15 percent.

However, Coke is accussed of supporting King Mswati III’s rule in Swaziland where it has its biggest operation. The multinational replies, it does not get involved with the politics of any country where it does business.

Nevertheless, democracy activists with Africa Contact, a Danish NGO working in Swaziland, urge the Danes to boycutt Coke. They claim that in addition to supporting the oppresive monarchy, Coke also exploit its sugar cane workers.

Recognition of Somaliland

In 2004, an $8.3 million Coca-Cola plant, United Bottling Company, opened in Mogadishu. Seven years later, Coca-Cola made a strategic relocation of the plant to Hargeisa, Somaliland. Supposedly, the Mogadishu franchise could not function, because of violence in the Somali capital.

Instead, Somaliland Beverage Industries owned by local businessman Ahmed Osman Guelleh was awarded a license to operate the franchise. It covers Somaliland and neighbouring semi-autonomous Puntland and boosts the economy in the two regions.

According to Financial Times, Ndema Rukandema, Coca-Cola’s franchise general manager for the Horn, Islands and Middle Africa, said that:

“Somaliland is a growing economy, made buoyant by the level of trading activity in the country. The stability that the country has enjoyed over the last several years is a positive indication of a conducive business environment.”

Coke leaves Mogadishu behind

When the Mogadishu bottling plant opened eight years ago, the 400-plus investors invited to finance the project were carefully chosen by clan. Each contributed a minimum of $300 to help start the company.

The project was a deliberate effort to create a feeling of communal ownership for the factory in a place where clan-based conflict has long been the rule. With the move from Mogadishu to Hargeisa, Coke seems to have lost faith in the Somali capital’s ability to maintain a profitable business environment.

Peter Kenworthy from Africa Contact says that:

“Coca-Cola is probably in Swaziland because it is a dictatorship that oppresses its unions and population. This allows wages to be kept low and unemployment high”

I wonder what business Coca-Cola has in Somalia and what business does a bottling plant have in a country that has scarce water resources.

Sources:

Danish NGO Africa Contact

Financial Times

The Blog: Facts for working people

Bloomberg’s Businessweek

Youtube Video of the Mogadishu Plant

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Photo Credit: Pernille Bærendtsen, Nairobi-Klubben

The mobile phone revolution

The developing world’s share of mobile phone subscriptions increased 20% in 2010. In comparison, subscriptions increased by 1.6% in the developed world. According to the Tanzanian daily, The Citizen, 75% of the 42 million population will have access to a mobile phone within the next four years.

The development of access to the internet in Tanzania as well as other East African countries has gone and is going fast, partly due to the access via mobile. Growth in social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook has been fueled by the transition from the PC to the mobile.

For example, access to Facebook via mobile phone in Kenya is relatively cheap (8 Kenyan shilling for 10 MB – ‘which is a little for lot’). Statistics show that mobile users in Kenya spend on average 3.1 hours per week on social networking sites compared to just 2.2 hours on email.

What about the minority, who don’t have mobile phones?

The impact of the access of the mobile phone has little effect, if we are talking:

• rural areas
• women
• people with little or no education.

The articles: ‘Is the ‘mobile phone revolution’ in Africa really for everybody?’ and ‘Mobile phones and the new ‘digital divide’’ couple the positive development with concerns.

In a paper published by Audience Scapes, Gayatri Murthi acknowledges the unprecedented rapid increase of mobile phones in the developing world – but she goes on to show that gender and income disparities mean that by no means everybody is able to reap the benefits.

Men are much more likely to have access to mobile phones than women. In East Africa, a woman is 23% less likely to own a mobile phone than a man. Unequal educational opportunities present another divide.

For example, 93% of Kenyans with formal education had access to a mobile phone, as opposed to 50% of those without. Since a higher proportion of men than women have access to formal education, this reinforces the gender imbalance.

Will new media and new technology liberate the people?

The fact is that people in rural areas, women and the uneducated are less likely to receive information via mobile phone, relying more in interpersonal communication. This challenges assumptions that new technologies are in and of themselves, going to democratize the information environment.

The advantages of new media lie in the ability to not only access information, where ever you might be, but also the ability to contribute with content. But the challenge remains though, that control over technique and access does not necessarily make good content.

