In search of economic boost, some African countries send workers abroad

NAIROBI/BERLIN: They line up by the hundreds to meet recruiters at schools in provincial towns and convention halls in large cities, some carrying advanced diplomas, others with only a primary education to their name.

Each is hoping to land one of the million jobs the Kenyan government aims to fill this year in one of its most ambitious ever employment initiatives. The jobs are not in Kenya. They are in rich countries in Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere, where officials hope young Kenyans can gain skills and income that will boost the domestic economy.

“There are no job opportunities here, so we are left with no option but to go outside Kenya,” said Lydia Mukii, a 27-year-old clinical psychologist who attended a government-sponsored job fair in the south-central town of Machakos, where recruiters distributed glossy flyers advertising pre-school teaching jobs in Germany and farm work in Denmark.

The fairs are part of Kenya’s first concerted effort to encourage labour migration to boost national development. Sending workers abroad has been at the core of development strategies of Asian countries like the Philippines and Bangladesh for decades. But the approach has not been widely embraced in sub-Saharan Africa, where countries like Kenya have been accused by frustrated citizens of shirking their responsibility to create jobs at home.

That is starting to change. As fast-aging countries around the world search for workers to keep their economies afloat, some African nations without enough jobs for their rapidly growing populations are moving to take advantage.

“We have a very important resource called the human resource,” Kenya’s labour minister, Alfred Mutua, told Reuters in Machakos, where he launched a recruitment drive in November across Kenya’s 47 counties. “We can ... export our labour and make a lot of money.”

For the government and jobseekers alike, the logic of turning to overseas employment is simple: about a million Kenyans enter the workforce each year, but only a fifth find formal jobs. Work in targeted countries pays considerably more than in Kenya, and part of the income is remitted to family members at home.