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Repository of Practices

National Remittance Stakeholders Networks (NRSNs)

Primary GCM Objectives

GCM Guiding Principles*

*All practices are to uphold the ten guiding principles of the GCM. This practice particularly exemplifies these listed principles.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Dates

2020 - 2024

Type of practice

Partnership/Multistakeholder initiative

Summary

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), through the Financing Facility for Remittances (FFR) is currently implementing the Platform for Remittances, Investments and Migrants’ Entrepreneurship in Africa (PRIME Africa). As part of the PRIME Africa programme activities, starting from April 2020, seven National Remittance Stakeholder Networks (NRSNs) were created, namely in Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Senegal, South Africa, The Gambia and Uganda. The NRSNs work as platforms (each country has a dedicated mail) to gather the key stakeholders in the remittance industry with the ambition to facilitate the dialogue among the parties, share information, challenges, and good practices to promote development opportunities created by remittance flows through innovations, partnerships and scalable products, while fostering the digitization of financial services and financial inclusion. The main beneficiaries of this initiative are the remittances senders and receiver of the seven targeted countries, while the key activities have been the approval of the country dedicated diagnostics and the validation of the country dedicated Roadmaps. To this end, NRSNs stakeholders have been invited to input their thoughts and comments on the two aforementioned documents through different activities namely dedicated meetings, on line survey and several one to one interactions.

Organizations

Main Implementing Organization(s)

International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)

Partner/Donor Organizations

The World Bank
UNCDF
African Union
DMA Global
CENFRI

Benefit and Impact

The essence of the NRSNs is networking, hence sharing, gaining new perspectives and ideas, exchanging information on challenges, experiences and goals and finally yet importantly staying abreast of the latest industry developments.
Connecting remittance stakeholders across sectors, who would have less contacts otherwise, lead to a series of positive effects like i) the improved use of remittance related of knowledge derived from an enhanced awareness of the local and regional remittance market, ii) the identification of solutions to common problems by the capitalization of the stakeholders connections, iii) the development of innovative initiatives given by the identification of good practices.
Together, these activities will benefit the remittance families of the seven targeted countries, and not only, since they contribute to the reduction of cost of remittances and the promotion of financial inclusion.

Key Lessons

The main challenges for the implementation have been given by the inevitability to build these networks virtually and by the consequences that this has generated as for instance, no face-to-face contact and initial difficulties with the e-meeting settings due to the impossibility to relay on all participants having access.
Fortunately, this initial negative aspects have been transformed in strengths. Indeed for each e-meeting organized the rate of participation and interaction has increased. to this end, the e-meetings have been recorder, therefore the participants with connection issue have had the possibility to listen to them. While to overcome the lack of face to face contact various one to one meetings have been organized.

Recommendations(if the practice is to be replicated)

The advices to implement an NRSN are basic yet fundamental ones:
1) Checking whether a similar network already exists, and if yes and if possible create synergies
2) Identify that the most relevant stakeholders in the country
3) Make sure that all relevant stakeholders are involved since the beginning
4) Make sure that all the remittance stakeholders across sectors, are invited to join, from both the remittance sending and receiving sides, including: Government, government agency, Government-owned corporation or state-owned enterprise, Multi- bi-lateral organization, NGO/non-profit, Private Sector, University, educational or research institute
5) Make sure all stakeholders receive equal treatment

Innovation

The NRSNs most explicit innovations and strengths are:
1) Their multi-stakeholder nature, hence the possibility for people who usually do not talk to each other, to meet and exchange ideas, opinions, practices and to advocate towards common goals.
2) The fact that the Networks have been entirely created and developed virtually given the pandemic
3) Their long term sustainability due to their double use of the
a)Linked-In closed groups that allows all NRSNs members to interact freely and the
b) official website where the reporting of each network takes place and in which a repository of all relevant remittance country (and not only) related documents are stored.

Date submitted:

02 February 2022

Disclaimer: The content of this practice reflects the views of the implementers and does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations, the United Nations Network on Migration, and its members.

 

 

*References to Kosovo shall be understood to be in the context of United Nations Security Council resolution 1244 (1999).