In both theory and practice, pull and push
factors drive migrants out of their own countries of origin. The factors are
complex but they are in general categorized as: (a) demand-pull factors,
represented by better economic opportunities and jobs in the host (new)
country; (b) supply-push factors, represented by the lack of economic
opportunities, jobs, and economic downturns, political oppressions, abuses of
human rights by home country governments, religious intolerance (constraints),
war, conflict and insecurity in the home country; (c) mediating factors that
accelerate or constrain migration
In attempting to explain the Ethiopian
outmigration, our conjuncture is that the push factors play the dominant role
in driving out Ethiopians out of their country, prominent among them being
abject poverty and bad governance. Bad governance and economic constraints are
highly correlated, for bad governance basically means the lack of
rule of law, political freedom, accountability, transparency, efficient
institutions and increased corruption and insecurity. Development economists
have repeatedly shown that bad governance plays significant roles in retarding
development in addition to exacerbating economic inequality,increasing
poverty, corruption, conflicts and environmental
degradation.
Development economists have also
documented that economic mobility and geographic mobility are correlated.
Unfortunately, the ruling party’s ethnic policy is known to have
restricted internal migration. That is, by restricting internal migration, the
ethnic based governance and political structure, has limited the economic
opportunities of the citizens and the country’s capability to absorb migrants
internally. As Gray, Mueller and Woldehanna (2012) show, barriers
within Ethiopia indeed exist, thereby prohibiting citizens from freely moving
within regions, hence denying them the basic constitutional right of mobility.
The expulsion of “others” from the Benishangul-Gumuz, and Gura Ferda and
the Ogaden regions, considered by many to be crime against humanity is
the extreme version of it. Another political problem which has a colossal
economic impact on migration is the corruption conundrum. As Ariu and
Squicciarin argue, the prevalence of corruption within a nation tends to
drive relatively skilled workers out of their own country in part because they
distaste a non- meritocratic and nepotistic regime. The “prolonged loss in
human capital” in turn leads a country to be afflicted by brain-drain which is
known to be a major obstacle to economic growth. In the case of Ethiopia’s
opaque system, there is a widespread perception that one can only advance
his/her career and economic opportunities using close knit ties established
through one’s ethnic stock, family connections or through corruption. This
captured state of the Ethiopian State has been dealt in the special edition of
the Ethiopian E. Journal for Innovation and Research Foresight (Volume
5 No 1 2013).
In explaining the Ethiopian migration to
the Middle East, which we believe is largely economic, we ask two interesting
questions: Firstly, why do Ethiopians leave their birthplaces en masse when
their country is alleged to have been registering double digit real economic
growth rates for nearly a decade? Secondly, are there any overarching
identifiable factors that explain the Ethiopian exodus? Managing the variables
enables policy makers and the international community to find mitigation
strategies for the outmigration, and the resultant human tragedy experienced by
the migrants.
As indicated earlier, the research-based
literature unanimously documents economic motives such as increased poverty
playing a prominent role in international migration. In other words increased
economic growth in the source country is a declining function of outmigration
from that country. Hence, in order to understand the Ethiopian outmigration, it
is important to briefly examine the state of the Ethiopian economy. The alleged
double-digit growth, if it is real, should have served to keep citizens to stay
put if not even serve as a magnet to attract foreign immigrants. The Ethiopian
exodus, therefore, is incompatible with a growing economy. We argue that the
fundamental determinants of economic growth and development (see Barro:
1996 and Petrakos et al: 2007, for example) and the realities on the
ground do not support the economic expansion that the Government of Ethiopia
(GoE) has been claiming. Furthermore, there are no indications that the alleged
fruits of the growth are shared with the citizenry for the country’s income
disparities have been rising (Shimeles & Delelegn: 2013, Gebre-Sellasie:
2012, Leite et al: 2009).
