Opportunity or Exploitation?: Unpacking the Ethical Dilemma on African Youth Labour Export

African youth migration for employment-related purposes has increased manifold in recent times, raising serious issues relating to both opportunity and exploitation.

Many a time, international markets appear to be an alluring lighthouse of hope. But is exporting labour a real way of economic empowerment or a desperate move in the face of contracting local opportunities? 

International jobs, better wages, and general perceptions of a better quality of life, often create huge contrasts with low wages, under-employment, and lack of prospects that face people across many African countries. 

This has given rise to the more fundamental question underlying this trend: does the exportation of youthful labour act as a stepping stone to success or an avenue to entrap young African youth for their exploitation?

Opportunity or Necessity?

The American dream has for the longest time been painted on the faces of Africans as an end to suffering. This explains why labor export has been a sort of a lifeline to many youths in recent times when economic fortunes have plunged. 

High rates of unemployment have made working abroad an option of last resort in countries like Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria where their youth have still remained jobless. But is this trend an opportunity for economic empowerment?

Whereas foreign jobs promise better rates than those available at home, the money such people get to bring back home greatly improves family lifestyles and contributes a lot to the local economies. 

In any case, this does indicate systemic failure by most African governments in creating adequate employment opportunities or providing wages attractive enough to attract the best brains among its citizens. 

It further shifts the problem of mismatching the skills provided within the educational system and those required at work, hence giving limited opportunities for getting a good job back home.

But with the opening up of apparently attractive ways out to international job markets, one question keeps knocking: labor export-a beacon of hope or a consequence of despair? 

Could foreign employment merely camouflage deeper governance failure in making available sustainable and high-quality jobs for the youths of Africa?

Remittances: Lifeline or Dependency?

In most cases, for African families, the remittances from abroad are a significant source of income. This has emerged as one of the largest sources of foreign income, dwarfing even foreign direct investments in countries like Nigeria and Kenya. 

In fact, this financial inflow increases through consumption at household levels, financed education, and even entrepreneurship development accruing to the local economy.

However, perhaps these remittances are a double-edged sword in that heavy reliance on cash sent home by migrant workers diverts governments in many countries from urgent needs to create sustainable local employment opportunities. 

Complacent governments could begin to lean on those remittances for support rather than try to invest in infrastructure, innovation, or industry to provide domestic jobs.

Yet, it is good to question whether the remittance economy signifies a stopgap life line or a long-term entrapment in stultification of domestic job creation. 

More basically, how do the African nations balance up the gains emanating from remittances with building stronger local economies that would reduce the need to export labour?

Exploitation in the Global Labour Market

Not all working conditions abroad end with a fairy tale finish. Migrant workers, especially those coming from Africa-speaking generally, are under the threat of heavy exploitation, wage theft, and poor working conditions generally. 

Tales have surfaced all too often in Europe from the Middle East of long hours, lousy housing, physical abuse, and the denial of basic human rights as happening to African workers.

Poorer African laborers are cheaper, disposable, and dispensable in the eyes of richer nations and industries. Global demand for very cheap labor is threatening African youth with the threat of exploitation in such sectors as construction, agricultural, and domestic sectors.

Many end up stuck in the lowly paid precarious employment devoid of any chance of justice. Therefore, a two-part question involving ethics emerges

• Do the richer nations exploit African labor as a means of keeping their citizens ahead economically?

• Are the African governments complicit by not providing options at home for their citizens?

Of course, the most contentious issue related to labor export has something to do with brain drain. It could rob the African continent of the very talent it desperately needs in its journey toward development and growth, since several educated and skilled young Africans may migrate for work abroad. 

Legal Protections and Ethical Responsibility

The call for legal frameworks regulating labor export in African countries will likely receive increasingly greater attention in focus as more youth migrate to other countries in search of jobs.

Most of the African countries have bilateral agreements in place with countries in whose interest there is usually very poor enforcement of these. Workers could fall into the hands of foreign employers who would mistreat them with little or no legal implications.

It is also far from evident if the recipient countries will show any interest in the protection of the African workers. Richer countries stand to make their profits from cheap inflows of labor and may want to close their eyes before any exploitation. 

Again, this invites questions of ethical responsibility: Should foreign countries bear the greater obligation toward protection and fair treatment of the African workers?

Meanwhile, the corresponding duty that should be asked from the African governments is: what are they doing in securing their citizens abroad, or do they care little about the welfare of their workers but more about increasing remittances? 

Labor Export and Gender: Vulnerabilities of African Women

Normally, it is a tough experience for all African migrant workers, but women find themselves in even more vulnerable situations, and even with higher risks of falling into various kinds of exploitation and abuse. 

Long working hours, physical and sexual abuses, and isolation are just a few experiences faced by many African women who migrate for domestic work, mostly to the Middle East. 

