Globally, the volume of remittances to developing countries exceeds the development aid budgets. This volume explores the contribution of remittances to Africa's finances and provides concrete guidelines as to how these may be expanded. It contains essays by the field leaders in this area which record, review and revise our knowledge base on Africa's remittance patterns. The advent of new information communication technologies can contribute to an expanded capture of remittances from the African diaspora and in Africa new forms of money transfer are already taking shape which reflect this affordance. The volume also examines other resources, such as skills, that the African diaspora remits in its patterns of contact with Africa. The volume, shaped out of a conference on remittances and the African diaspora held at the Institute for African Development at Cornell University, is a timely reminder of the substantial role to be played in Africa's development by Africans themselves.
About the Author: Raj Bardouille holds a PhD in Economics (Bradford University, UK). She is a Visiting Research Fellow at Cornell University's Institute for African Development. She has over 31 years of work experience as professor/senior researcher in universities in the Caribbean and Africa (Zambia) and as senior economist in the United Nations system organizations (UNDP, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the United Nations Secretariat). She has written extensively on the issue of migration and remittances within the international agency system. Margaret Grieco holds her doctorate from the University of Oxford. She is the first Full Professor of Transport and Society, a post which she holds at Napier University, Scotland. She is salaried Visiting Full Professor at the Institute for African Development. She has published extensively on migration patterns and upon gender, transport and information communication technology most particularly with respect to Africa. Recent publications: Accessibility, mobility and connectivity: the changing frontiers of everyday routine. Edited with Kenneth MacDonald. Special Issue of Mobilities, Volume 2, Number 1, 2007; Transport, Demand Management and Social Inclusion: The Need for Ethnic Perspectives. Raje, F., Grieco, M., Hine., J. and Preston, J. Ashgate: Aldershot, 2004 Muna Ndulo is Professor of Law at Cornell Law School and Director of the Institute for African Development at Cornell University. Dr Ndulo is a graduate of the University of Zambia (LLB); Harvard University (LLM); and Trinity College, Oxford University (DPhil). He has extensive international and UN experience. He has published 11 books and well over 80 articles in law journals and other academic journals. He has a wide range of scholarly interests including human rights, legal aspects of investments in developing countries, African legal systems, legal education, confl ict resolution, constitution making and elections, and law and development. Recent publications: Security, Reconstruction, and Reconciliation: When the Wars End (editor) (University College London Press 2007); Democratic Reform in Africa: Its Impact on Governance and Poverty Alleviation (editor) (Oxford, Eng.: James Currey, Ltd.; Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2006).