Thinking Back Home

The main focus of this book is remittance. Remittance as a direct cash reimbursement for brain drain stood as the main source of hard currency for many countries including Ethiopia. This research is done with the preliminary premises that the formal remittance flow to Ethiopia is relatively low and the migrants' channeling patterns has affected this. To examine these premises, the research deployed qualitative method. The application of depth interviews have revealed a new insight to the remittance business which is not explicitly found in the quantitative research, as Ethiopian migrants indicate socioeconomic obligation as the main reason for their remittance. Whereas, lower accessibility of financial institutions on the receivers' side, lower competition among money sending agencies in the remitters' side, high transaction cost, higher exchange rate differentials which resulted to the wider availability of the invisible channel are responsible to the relatively low remittance flow through the formal channels which in turn proves the premises of this research. This is a mere insight to the complex nature of remittance with regards to Ethiopia.