Within the space of the past 35 years, Ethiopians have spread across the globe and some two million of them now call North America, Western Europe, the Middle East, and parts of East and Southern Africa home. Over the same period, this Ethiopian Diaspora has grown in financial and technical capacity and managed to largely integrate themselves into their adopted countries.
 

All the while, they have continuously harboured a longing to either return home, or at least help their families and friends who have not been so fortunate to escape the quagmire of poverty and civil war. As we approach the third Ethiopian Millennium, the world in which Ethiopia and Ethiopians reside has changed in fundamental ways to make just this possible.

Advances in communications technology have made it possible for the Ethiopian Diaspora to keep connected to each other across the globe and indeed to friends and family back home. Voice Over Internet Provider (VOIP) technology, cheap phone cards, web aggregators, blogs and sites such as YouTube, Google and Yahoo Groups!, are helping to create a 'virtual Ethiopia'.

In fact, what is beginning to emerge is a new Ethiopian entity, a Greater Ethiopia, beyond the legally recognisable physical borders spanning the entire globe. Combined with the end of civil war, better investment environment and a booming economy, there exists today a potentially large win-win arrangement in which Ethiopians the world over can all benefit economically.
 

The National Bank of Ethiopia (NBE) reckons that Ethiopians in the Diaspora sent home 1.1 billion dollars in the first nine months of 2006/07. This figure roughly doubles if money transferred through unofficial channels, such as in person or mail deliveries, is included. These cash transfers alone may equal around 10-20pc of Ethiopia's Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
 

The potential for growth is even brighter. If Diaspora Ethiopians were to send no more than a tenth of their total annual income home, it is conceivable that the net value of their remittances may equal Ethiopia's Gross National Product (GNP).

The Ethiopian Diaspora's economic strength is just one of its potential benefits to the country. Other major strengths of the Diaspora include a vast pool of trained human capital. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) report estimated that Ethiopia lost 75pc of its human capital - including a third of its doctors - from emigration between 1980 and 1991. The loss in business management and other technical skills are likely at least as severe.

People who move to developed societies also tend to acquire other intangible skills. The bulk of the post-1974 émigrés now have had more than 20 years to get acquainted with Western management styles, business discipline and technology. Someone who worked for a multinational corporation understands the importance of attending meetings on time and answering back to clients promptly. An IT manager in an industrial country has seen how Internet can speed transactions and enhance promotions - not to mention knows how to manage a multi-team project.
 

A simple visit to Starbucks reveals what customer service can do to a business - and what it looks like. Moreover, the Ethiopian-Americans, -British, -Dubaians know what the customers in these markets desire and how they do business. Some perhaps even have connections and influences.

These are all skills and know-how crucially needed and lacking in Ethiopia.

Members of the Diaspora are among the most powerful, capable and focused development agents for Ethiopia. The macro view of the Diaspora's power only partly conveys the influence they can each exert individually. In fact, the Ethiopian Diaspora returnees represent a reverse side of the brain drain. The difference in living standards and technology, a little money and know-how from the developed world goes a long way back home.

Interviews conducted with recently returned expatriates show the promise of the Diaspora community. A returned Canadian Ethiopian who worked in hotel management for the Hilton for more than a decade and wanted to come back to contribute to the country's development put it this way: "If we do not come back and face the hardship [of development] here, who is going to come? If I can create just one job, that is a contribution."

After many years of, sometimes admittedly difficult, trials and errors, he now employs 55. These employees probably support several hundred people in turn.

An Ethiopian-American who works for a garment distributor, with the help of USAID's AGOA project, successfully placed a one million dollar garment export order. This large garment order possibly will increase the country's total non-agricultural exports by up to five per cent, single-handedly. With several more millions orders likely to come in the future from this Diaspora buyer, the potential for expanding exports in this sector is bright. It is tough to imagine where else this type of impact can be achieved.

Then there is the progress in business savvy brought by the Diaspora. Arguably already the best known international business to come out of Ethiopia, Ethiopian Airlines has been flying even higher since the arrival of its current CEO, Girma Wake, once a member of the Diaspora.

Since his takeover, Girma has emphasised the state-owned airliner's modernisation efforts on customer service and global competitiveness. Ethiopian is currently projected to earn one billion dollars and reach about 50 international destinations by 2010, a phenomenal feat for a country currently marginalised in every measure of world trade.

But the business savvy is also starting to reach smaller investments as well. Recently, when a cup of coffee took too long to come at a recently opened trendy café establishment in Addis started by an ex-Diaspora, the on-duty manager walked out, apologised, and offered the customer to have it for free. This unfamiliar level of customer service has deeply surprised many Ethiopians. There are more examples than this page can hold.

An expatriate's involvement in Ethiopia's economy is beneficial to both the expatriate and the country. Many argue that Ethiopia is now a great place to do business. GDP has been growing by double-digits for three consecutive years. Various business environment indicators score well above Africa's average. A national industrial development plan has been passed, outlining export-oriented strategies for sectors such as coffee, leather and flower, whose exports grow at more than 200pc per annum. The government has put many incentives in place, including a loan guarantee for 70pc of the capital requirement for an investment on 'priority sectors'.

