Optimising the Role of Sub-Saharan African Remittance Senders in Sustainable Development

Abstract

Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10 seeks to reduce inequality by limiting the costs of remittances to less than 3% and eliminating corridors, which will cost more than 5% by 2030. Making remittances affordable is timely given that they were three times higher than official development assistance to the developing world in 2016. This comparison between remittances and aid tacitly recognises these migrants as important actors in development. The absence of other references to remittances in the SDGs demands analysis of how remittance senders are conceptualised by other ‘development actors’. This paper examines the complexities and contradictions that obscure the conceptualisation and mobilisation of Sub-Saharan African remittance senders in sustainable development. It is informed by in-depth interviews with officials from a bilateral donor agency and diaspora organisations. It applies a social constructionist framework to understand how the role of remittance senders can be reconceptualised to examine how their interventions impact sustainable development in Africa.