Diaspora Is Africa's Most Undervalued Development Asset
By Jeph Acheampong * Recently, my friend Oforiwaa took a leap of faith and relocated to Ghana, a decision she had wrestled with her entire adult life. To many people, the decision to move to her mother’s home village to build a cashew processing factory made little sense. Her parents had wor
*Recently, my friend Oforiwaa took a leap of faith and relocated to Ghana, a decision she had wrestled with her entire adult life. To many people, the decision to move to her mother’s home village to build a cashew processing factory made little sense. Her parents had worked tirelessly to build a life in the U. S. Why then go back?And yet, her decision to return to build a new future reveals a promise that a majority of Africa’s policymakers, development practitioners, and business leaders tend to overlook: that the African diaspora may be the continent’s most undervalued development asset. Across the globe, on any given day, many members of the diaspora are contemplating whether and how they might contribute to the continent’s future. Some will return. Others will invest, mentor, teach, advise, or build from afar. The real question is not whether the diaspora has something to contribute; it is whether African countries are prepared to create environments where that contribution can flourish. Often, the diaspora’s contributions are reduced to remittances. This is a mistake. The true value of the diaspora is not simply the money it sends home, but the ideas, networks, and institutions it helps create. Diaspora communities serve as conduits through which global knowledge, professional standards, and investment opportunities flow into African economies. Indeed, some of Africa’s most transformative institutions have been built not by outsiders, but by Africans who left, accumulated knowledge and resources, then chose to reinvest them in the continent. The evidence is all around us. In my field of education, for example, some of Africa’s most influential universities were founded by individuals who spent years studying and working abroad before returning home. Patrick Awuah leftMicrosoftto establish Ashesi University in Ghana. Fred Swaniker worked atMcKinsey, then later founded the African Leadership Academy and the African Leadership University. Misan Rewane left a career in consulting at theMonitor Groupto co-found WAVE Academy, training thousands of West African youth for employment. What makes these institutions remarkable is not merely the quality of their education, but the ecosystems they create. Students are exposed to faculty, mentors, and peers from across the continent and around the world. They develop relationships that transcend borders, industries, and cultures, and by the time many graduates leave these institutions, they have gained access to perspectives and opportunities that would have otherwise remained out of reach. The future of Africa however will not be built solely by those who stayed, nor solely by those who left. It will be built by both. As the founder of an education technology company, I know that this kind of exposure is one of the most underrated drivers of development and underused forms of acceleration. The skills, professional norms, and global networks that might otherwise take a country decades to develop domestically can arrive in a single returning entrepreneur, professor, or investor. To be sure, for every diaspora founder whose story becomes a case study, many others encounter bureaucratic obstacles, infrastructure gaps, or financing constraints. Those who choose to build in Africa often encounter unreliable infrastructure, bureaucratic obstacles, policy uncertainty, limited access to capital, and shortages of skilled talent. Indeed, progress can be frustratingly slow, and institutions that should facilitate growth sometimes become barriers to it instead. Patrick Awuah spent yearsnavigating regulatory hurdlesbefore Ashesi could realize its full potential as one of Ghana’s most respected universities. And having spent over half a decade working through this bureaucracy in Ghana and across Africa, I have seen this firsthand. There are moments when everything seems harder than it should be. A process that should take weeks takes months. A partnership that appears straightforward becomes tangled in bureaucracy. A promising initiative stalls because of factors entirely outside your control. These frustrations are real. Even setting all the obstacles aside, the economic contribution of Africans living abroad is substantial. Africans abroad send more than US$90B to the continent annually, financing education, healthcare, housing, entrepreneurship, and household resilience. In many countries, these remittances exceed official development assistance and often reach communities more directly than aid ever could. Yet money is the easiest thing to transfer. Knowledge is harder. The future of Africa however will not be built solely by those who stayed, nor solely by those who left. It will be built by both. Therefore, we must not merely celebrate exceptional returnees but create mechanisms that make their outcomes less exceptional. This is why the conversation about migration in Africa must shift to embrace an important reality: that many Africans do not simply leave. They accumulate knowledge, capital, and expertise abroad and then find ways to channel those assets back into the continent, whether physically, financially, professionally, or institutionally. I think about Oforiwaa’s dream often; on whether the bet she made to return to her mother’s village and start anew was the right one. The honest answer is that nobody knows yet, including her. But the evidence is overwhelming that the diaspora has something to contribute; now it is up to African countries to create environments where those contributions can flourish. *Jeph Acheampong is a 2026 Public Voices Fellow of Acumen and The OpEd Project and the founder of Blossom Academy, which equips African talent with data and AI skills to increase incomes and helps companies adopt data-driven practices.