Abstract
People migrate from one country to another for several reasons, which include better
living conditions and some push or pull factors. Whatever the reason, increased flow of
financial remittances to countries of origin was among the immediate positive outcomes
of such movements, with expected attendant boost in growth of the migrants’ economies.
Brain drain or loss of human capital has been identified among the negative effects on migrants’ countries of origin. This paper employed cross-section random effects model on
panel data for purposively selected twelve (12) African countries to examine migrants’
remittances-economic growth nexus in Africa during the 1994-2015 periods. Variables of
interest were gross domestic product per capita (GDPPC) as the explained variable, and
migrants’ remittances (MREM), official exchange rate (OEXR) of domestic currency,
gross fixed capital formation (GFCF), school enrolment rate (SER), domestic nominal
interest rate (DNIR)and domestic inflation rate (DNIFR) as the explanatory variables. Results showed that at the 0.01 level of significance, MREM, OEXR and SER had
significant positive effects on growth of economies in the Continent. GFCF and DINFR
had positive but not significant effects while the effect of DNIR was negative and
significant. The variables collectively had significant effect on growth at the 0.01 level.
Power of the variables was moderately high in explaining total variations in growth of the
economies during the period. The paper concluded that migrants’ remittances
significantly spurred growth of African economies during the period, and recommended
allocation of remittances to productive key sectors in order to engender sustainable
growth and development of the countries and the Continent.