Cases of documented trafficking and incidents of forced labor are also very common. NGOs and international organizations have tried to make sure the women migrants are protected by raising awareness and calling for the passage of stronger legal protection. 

Much more needs to be actually done so as not to have African women seeking labor abroad taken advantage of. Arising questions would then be: 

• To what extent do the African governments-as well as the international community-go further in protecting the women migrants from exploitation and abuse?

• What mechanisms have been laid down to empower the women who cross borders for labor?

Case Studies: Success and Failure Stories

Examples that will really relate to the comprehension of that complex reality of exportation of African youth labor include the fact that behind every story of exploitation, someone managed to have a good story to tell by working abroad, such as the acquisition of new skills and pride in financial stability, returning back home.

On the other hand, however, for each such success story, there is again a failure story of how young people get deceived through recruitment agencies, tricked into exploitative jobs, and even worse, into trafficking. 

Understanding exactly what sets the conditions for those who are predisposed to succeed, in contrast to being exposed to exploitation, forms the building blocks toward better policy and protection for migrant workers in the future.

Success Stories: Empowerment through Labour Export 

Some of the success stories of the Kenyan youths, who were exported to Europe courtesy of GoK after training in skilled labour through initiatives meant to improve the employment opportunity for the youths include:

1. Kenya-Germany Vocational Training Partnership GIZ Program

The Kenyan government has helped the youths who are trained in TVET institutions to migrate to Germany on behalf of the German International Cooperation Agency. The program targets the youths in various areas such as health care, mechanical engineering, and information technology, among many others. 

In fact, Germany has a shortage of skilled personnel, especially in the health sector; as such, the youth is assured of being absorbed into internships and later on into jobs as soon as they finish their vocational training in Germany.

2. Finland-Kenya Nursing and Health Care Workers Program

The government of Finland and that of Kenya reached consensus on the supply of Kenyan health workers to fill gaps within the sector dealing with the aging population of Finland. 

It is through this program that Kenyan youth, who have undergone training in health-related courses including nursing from different skills institutions, get a chance to go and work in Finland.

Exploitation and Failures: The Dark Side of Labour Export

There have equally been sad cases of Kenyan youths who are exploited after exportation to work in other countries. Such vulnerabilities arise because of poor regulation of recruitment agencies, laxity in the law to protect them, and other unfavorable working conditions abroad.

Case of Exploitation in the Middle East Countries

Most of the labor export programs irrelevant to Europe have been overshadowed by cases of Kenyan youths being exploited in countries like Saudi Arabia in the Middle East. 

Most of these Kenyan youths are mainly lured by the high-paid jobs which put them in abusive situations from which they had no way of escaping.

Such cases, therefore, triggered a diplomatic row between Kenya and Saudi Arabia-something that had the Kenyan government resorting to reviewing its labor export policies.

This simply shows how such regulatory frameworks and oversight mechanisms become necessary in ensuring that recruitment agencies do not exploit the vulnerable youth.

Scam Recruitment Agencies and Fraudulent Job Offers

The others had been promised jobs abroad with lucrative wages but only if the recruiting agencies, overtly scamming Kenyan youths, take their cut toward those ends.

Poor Working Conditions and Low Wages for Industries in Europe

In Europe, considered to have better labor laws generally, quite a number of cases involve Kenyan youths facing hazardous conditions of work. Some report getting lower wages than the continent’s minimum wage law, leaving doubts on how well the labor laws are followed in Europe. 

African Youth and Employment in the Future: Alternatives to Labour Export

Meanwhile, as debates are still raging with regard to the export of African youth, there grows a feeling that something more needs to be done in an effort to provide them with sustainable employment at home. 

As a matter of fact, such employment opportunities will have to be created through entrepreneurship, technology startups, or the development of sustainable industries like green energy or agriculture by governments in Africa, the private sector, and international organizations.

Aside from those plans and projects, those schemes which are known to be mere tools intended to spur innovative thinking amongst the youths-for example, a sprouting of technology hubs across the continent-show great promise in themselves. 

At any rate, it cannot be labor export which can give employment to the African youths but labor export of Africa's youthful population which has the economic development potential for the continent.

Labour export is an opportunity and a curse for the youth of Africa. Therefore, the challenge of balance would be between economic gain through remittances with ethics in standards of labor and with more solid economies where a job is created on a sustainable basis for the next generation.

Conclusion

An exodus of human capital weakens local industries and further diminishes African nations' capabilities for competitiveness on the global market. The other side of this coin is that somehow the export of labor may convey rich experience and knowledge to African youth whom they can bring into the mother country. 

Specialists practicing in advanced sectors-for instance, technological or health care areas-can gain expertise that might be quite crucial upon return to a rejuvenated boost for developing Africa.