Knowledge transfer and diaspora entrepreneurship
Energised by a new year bringing new opportunities, The Broker and IOM Nederland join forces to continue and enrich our online dossier on Diaspora Inclusion. This dossier was initiated by The Broker and Partos (the Dutch membership body for organisations working in international development) to help shed light and stimulate constructive dialogue on diaspora inclusion. Now, together with IOM Nederland, a new series of articles will be added to the dossier to further stimulate the debate and draw attention to the potential of diaspora professionals and entrepreneurs for the maximization of Dutch development impacts in Low- and lower-middle-income countries (LLMCs).
After the first series of eight articles as well as an online multi-stakeholder expert meeting, The Broker identified a number of common assumptions and challenges defining current views and debates on diaspora inclusion. Most importantly, the eight articles and expert meeting emphasized the need to critically reflect on our perception of diaspora as one homogenous group – i.e. the diaspora. Additionally, several courses of action were pointed out for both Dutch development actors and the diaspora community in order to improve their collaboration.
With this new series of articles, supported and inspired by the work of IOM Nederland, our Diaspora dossier will be enriched with new content for the coming six weeks. Focussing on knowledge transfer and diaspora entrepreneurship, The Broker and IOM Nederland will provide a platform to diaspora professionals and entrepreneurs to shed more light on their potential and how this can be tapped into more effectively to benefit diaspora groups, their countries of origin as well as their new home country, The Netherlands.
This Thursday, we will kick off with a first new article, in which Dorien Deketele and Nina Staal from IOM Nederland will share their lessons learned and success stories of IOM’s two main programmes on migration and development: CD4D – Connecting Diaspora for Development and ED4D – Entrepreneurship by Diaspora for Development. Thereafter, we will be publishing four more new articles every Thursday, based on interviews with and contributions from external experts, including academics from Maastricht Graduate school of Governance as well as diaspora professionals and entrepreneurs Marina Diboma (Netherlands-Africa Business Council), Fridah Ntarangwi (Zidicircle) and Saskia Kloezeman (North-South Consulting).
In the final week, we will conclude the series with a synthesis article, covering the dossier on Diaspora Inclusion as a whole. Additionally, we are happy to announce that this new journey will result in the publication of a magazine, which will feature all articles in our diaspora dossier and can be downloaded in six weeks time on our website. With these new contributions and publication of this magazine, The Broker hopes to generate more insights that can inspire and inform relevant actors – within Dutch policy circles, the private sector and the development community – on how they can harness the potential of African professionals and entrepreneurs and collaborate with the many diaspora groups to work towards more inclusive and sustainable development.