International organisations and IT professionals continue to sprawl into Addis Abeba, creating demands for high-scale services as well as capacity for niche high-value technical businesses. A day's tour around the capital will reveal as many buildings in construction as those already established buildings.

A returned entrepreneur mentioned above heard news that the government was trying to induce investment, and came back to test the environment as a tourist for two weeks. To his surprise, he found that the government agencies were inviting. He was able to get direct access to the needed people at the investment agency and other secretaries with no prior connection. The incentives were hard to refuse. Land was offered at 70 cents per square metre, "which is like free", he said.

"You might not get things done in the way you do in the US, but you have to understand Ethiopia and America are not the same," he conceded. "Yet, the business opportunities are here. As long as you learn how to navigate the bureaucracy, the private environment is very advantageous."
 

After an attempt at building a hotel consultancy failed since the local hotels were not ready to embrace professional practices yet, he quickly moved on to other entrepreneurial opportunities.

Today, he owns a fibre glass manufacturing shop and a fish processing plant in a joint venture with Italian partners. When asked about the difference in his living standards between now and the day when he was operating manager of the Hilton Hotel in Toronto, he replied, There is no comparison.  It is much higher now. It has got to be when I am employing 55 people."
 

Moreover, the superior management and technological know-how that the Diaspora possesses gives them a unique competitive advantage in this environment to make profits out of opportunities. Spend a few months in the country and it is not hard to see that many of the most successful businesses are started and run by people who had first-hand foreign exposure. As the economy steers itself for export-driven growth, the new business leaders will need to understand what foreign customers demand; the ones with established contacts with foreign buyers will excel even more.

The Ethiopian Diaspora wants to invest back in their homeland. Unlike other Diaspora groups, such as the Armenians, who are typically second-or-more generations removed, the Ethiopian Diaspora is made up of almost entirely first generation and still maintains fresh and emotional links to their country. Most expatriates we interviewed so far expressed strong desire to come back and do business in Ethiopia at some point soon. Of those who returned, none of them regretted their decision to return home.

But many of the people we interviewed said they do not know where to put their money. What sectors are growing, which geographical areas are best to put in a factory, whom to trust and how does one determine these things?
 

We have talked to several people who have accumulated more than 100,000 dollars in investable assets, would like to invest in Ethiopia, but do not know where to start. Worse, there are some that are turned off by Ethiopia's regulatory obstacles. A prospective Diaspora returnee we talked to expressed his desire to invest and be a part of the country's development. But, due to the burdensome regulatory structure and weak telecommunication infrastructure, he was forced to divert his investment to Kenya and South Africa instead.

In the absence of a well-developed integrated scheme to lure the global Diaspora into the Ethiopian economy in a productive way, the current level of involvement is only indicative of the immense potential the Diaspora holds for development. Taken together, through remittances, direct investments and increased export opportunities, it is not hard to see the significant role the Ethiopian Diaspora is already playing in earning foreign currency and job creation in the Ethiopian economy. In fact, the Diaspora can be much more important for Ethiopia, even more so than foreign direct investment (FDI) and development assistance.

But how to translate this potential into results is a key challenge. While economic performance and third-party assessments suggest that the overall business environment is changing for the better (World Bank's most recent Investment Climate Survey [ICS] found that most areas of regulations have significantly improved), bureaucracy and regulatory transparency often take a long time to fix. More immediate stop-gap solutions will reap a large benefit.
 

As argued earlier, the GDP of Ethiopians living abroad is now at least as large as the one within Ethiopia's geographic borders. These facts and trends are inevitably changing the way we think about and define the Ethiopian economy. Discussions around a development policy therefore must now start to include the "other half of the Ethiopian economy" and how to integrate it for better value addition system-wide. Such an approach can help to increase incomes for Ethiopians the world over.
 

In the areas of direct investment and trade development, national and donor policymakers should pay a lot more attention to the potential and promises of the Diaspora as a development force. Today the Diaspora is treated more or less on equal ground as other foreign investors and importers. We believe they are a lot more important.
 

No export strategy, sector planning or linkage building should be done without considering the Diaspora at the forefront. Just as the government put in economic, preferential incentives for priority sectors, it can equally view Diaspora as a sector with strong natural endowment, and put in preferential incentives to facilitate their impacts to the economy. This would imply, for examples preferential economic incentives, dedicated government agencies and access process as well as tailored supporting services, such as access to finances and legal money-pooling mechanism for shared companies.

And this could be even more productive if an offer of dual citizenship is considered along the lines of what the Indian government is doing to integrate its sizable global Diaspora into its economy 'within borders'. These seemingly drastic steps are not superfluous considering the developmental impacts that the Diaspora has demonstrated for the country.
 

Members of the Diaspora want to invest back because they care about the country's development, and because they want to make profits. So they should. We are at a point in the country's development that the two objectives coincide. Ethiopia will only be better-off if they continue to do so.

The government should consider the potential of the Diaspora in economic terms separately from their stands on political terms. The Diaspora should, at least, as our succeeded hotelier-turned-plant-owner advocated, "come and see the country for yourself. Come and see whether it is like what you heard. You will never regret it."