The Diaspora's $60 Billion: Why We Must Spend Differently

TELL YOUR BROTHER ABROAD TO NOT SEND YOU MONEY THIS DECEMBER . My elder brother has a way of messing with me. He works in one of those fancy investment firms on Wall Street. Every 2 months or so, he has these “sale targets” he has to meet, and when he does he gets some kind of a performance bonus.

Every time he gets a bonus like that, he logs on to his Western Union account and sends me $50. Nothing more, nothing less. Just $50. Why? Two reasons.

Number 1

He has this ‘pofpof money’ joke that he does every time he sends me that money. “Take am buy pofpof and beans for sharp. I no wan hear say you no get dough for breakie” the WhatsApp text message would read. I’ve never found the joke funny. But I always send that laughing and crying emoji. You do not look at a gift horse in the mouth, right? Enh-hen!

Number 2

He thinks he is torturing me. You see, there is this Western Union office not too far from my place and there is this nice girl who works there. I chatted her up a long time ago and we developed a close relationship. I cannot get into details at this point. The only thing I can say here is that it is at her office that I cash my transfer payments. Three years ago when my cousin visited Cameroon he met that nice girl and thought his bushfaller swag would win her affection. Little did he know that in my capacity as landlord, I was already receiving her rent.

Anyway, Oga has been sending me $50 thinking that he has been ‘rubbing’ me. I am a Bamileke man. When it comes to money I have no pride. Hahaha. I put the 'rubbing' aside and march proudly to that office like Martin Luther King at Selma. To cut the story short, Aunty and I have been chopping the money. Except when I’m a little broke and the money comes in handy for my utility bills.

But here is the issue. Recently, I read a rather interesting article. It said that my brother’s troublesome $50 was part of the $60 billion dollars that was sent every year to Africa by Africans in the diaspora. Let me loud it: SIXTY billion dollars.

I felt a tremor in my legs when I read that. So I called up a friend who works at the African Development Bank. How much does Africa receive in foreign aid every year, I asked him.

$50 billion, he said. I asked him how much of that money is actually used and how much embezzled? He chuckled for a little while and I imagined him reclining in his office chair and rubbing his stomach when he said: “that, my friend, is the 50 billion dollar question.”

I daresay a quarter of that money is embezzled. In Cameroon, probably half of what enters here goes into private pockets. But let that not distract you from the fact that our parents and brothers and sisters abroad send us more money than we get in foreign aid! As a matter of fact, what they send us is actually 3% of Africa’s $2 trillion dollars GDP. Go figure!

Hey. You know that American guy in the Yahoo News comments section whose comment on any African news article is ‘let’s stop sending them our aid’? Next time, tell him to stick that comment up his butt.

$60 billion is a lot of money. It is 2.5 times the GDP of Cameroon. And if anything it shows two things.

One: That our government which specialises in accusing the diaspora of trying to destabilise the country has its proverbial head up its arse and has been doing nothing short of throwing the baby out with its flawed conception of what it thinks is the bathwater. Actually, it has been trying to drown the baby even before throwing it out.

Two: We need to all sit together and come up with a plan of how to use that money more strategically. I am going to focus more on this part because as far the government and the recent elections have shown we are on our own here, people.

We all (the young and conscious generation) need to start thinking more strategically about putting this financial manna (well, it’s not exactly free money) into a more sustainable use that will make us grow, and perhaps pull up two or three or more people economically along with us.

Ask yourself this question; What is it that we receive money mostly for, from abroad?

Health issues, School fees, Burial, Pocket money ….and….Birthday parties, right?

While the first two above cannot be dealt with otherwise because of poor governance, the last three (plus other reasons you may have thought of), can certainly be managed. For example, is it worth spending 10 million to bury someone, when we can do that for 5 million and use the balance to open up a business which might make more millions? Do I really need to celebrate that birthday party and slay in my Brazilian hair for the gram when I could have used that 500K that my boyfriend/girlfriend/sugar mommy sent me to invest in a business instead?

And to those abroad, you have to start thinking on the long-term impact and the lengths to which your transfer payments can go. I bet you if you sum up what you have sent back home over the last 5 years, you will be shocked at how far that money can go.

Now, I know it’s not easy for you guys overseas and I know also that people have REAL problems here and sometimes people abroad can’t do more than to send those $100 at the times when they send them. I also understand how difficult it is for many families and how those transfer payments are used up. To quote a Pim Boy, I know that “pauvreté don géant sotay pantalon don be na sur-mésure.”

But still, we need to all have some kind of reawakening. That $100 is a drop in a large bucket that could significantly change the face of Africa over the next 10 years if put to good use. Our brothers abroad need to understand how far those dollars can go economically, and we at home need to learn to flip every dollar we receive into three.

For my part, I called my brother yesterday and told him to keep all the $50 he “annoys” me with, in a piggy bank. He can send that to me at the end of the year. I’ll find a business where I can invest 300K in. I am pretty sure I can find one around.

- Wandji Wilfred