MIDA — Migration for Development in Africa: Somalia's Diaspora Skills-Return Programme

MIDA (Migration for Development in Africa) is the International Organization for Migration's long-running mechanism for turning Somalia's roughly two-million-strong diaspora into a source of institutional capacity rather than only remittances — which separately exceed $2 billion a year and account for about a third of Somalia's GDP. Since the programme's Somalia launch around 2008, qualified diaspora members have been placed in short- and medium-term technical assignments inside ministries, universities and hospitals, paired explicitly with local counterparts for mentorship and skills transfer rather than simply filling vacant posts.

IOM reports more than 800 diaspora professionals, local professionals and interns deployed under MIDA in Somalia since the programme began, while a UN News profile citing IOM staff separately reports "over 400" diaspora returns from 17 countries over a 20-year span — the two figures likely reflect different counting bases (all MIDA sub-projects and interns versus a narrower returnee count) and could not be fully reconciled from public sources. The current donor-specific strand, MIDA FINNSOM phase III, launched in Mogadishu in May 2023 and runs to 2025: it has supported over 200 diaspora experts and involved 126 local professionals and interns, built around a target of 40 Finland-based Somali diaspora experts each mentoring at least two local staff (40 professionals plus 40 recent graduates).

IOM cites several senior Somali officials, including a former transitional prime minister and the current president of Puntland, as MIDA alumni, as evidence the model builds durable capacity rather than one-off placements. That said, placements are typically weeks to months rather than permanent relocation, so this is better understood as a circular knowledge-transfer model than a settle-and-stay retention programme, and it operates in a country still facing an active security and governance crisis.

Read the full analysis: https://somalia.iom.int/mida-programme