Diaspora Investment and Entrepreneurship

The Migrant Support Fund is a federal fund administered to states according to the size of their repatriated migrant populations, which provides migrants one-time seed grants of up to USD 1,500 to start a new business.

Because the Mexican labor market is saturated and often unfamiliar to returning migrants, especially those who have been abroad for an extended period, these entrepreneurial and self-employment opportunities offer a key path to their economic reintegration.

Programs of employment creation for migrants, and economic and psychosocial integration projects for returnees offer returned migrants in El Salvador access to local job-search databases, vocational training, skills accreditation, and seed grants up to USD 3,500 for entrepreneurial projects.

The National Network of Returned Entrepreneurs (RENACERES) offers counseling and seed capital to migrants who demonstrate potential to establish new businesses or projects.

Deepening financial inclusion and enhancing rural people’s resilience by providing low-cost, cross-border mobile money transfers across the Kenya-Uganda corridor, linked with savings, loans and other financial services, and by promoting entrepreneurship for migrant family investment.

France issues Temprary Residence permits to non-EU foreign nationals who benefit from an employment contract of more than 3 months concluded following, in particular, the difficulties encountered by an employer in recruiting on French soil of employees already admitted to the labor market.

The temporary residence card (STC) "Temporary worker" is issued for any employment contract of between 3 months and 12 months.

The Somali AgriFood Fund is a seed capital investment matching fund, which targets the succesful Somali diaspora in the United States, Canada, European Union and Australia, matching their interest to invest with small and medium enterprises in agribusiness in Somalia on fishing, agriculture, food processing, packaging, cold storage facilities, and livestock.

Through the crowdfunding platform 'Babyloan Mali', established by IFAD, Malians living in Europe can invest in microentreprises or agro-business opportunities in the rural areas of Mali. Babyloan identifies good business plans for the development of microentreprises, and matches them with diaspora members and organizations in France keen to invest in their home country, through the intermediation of Malian microfinance institutions.

The Handbook for Armenians Abroad was published in 2010 by the Armenian Ministry of Diaspora with the support of the ILO-EU project 'Towards Sustainable Partnerships for the Effective Governance of Labour Migration in the Russian Federation, the Caucasus and Central Asia'.

The government of Ethiopia has recently launched the Ethiopian Diaspora Trust Fund (EDTF). www.ethiopiatrustfund.org

The Government of Kenya and IOM released in 2017 a guide for diaspora remittances and investments in the country.