Luckily, some economists and commentators
have been questioning the credibility of the statistics that has been and
continues to be produced by the GoE. A good example is the short commentary by
Professor Daniel Teferra (2013) who not only poked holes on the
government’s claim of sustained double-digit growth rates but also criticized
multilateral institutions such as the Africa Development Bank, the IMF, and the
World Bank who happen to echo the government’s claim in a rather scandalous
proportion. The Economist magazine described the Ethiopian inflation figures as
“fiddled with even more than those in Argentina” and “the
double-digit growth rates predicted by the government of Prime Minister Meles
Zenawi look fanciful.” On a fundamental level, Professor Abu Girma
Mogeshas shown that there is no reduction in poverty in Ethiopia as claimed by
the GoE since the base for the claim is the “recent poverty index computation
is the 2010/11 Household Income, Consumption and Expenditure Survey (HICES)
conducted by the central statistical agency (CSA, 2012) was flawed and
incorrect, “perhaps by design.” Fortunately, still, other observers have
begun questioning the GoE’s double-digit growth rates and sustained economic
development. The GoE’s central planning which is a reminiscent of the old USSR
planning system has caught the attentions of writers on Ethiopia. The French
writer Rene Lefort, in his piece of 26 November 2012 observed what economists
of Ethiopian origin have been stating for a long time. It is only in the
Ethiopian context where the ex-ante economic forecasts (budgets) are nearly
identical to the actual outcomes! Lefort succinctly puts the ruling
party’s performance evaluation (gim’gema) system as follows:
“The first question concerns the reality
of its achievements, notably the famous ‘double digit growth’ since 2004, which
the authorities constantly extol. In fact, this figure is the product of a
vicious circle. The government sets absurdly ambitious targets. The work of
every public servant is assessed against those targets. Their careers depend on
it. And of course, they claim to have achieved them. Then the targets are
raised again. Once again, they claim to have met them. The lie becomes
institutionalized. The gap between basic national realities and the image that
the authorities perceive and communicate, from summit to base, has become so
great that it could be said that Ethiopia has turned out to be not so much a
Potemkin village, as a Potemkin country. Sooner or later, the authorities will
have to deal with the shockwave that results when the truth inevitably comes
out.”
Similar accounts have been made by Epstein whose
finding was based on her own field-work that took her around the country as
well as by Abbink, (2009:21).
Having noted the incompatibility of
outmigration with real growth, we now move to the second question of
identifying the economic variables that explain the migration phenomenon. The
economic variables however are affected by a number of mediating factors. One
mediating factor that exacerbates outmigration is government ineffectiveness.
We alert researchers on the Ethiopian outmigration to consider the following
conjectures/hypotheses in any way they deemed it necessary. In particular, we
observe that the existence of an organized crime, whose main purpose is reaping
the benefits fromsmuggling and human trafficking. This highly organized
criminal activity enjoys an interlocking relationship with the strength of the
institutions of governance and the political effort to delegitimize the
Ethiopian State, ironically connected to the history of the ruling regime
itself. Furthermore, the breakdown of law and order is in part explained by the
GoE’s increasingly repressive methods of resolving dissent. Our
observations indicate that criminal syndicates pertaining to human trafficking
have become powerful; often connected to either the law enforcement agencies or
the various armed groups that claim to have political grievances. We also
observe that the majority of migrants are coming from rural areas; they are
poor, uneducated and unskilled and hence unable to legitimize their
immigration. We therefore predict that the Saudi mass expulsion of Ethiopians
will not be the last we would observe. Nor would we see Ethiopians stopping
emigrating unless the root causes of the exodus and the mediating factors are
recognized, and appropriate mitigation policies are put in place.
We list a few of the inter-related push
factors that explain the Ethiopian outmigration below.
Factors that explain the Ethiopian outmigration
1. As
one of the current authors illustrated earlier, the repeatedly devalued
birr (conducted without addressing the economic fundamentals of the
country) which in turn was created by politically driven monetary and fiscal
policy measures, raised prices sharply leading to a rise in the cost of living
and a massive fall in living stands. Worse, the regime unwisely adoptedprice
caps measures, despite warnings of its damaging effects. All the price
caps measure did was create shortages without reducing prices. It is refreshing
to see Sendeq, one of the country’s local newspapers in its November 27, 2013
edition rather boldly articulating the rising cost of living as one of the
drivers of the Ethiopian outmigration.
