Latest Research
Thematic Research Clusters
Governance and Migration
Data on Migration
AIMS addresses the African migration data collection which remains a challenge. The institution believes expanding the scope of data collection, processing and analysis disaggregated by gender, age and sub-national region, can greatly improve migration policies.
Global Governance: Africa-European Union (EU) Migration Policy
The European Union and its Member States have gradually, hesitantly but eventually opened to migration flows from Eastern Europe but counter balanced it by tough political rhetoric and closure to flows from Africa. We focus on the European Union (EU) -African Union (AU) and regional coordination platforms have sought to provide policy frameworks for addressing the challenges of migration.
Regional Integration: Migration Priorities for the East Africa Community (EAC)
Globalization poses a challenges to national governance policies and regional integration labor policies in particular. This challenge of continuing to transform the economies, while ensuring that the poor and vulnerable are protected, workers equipped with skills necessary to compete in today’s global economy remains very relevant to East Africa Community (EAC) integration process.
Globalization and Migration.
Migration Remittances and Mobile Technology.
Globalization marked by liberalization, privatization, and deregulation of the telecommunications sectors has dramatically leapfrogged the continent into the use of innovative mobile phone technologies. The advent of relative affordability of mobile phones has dramatically propelled many unbanked migrant households into formal economic mainstream where instant, safer and less costly migrant remittances are delivered over the cell phone. We focus on important implications of financial inclusion for previously unbanked migrant households.
Migrant Entrepreneurship and Business Networks.
The emerging African urban economies are characterized by a renaissance of small migrant businesses. We look at how migrant business activities are affecting African urban economies in various ways, for example, revitalizing formerly derelict shopping streets, introducing of new (exotic) products or by fostering the emergence of new spatial forms of social cohesion.
Globalization and Skilled Labour Migration
Highly-skilled African migrants have significant impact on innovation and research and development (R&D) activity in destination countries. At the same time the global battle for highly skilled migrants has intensified due to increased sophistication of the advanced economies with a shrinking working age population. We seek to identify the developmental impact of skilled migration, understanding the newly emerging determinants of these patterns and their linkages to underlying economic, social, cultural and globalization factors.
The African and Black Diaspora in Development.
Today there is great interest in Diasporas role in African development agenda and much enthusiasm for identifying policies that can maximize their contributions. It must be recognized that the African Diaspora is intimately linked to evolution of a globalized and racialized capitalism resulting from slavery, colonial labour policies, post-colonial conflicts and current economic hardships that continue to shape the Diaspora. Therefore, we seek to unravel the role of Diasporas in development in the contemporary social process of economic globalization that give Diasporas a shifting, and overlapping geometry that stretches it from Latin America to the Asian continent.