On the other hand, online communication facilitates the establishment of online communities. Political activism and civil journalism can be used to voice opinions that might otherwise be silenced if expressed off-line. The strongest case of this might be the role of Facebook to organize demonstrations in the Middle East.

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From violence to safety

Somali people were fleeing the violence and famine in their homeland even before the civil war broke out in 1991. My father along with many other Somalis sought asylum in Denmark as early as 1989.

However, with the growth in violence occasioned by the Ethiopian invasion of 2006, the exodus has severely increased. The majority of Somalis flee to neighboring countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya and Yemen.

Somalis, who flee their homeland may be defined as forced or economic migrants by some nation states and refugees by others, who are willing to recognize often ill-defined violence as persecution.

Migrants are denied basic human rights

Forced migrants and refugees often flee the same violence, but the former have few rights and are sometimes given some form of subsidiary protection, so that the hosting nation will not be accused of sending the migrant back into a zone in which his/her life is at risk.

On the other hand, refugees have the right to travel, work, and educate their children in a fashion equivalent to that of ordinary citizens. According to the Geneva Convention, the definition of a refugee is:

”a person, who because of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable or owing to such fear unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.” (UN General Assembly 2007, 16)

If say a Somali is forced to migrate because of bandits that have cleared his/hers village, so they can take advantage of the food and livestock left behind, then how does one determine whether or not the migrant is, in fact, a refugee.

The perpetrators could have been made free to commit such atrocities by the chaos created by a larger pattern of persecutions. Nevertheless, the indeterminate nature of violence can make it relatively easy for nation states to deny refugee status to people who are directly or indirectly victims of war and persecution.

Somali diaspora provides financial support

Most countries do not welcome mass migration, so they create legal barriers for Somali migrants. In turn, Somalis create and participate in a transnational community (diaspora) that operates to overcome these barriers.

A worldwide network of money-wiring offices run by Somalis allows them to send money to friends and relatives even in the refugee camps. Meanwhile, organizations smuggle Somali migrants across borders and seas.

The current approach to the humanitarian crisis in Somalia hinders organizations charged with the care of refugees and forced migrants from carrying out their missions successfully. Instead of being a temporary solution, Dadaab has become the largest refugee camp in the world and has been operated as a human warehouse for nearly twenty years.

The current approach removes Somalis from the category of human through a discourse that selectively distributes human rights – rights that were supposed to be universal.

Source:

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Fatuma Noor, 24, Kenyan-Somali journalist

Noor won the “2011 CNN African Journalist of the Year” award for her investigative three-part series on the Al-Shabaab in Star newspaper. The articles tell the story of the young men who give up their freedom abroad to return and fight for the Al-Shabaab in Somalia.

Noor is a renowned journalist, who has won many awards in a young age. She currently works for The Observer as part of a David Astor Journalism Programme, which works to promote independent journalism in Africa.

As a Somali woman writing investigative stories, Noor faces regular threats and her own family oppose her profession. According to Noor, in Somali culture, it is wrong to speak and raise an opinion in front of men. Even travelling for work unaccompanied by a relative is not permitted.

Jay Bahadur, 27, author of “The Pirates of Somalia”

The Toronto-based freelance journalist recently published the book “The Pirates of Somalia”, which is based on three months of research in Puntland – an autonomous region of Somalia and the heart of the pirates’ tribal homeland.

For a foreigner, his access to the region was truly unique. Bahadur brilliantly juggles background stories, gossip, family ties, backroom political dealings and daily impressions of life in Somalia.

Recently, Bahadur landed the job as the Managing Editor at SomaliaReport – a Nairobi-based website with an extensive network of local journalists, which aims to be Somalia’s premiere source for non-partisan and clan-neutral news coverage.

Bashir Yusuf Osman, Somali Hotel owner

Situated in the heart of Mogadishu, the Peace Hotel serves as the accommodation of choice for most foreign journalists visiting the capital. BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera. They all come here. The hotel is like a white flag in city torn by battles between different militias.

The owner, Bashir Yusuf Osman arranges professional security teams for every journalist. The importance of having a good security team cannot be overstated in this lawless city. Several journalists have been targeted or killed in or around other Mogadishu hotels in the past.

Osman is also able to fix meetings with anyone and everyone, from the militant Shabaab fighters to local businessmen to the parliament members of the transitional government. Ironically perhaps, it is the civil war that may be the key to the success of Bashir’s business.

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