2. Land
policy: Gebru and Beyene document that landlessness is one of the key
factors for outmigration in Ethiopia. This fact is buttressed by the
significant portion of Ethiopian migrants to the Middle East being from rural
areas where about 80% of the population depends on farming and nomadic cattle
raising for its livelihood. The abject rural poverty that peasants are facing
cannot be separated from the government’s landholding policies (Gebresellasie,
2006). Unfortunately and as Gebreselassie noted (P.4), the GoE’s “insertion of
the issue of land in the Ethiopian constitution [has made] rural land
increasingly [to] become a political affair”. By inserting the land policy in
the constitution, the GoE has effectively eliminated the possibility of
flexible application of policy, extended its control over the population and
made free and fair election only a dream. Worse, it has eliminated all
meaningful debates about efficient utilization of land (Nega and Degefe, 2000).
The net effect is that instead of curbing migration, the landholding policy is
used to disown and evictpeasants from their ancestral lands. The
evictions are made in part to give way for the government’s sugar plantations
and facilitate for international agri-business which ironically come from Saudi
Arabia and Asian countries. Furthermore, the lack of productivity in the
agricultural sector is also connected to the GoE’s land policy. According to a
report published by the Ethiopian Economic Association (p.2), the
government’s bad land-holding policy has led to “declining farm size, tenure
insecurity, and subsistence farming practices”.
3. Rapid
Population Growth and Weak Industrial Sector: Poor family planning and
population policy when coupled with problematic land policy makes the situation
explosive. As noted earlier more than 80% of the population lives in rural
areas and depends on subsistence farming. The population growth rate hovers around
3%. The rapid growth in population has reduced the land that is held by each
farmer, making it uneconomical for the small farmer to stay in rural Ethiopia.
The effect of the land shortage is to create an influx into urban centers,
which themselves are under extreme pressure. The manufacturing and the service
sectors of the economy were supposed to absorb the rising population. This
however is not the case as government itself admitted its disappointments about
the industry sector of the economy. The fact that population growth has been
outstripping food production, which is associated with increased land scarcity
and environmental degradation, has been proved by the last and current regimes’
attempts of repeated land redistribution schemes.
4. Remittances
not invested: According to some estimates the annual revenues from remittances
is close of three billion US dollars, a figure that is much higher than the
country’s revenue from exports of goods and official development assistance
(ODA). The bulk of the remittance is coming from the Middle East countries. The
remittances are spent for repayment of debts (often borrowed from family,
friends or loan sharks) and fees for recruitment agencies. Most of the
financial flow is outside of the banking system and involves the money
laundering networks. Anecdotal evidence indicates that income generated by
migrants is rarely invested in productive assets. The leftovers from debt and
fee repayment are used to support and alleviate family constraints and hardships.
The few that is remaining is invested in real estate, an investment sector with
no multiplier effects.
5. Most
Ethiopian migrants to the Middle East are poor, women, uneducated and
unskilled: Economic and migration theory indicate that relatively highly
skilled workers are mobile, flexible and have a better chance of negotiating
and enforcing employment contracts. Contrary to this fact, most
Ethiopians who are migrating to the Middle East are relatively unskilled, less
educated and destitute which makes them to be vulnerable for abuse. Dawit
Wolde Giorgis and David Weinberg connected the labor brokerage system in
the oil rich Kingdom to a form of modern day slavery. On the other hand the poorest
households would have greater incentives to send their children in order to
benefit from the accrued remittances. The poor households however would not
have the financial wherewithal to afford sending their household members abroad
to pay for the journey and the human smuggler or recruiter ((Taylor, 2006)).
Even though the country exports both skilled and unskilled labor, the mass
migration of unskilled manpower of the country is peculiar to the country. To
make matters worse, there was no meaningful effort on the part of the GoE to
equip the migrants even with basic household management skills such as the
operation of washing machines and stoves. The GoE did not and probably still
does not have labor counselors in its embassies.
6. Unemployment
is the main driver of the outmigration: According to Serneels of Oxford University,
Ethiopia has “one of the highest unemployment rates worldwide, around 50% of
the urban men between age 15 and 30 are unemployed.” The official statistics
for unemployment however is much smaller than what is indicated above.
