Episode 55: African migration aspirations

Hello and welcome to Episode 55 of the Migration & Diaspora Podcast, a show about anything and everything to do with migration and diaspora engagement.  I’m delighted to be joined today by Linda Oucho, Executive Director of the African Migration and Development Policy Centre (AMADPOC), who shares her insights into African migrant decision-making. About Linda Linda is an established migration expert with over a decade of experience leading AMADPOC – a research think tank based in Nairobi, Kenya. Linda returned to Kenya after 16 years studying abroad in Ghana, Botswana and the UK. She draws from her experience as a migrant to understand the dynamic nature of migration to, from and within Africa. Linda has undertaken consultancies with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), the African Union Commission, among other intergovernmental and non-governmental organisations. She works closely with African governments, including Kenya where she serves as an active member of the National Coordination Mechanism for Migration (NCM) advocating for the use of research to inform migration decision-making, policy design and implementation.  What we talk about Today, Linda shares a range of insights on migrant decision making, drawing from emerging findings of DYNAMIG, a three-year project that aims to create a more thorough understanding of how people make decisions on whether and how to migrate. We talk about: How the DYNAMIG project functions and how they’re conducting their research. The factors that contribute to Africans’ decisions to migrate.  Whether or not policies to deter migration actually work.  African migrants’ increasing awareness of protection issues (or their lack of protection). As always, lots of links in the show notes so be sure to find this episode at homelandsadvisory.com/podcast. If you enjoy this episode, I invite you to leave a review via your preferred podcasting platform and to share the podcast with your migration-enthusiast friends.  Links DYNAMIG: https://dynamig.org/ LI: https://www.linkedin.com/company/dynamig/ X: https://x.com/_DYNAMIG  AMADPOC: https://amadpoc.org/ Connect with Linda: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindaoucho/ MIGNEX: https://www.mignex.org/  Migrating Out of Poverty: http://www.migratingoutofpoverty.org/  JLMP: https://au.int/en/jlmp  All episodes of the MDPcast: https://homelandsadvisory.com/podcast