Author: Prof. Tolullah Oni
The future of Africa’s cities depends not only on roads, buildings or finance, but on the systems that generate, connect and mobilise knowledge. As African cities urbanise at unprecedented speed, they face intersecting challenges of health, climate risk and inequality that demand new forms of leadership and collaboration. The African diaspora represents a vast but underutilised reservoir of intellectual capital: the knowledge, skills, and technical, professional and research expertise that can shape, test and scale solutions for healthy, climate-resilient cities.
This piece explores why diaspora engagement should be understood not as charity, but as transnational knowledge diplomacy, and why mobilising diaspora intellectual capital is essential to shaping healthier, more climate-resilient urban futures for Africa. It also introduces a new Diaspora Knowledge Hub designed to operationalise this approach by setting out principles for how diaspora expertise can be mobilised with purpose, legitimacy, and impact to shape Africa’s urban futures.
The African Union (AU) defines the African diaspora as people of African descent and heritage living outside the continent, regardless of citizenship or nationality, who are willing to contribute to the continent’s development. Several countries have expanded this framing. Countries like Nigeria and Ghana further include the historical diaspora: communities separated from the continent by generations who continue to identify with and support national and regional development.
Diaspora communities are largely shaped by human mobility and dispersal. While a cross-sectional view of diaspora requires diverse entry points (from contemporary to historical), the bulk of future diaspora replenishment will stem from human mobility in response to the global need for skilled human capital. According to the African Development Bank, the African diaspora already exceeds 160 million globally.
The African Union estimates it at over 300 million when including historical and dispersed communities. Europe and the Middle East are projected to attract the largest numbers of African professionals due to targeted recruitment efforts and labour market demands. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, have seen a significant increase in African migration. Between 2010 and 2020, African migration to the GCC states increased by over 50%, with projections indicating continued growth due to labour market demands and climate-induced mobility.
This growing diaspora resource is well-positioned to meet global needs for portable, networked and culturally dexterous talent. Yet Africa has not fully positioned itself to shape this dynamic strategically. With the right mechanisms, brain circulation rather than brain drain can become a driver of shared value, advancing African priorities while contributing to global development. Moving beyond reactive responses to inevitable mobility, there is a need for mechanisms that channel diaspora knowledge and networks into Africa’s cities, countries, institutions and innovation ecosystems by design.
This recognition was reinforced at the 2012 AU African Diaspora Summit in Johannesburg, where the Sandton Declaration designated the Diaspora as Africa’s “sixth region.” It called for sustainable partnerships and encouraged governments to integrate diaspora engagement into development strategies.
Agenda 2063, launched in 2015, further reinforced this vision, noting that the diaspora is a key driver of change and a source of investment, expertise and solidarity. A decade later, the 2025 African Heads of State Summit reaffirmed the diaspora’s role in knowledge transfer as a critical lever for Africa’s development and emphasised the need to strengthen institutional frameworks to facilitate diaspora engagement.
At the national level, momentum is growing. Benin (2000), Senegal (2006), and Rwanda (2009) led early policy development. By 2020, 21 African countries had diaspora engagement policies or drafts in place, and 30 had institutions dedicated to diaspora affairs. While remittances and investment dominate discourse, a shift is emerging to recognise the diaspora’s potential as a wellspring of knowledge capital, with at least 10 acknowledging the value of skills and expertise, though often articulated in limited, short-term initiatives – often described as “missions”.
This context reflects a strong foundation, a need for institutionalised approaches to Diaspora engagement as a regional strategic priority, and a significant infrastructure gap to harness diaspora knowledge as a long-term resource. We also note little to no articulation of the bi-directional benefits of such efforts for both Africa and the Diaspora resident countries.
Staggering as this contribution is, this view obscures the full spectrum of diaspora contributions; in particular, the vast, underutilised pool of technical expertise, institutional reach and influence – intellectual capital. With financial remittances tending to diminish across generations, it is important that other forms of capital such as intellectual capital are as systematically harnessed as financial capital has been to date.
But much of this intellectual capital deployment remains individualised, informal and episodic. This is not a failure of commitment. But rather a failure of infrastructure. Without shared platforms and governance, intellectual capital cannot be mobilised at scale or aligned with long-term priorities.
There is therefore a need for durable, transnational infrastructure that enables continuity, shared learning and accountability, grounded in long-term partnership with African institutions.
Such infrastructure must move beyond the “duty to give back”, obligation or charity framing – to one grounded in connection, contribution and shared purpose. Well-designed diaspora engagement mechanisms should provide:
- A space for diasporans to define and shape their relationship to Africa on their own terms
- A platform for professionals across career stages to contribute expertise and co-create solutions
- A bridge for Global Africa, bringing continent-based and diasporan actors into shared agendas that shape science, policy and practice
Done well, long-term diaspora engagement ecosystems can deliver triple value:
- For African cities and institutions
- For countries of diaspora residence, through shared learning and innovation
- For global, transboundary urban health and climate challenges
In this context, transnational knowledge diplomacy refers to the structured, reciprocal mobilisation of knowledge across borders to strengthen institutional relationships, inform public decision-making and build long-term trust, legitimacy and collective capacity.
It moves beyond one-directional knowledge transfer or short-term technical exchange. Instead, it is a deliberate approach grounded in co-production, mutual accountability and sustained institutional partnership, connecting local realities with global systems of research, policy and practice.