Widespread poverty, lack of jobs and hopelessness, particularly
among the youth, disadvantageous economic and social position of women (see
also Endeshaw et al/IOM) are the driving force of Ethiopian migration. The
great majority of the deportees from Saudi Arabia and the new arrivals in Yemen
and Southern Africa are young people who are desperate about their future. They
are by and large in the 20-30 years of age. This fact further indicates the
inability of the local economy to absorb the younger and more productive
portion of the labor force. This also should negatively affect productivity and
Ethiopia’s growth capabilities. The massification of higher education and the
10+2 education policy have not helped to mitigate the problem, which in turn
has resulted in an alarming level of poor education quality and high dropout
rates, as reported by Hassan and Ahmed: 2010); Dyson:2012; Tekeste
Negash:2006). This puts the
country in a vicious circle.
7. Drought
and climate change are major problems. The country has been frequently hard hit
bydrought which exacerbates the financial constraints of households and
increasing food insecurity. The country has not been self-sufficient in food
and about 20% of the population is in donor-supported social safety net
program. The massive environmental degradation of the few virgin lands by
commercial farmers when coupled with the eviction of peasants exacerbates both
the despair and the outmigration.
8. Labor
exporting policy to mitigate shortage of foreign currency: Exporting people is
considered by the GoE as one of the best sources of foreign currency. Unlike in
other countries, the government encourages its citizens to migrate. The
GoE’s encouragement comes in two forms. The first is political while the
second is economic. The immigration of political opponents is seen by the
ruling party as a sign of relief. With regard to the economic reasons, Kebede notes
that the government encourages and has instituted migration policies, to the
extent of being “active in facilitating the recruitment of workers for
employment abroad (p. 22) but without adequately informing migrants about the
dangers they would face in host countries, and without negotiating with host
countries on labor conditions. The diaspora did not disappoint when it comes to
the latter, as it helped finance the ruling party’s mega projects by buying
diaspora bonds, participating in government housing construction (condominium)
schemes, building houses and increasing own family consumption expenditures.
Both the government and families of emigrants view remittance flows as an
important source of finance.
9. No
reverse brain drain is observed. Countries such as China, India and Korea were
able to attract their skilled members of the diaspora to help them develop
their economies because as their economies grew, the diaspora was pulled back
into these countries. The fact that Ethiopia is unable to do this suggests that
the so-called growing economy either does not exist or is incapable of
absorbing the skilled part of the Ethiopian diaspora, in part due to lack of
opportunities (Fransen and Kuschminder (2009:23). The political tensions exacerbate the
problems of brain drain.
10. Voice
and accountability problems. Ethiopia is ranked very low in most of the
international and regional governance indicators. It is also in the list of the
world’s 20 failed states. Interestingly, the alleged economic expansion started
to occur immediately after the 2005 election crisis. However, outmigration
accelerated right after the 2005 election. This may indicate two factors
playing a big role. One is the political difficulties the regime has faced
since the 2005 election debacle. The second bolstering the claim made about the
nonexistence of the much trumpeted growth of GDP and/or not reaching the
majority of the people. Indication are that both maybe working together as
Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen shows that in countries where governments are accountable,
human misery is low. The controlling nature of the ruling party is
documented by Arriola: 2005, Abbink: 2006, Epstein: 2010, Human
Right Watch: 2010 and others.
In conclusion we surmise that Ethiopia’s
outmigration is largely explained by several interconnected push factors.
According to one of the aforementioned researchers, 71% of the migration from
Gojam and SSNPR is “related to push factors in places of origin, and 29% to
pull factors in places of destination.” The pull factors are largely out of the
control of the GoE and it may only have limited influence. The TPLF/EPRDF had
22 years to originate and implement policy, a job that Endeshaw et al (IOM),
the U.S. State Department, Kebede,Teshome and others have
indicated that the GoE has failed to do. In other words the present
crisis is yet another evidence of government ineffectiveness.
Furthermore, it is hard to imagine that such a highly lucrative business
involving huge network of migration facilitators, local brokers and recruiters
and human trafficking networks, to the extent of making the country the hub
of human trafficking, would exist this long without being sanctioned by the
regime, particularly in a system which controls each individual citizen with
the notorious 1-to-5 bonding scheme.
[1] Seid Hassan is Professor of Economics at
Murray State University and Minga Negash is Professor of Accounting at the
Metropolitan State University of Denver and the University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
By Professor
Seid Hassan & Professor Minga Negash
