Time to Look to the East

I remember getting on the airplane at Sangster’s International airport in Montego Bay in 1999. I was twelve years old and moving to the United States. My dad was living there and I was going to join him. That’s a story that so many Jamaicans are familiar with. So many of us have left our beautiful beaches and our delicious food and sometimes our families in pursuit of a better life.

The economic realities for the average person in Jamaica are tough. There are few good paying jobs and crime and violence on the island are astronomically high. Jamaica has the fourth highest homicide rate in the world at 43 per 100,000 people. Jamaica is also one of the most debt burdened countries in the world. Just eight years ago we had a debt to GDP ratio of 135% making us the country with the 5th highest ratio in the world. While that percentage has come down over the past few years we still have a debt to GDP ratio of 103.3% ranking us 11th in the world, interestingly behind the United States who sits in 10th place on that list.

We can all understand why many people want to leave a country that provides few opportunities for the advancement of its citizens. Years of bad government has failed us and there is little hope for an improvement of the current circumstances. Corruption is rampant in our economy and civil services. Ask anyone who has ever been pulled over while driving by our local police force or who has tried to get anything approved through a Jamaican government entity. I do not contend that all participants are corrupt but the systems are designed in a way that a few bad actors have created a hostile situation that is not conducive to progress.

It makes sense that people will want to leave Jamaica behind both figuratively and literally. The interesting concept and the main point of my discussion however, is our choice in places to emigrate. Our favorite destinations are the US which has approximately 750,000 nationals and the United Kingdom and Canada which each has 150,000 nationals respectively (this data is per a 2013 UN migration report). It seems to stand to rational reasoning, these countries are either fully developed nations with robust economies and and are all relatively safe places to live and raise a family. However, these are the same places we have been predominantly going to throughout our history of migration. I’ve lived in New York and I’ve visited London and I’ve seen firsthand that today many our diasporic communities are generally lower middle class places. Yes, people do have better prospects than living in Jamaica but they are still living like second class citizens. Our people re all too familiar with basement apartments and low paying jobs.

Isn’t it time we find a new frontier?

Jamaicans have always been enterprising people. For a country of our size, we certainly command a lot of attention on the world stage. Our contribution to music and sports goes without having to be explained. So I’m encouraging my fellow countrymen to start looking east in a new direction. Africa. It is our origin and it’s a continent that has some the most sought after natural resources and vastly untapped potential. It is also home to some of the fastest growing economies in the world. Ethiopia has a GDP that is projected to grow at 7.2% this year which ranks 5th in the world that is after having achieved approximately a 10% growth in GDP over the past decade. While Ghana, a country that many of us should familiarize ourselves with is growing at a projected rate at 6.9%. There are many other countries including Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Senegal who are also growing at a robust rate.

The African continent as a whole is not perfect as there are many social issues and economic problems that the region must address. African countries are still some of the most impoverished places in the world but the proportion of people that are living in poverty is declining. In this I see opportunity for many of my fellow Jamaicans to take the journey much like our ancestors did, this time willingly, back across the sea. To countries where are there abundant opportunities and societies that are much more inclined to treat us like the equals we deserve to be, that we often don’t even get in home country.

#immigrants #jamaica #africa #unitedstates #canada #england