In practice, this means:
- Connecting place-based knowledge, lived experience and locally generated evidence with global research, policy and investment systems
- Creating pathways for joint problem definition, co-production of knowledge and shared accountability
- Enabling sustained collaboration across geographies, disciplines and sectors, rather than time-bound missions
- Building legitimacy through reciprocity, humility, solidarity and long-term partnership
Its purpose is to activate, connect and sustain the collective knowledge, experience and networks of Global Africa in the service of healthier, more equitable and climate-resilient cities.
Who the Hub is for
To reflect the diversity and heterogeneity of Global Africa, we define diaspora in the most inclusive term to mean people living outside of Africa but connected to the continent through citizenship or origin (recent emigrants), heritage diaspora (through contemporary descent or historical ancestry including peoples dispersed during commercial slave trades) and affinity diaspora who hold a deep appreciation for African peoples, places and culture (through living on the continent over extended periods).
This is an explicitly transnational definition, decoupled from narrow national affiliations. It values connection over origin and contribution over geography. The focus is not on matching individuals to countries of heritage, but on building a “Global Africa” (continent+diaspora) knowledge ecosystem of people committed to shaping healthy, sustainable urban futures on the continent and beyond.
When mobilised with humility and purpose, diaspora actors can function as strategic bridge-builders and enable reciprocal South–North and South–South flows of knowledge, technical collaboration and scalable solutions across geographies. Embracing these principles, the Hub aims to foster an inclusive sense of belonging for Africans in the diaspora, creating spaces for respectful, reciprocal and long-term collaboration.
What the Hub seeks to enable
The goal of the Hub is to enable diaspora researchers, practitioners, policymakers, funders, entrepreneurs and civil society actors to collaborate with continent-based partners around shared urban challenges at the intersection of health, climate and development. Positioned as infrastructure to activate, equip and connect a global knowledge ecosystem, the Hub is anchored within the wider UrbanBetter ecosystem:
- Cityzens, UrbanBetter’s youth-led, data-driven civic action
- UrbanBetter Academy, a distributed network of Nodes, hosted in universities and partner institutions in Africa and the diaspora, serving as sites of intellectual infrastructure
What we aspire to
We seek to ensure that the Hub’s activities are grounded in these core values as it evolves:
- Solidarity and kinship: embracing an ethos of interconnectedness and intertwined futures. Transformation as a collective pursuit, rooted in mutual care, shared purpose and enduring connection. Ours is a pedagogy of we: we belong to each other, and our futures are intertwined.
- Equity: centring historically marginalised perspectives and geographies in how knowledge is produced, legitimised and used – actively seek to redress power asymmetries across research, policy and practice.
- Imagination: as a necessary force for systems change. We will seek to create space for speculative futures and cultivate the conditions for collective dreaming and design.
- Urgency: we acknowledge the scale of today’s crises but reject the illusion that speed alone delivers impact. We embrace urgency that is disciplined and foresight-driven, building trusted partnerships and durable infrastructure rather than reacting to symptoms.
- Reflexivity: holding space for critical self-awareness. We interrogate our roles, assumptions and positionalities, especially across geography, discipline and identity.
- Participation and reciprocity: as an ethic. Young people and communities are co-creators, not informants. Knowledge is shared, not extracted. Expertise flows in all directions.
- Transdisciplinarity: working across disciplinary, institutional, sectoral and geographic boundaries. Our challenges are systemic. Our methods and partnerships must be, too.
By 2030, the number of African cities with more than half a million residents is projected to increase by 80 per cent. This represents a generational opportunity for economic transformation, cultural resurgence and innovation, amplified by Africa’s young population, with a median age of 19 years.
Without intentional design and governance, however, this growth risks deepening health inequities, exceeding planetary boundaries and intensifying climate vulnerabilities. The consequences of inaction are already visible: rising non-communicable diseases, expanding informal settlements, unsafe mobility systems, polluted air and overstretched public services.
At the same time, the future remains unwritten. More than 60 per cent of the investments that will shape African cities by 2050 have yet to be made, presenting a rare opportunity to build cities that are healthy, equitable and climate-resilient by design. Cities also sit at the centre of the climate and health crisis.
Climate impacts are already being felt through heat stress, food insecurity, air pollution, water scarcity and mental health strain. These risks intersect with structural inequities that disproportionately affect low-income communities. Yet most drivers of health lie outside healthcare, in housing, transport, food systems and environmental conditions.
These interlocking challenges are systems problems. They cannot be addressed through isolated interventions. They require new forms of collaboration, leadership and knowledge production supported by institutions that can bridge disciplines, sectors and geographies. This is why cities are not only where risks are concentrated, but where systemic transformation can be accelerated.
By connecting diaspora intellectual capital to African cities, the Hub seeks to create the conditions and pathways for diaspora transnational knowledge diplomacy – contributing intellectual capital in ways that are institutionally useful, while also enabling countries of diaspora residence to learn from African innovation, experience and systems thinking.
As governments, institutions and corporations confront complex, transboundary challenges, the demand for networked, values-aligned and globally connected human capital will continue to grow. Diaspora engagement will therefore become not only strategic but essential.
The UrbanBetter Diaspora Hub offers a future-oriented response: building the structures and pathways now for sustained, multi-generational and mutually beneficial collaboration. Through transnational knowledge infrastructure, it seeks to activate Global Africa as a collective force for just and healthy urban futures.
This work is not driven by nostalgia, but by a commitment to building the future together through knowledge, imagination and solidarity.
If you are part of Global Africa and believe your knowledge, skills, or networks can help shape healthier, more hopeful urban futures, then I invite you to engage with the Diaspora Hub and help co-create what comes next.
Further reading
For readers interested in UrbanBetter’s institutional and theoretical foundations, further detail is available in the White Paper, Hope as Infrastructure for Healthy, Climate-Resilient Cities.
