 I'll just give a brief description of what my organization does, and then I'll talk about briefly what I'm going to discuss on my presentation. It's an independent research think tank that conducts policy-based research, and we work closely with government officials and other stakeholders, including United Nations and universities. So we work closely with different stakeholders that work on migration and development issues where we try to understand the connection between migration and development. We've primarily focused on migration in Kenya because we realized there was a gap and there was something missing in terms of migration and policy. And that's why a lot of our work, we have a biased approach where migration always has to feature. So if it's migration and employment, migration is a primary issue. So my presentation, which is looking at the challenges and solutions to migrant integration and diversity is going to pull together some of the findings we've had from different studies that we have conducted in Kenya and within the region, but also observations we've made from neighboring countries where we've been assessing durable solutions for displaced persons. And to see what are the actual challenges that are emerging in terms of migrant integration and what are the potential solutions we should be looking towards when we're looking at migrant integration and social cohesion in Africa. So it's not, I know Africa is a very big continent, so it's a bit ambitious for me to say Africa. So I'm drawing examples from selected countries. So I know that question will come up. I just had to put that disclaimer. Okay, when we look at the state of African migration, we cannot bypass the whole historical, the history of migration. And when you look at the pre-colonial era, migration was more fluid. There were no borders. People moved because of the response to the local environment. When you look at environmental shocks, you look at conflict. It was movement that was informed by the environment that they occupied. So you find that there was less control measures at that time. But when you bring yourself to the colonial era and the demarcation of the borders, you find more control mechanisms that were put in place, more specifically on labor migration, especially of male labor migrants who are providing support in the urban areas. But you still found a few selective movements of female migrants in some countries like Nigeria and in Kenya. I'll be also a bit biased and refer to Kenya a lot because that's the country that I know more and also Uganda because of what I've been also working on in different projects. So when we look at the colonial era, you see some aspect of cultural integration, especially in terms of the cultural imperialism that was taking place at the time. You look at religion, education, and basically those are platforms where cultural integration could take place. And it was more of the replacement of traditional cultures and replacing them with the culture of the colonial state. So it's more imposed, but then you find there's a balance that there was still traditional cultural behaviors or customs that were still taking place and meshing with the colonial, with the colonies, cultural behaviors and customs. But when you move yourself closer to post-independence era, you find more internal movements were more rapid because now there were no restrictions or movements, but it was not controlled. And it just meant that more populations within the rural areas were moving into the urban areas. And that meant that there was no controlled mechanism in place and the rural areas were lacking labor support. So you find that there's ethnic, you find a lot of ethnic groups that are not traditionally found in urban areas, they're resident in those areas and there's an intermeshing of communities as you would see in Accra, in Lagos, in Nairobi, in Addis. There are so many different ethnic groups within there, but also international populations that are resident within that. So we've been hearing about the state of migration and where people go in. A lot of them were saying that migrants are mostly resident in the continent. And as you can see from the table, I don't know, it's quite visible. You can see majority of the migrants move within the continent. And these are based on World Bank statistics on the migration and remittances database. And as you see, as the time goes by from 1960 to 2013, the population of people that are moving has increased, but it still remains that there's a large population that is still on the continent. And you find that most of them are driven by violence. You find in the case of Somalia and South Sudan, environmental shocks where you find flooding and floods and droughts that are taking place as what happened in Somalia earlier on this year. There was a major drought in Somalia which caused a lot of internal displacement at a time when the government of Kenya had announced they will be repatriating refugees back to Somalia. So that becomes a problem because you're repatriating them back to a place that's already facing an environmental shock. But you also find that migrants contribute to the economy and that's something that discussions have been taking place at a national level where the governments are trying to see how can we benefit from working closely with migrants to build the economy? And this is an aspect of migrant integration. You have to ensure that migrant integration can take place and that is the challenge that a lot of countries may be facing because there's no formula that actually works. It can work temporarily and then you have to modify it based on the response. And you can also see culture can be used positively as a tool of integration. You see it in the food practices. You see it in the language. I'm sure here in Ghana, you can find there's a Kenyan restaurant or a Nigerian restaurant or Senegalese restaurant. Just like in Kenya, we have a lot of Ethiopian restaurants. We have so much diversity and we also see it in the influence in the music. Right now, I don't even know when I'm listening to Kenyan music, I'm listening to Ghanaian or Nigerian music because it has intermeshed so well that we are actually integrating in our own way and we need to use that to harness it positively for development purposes. And still just continue on migrant integration. When you look at the media, what the media has portrayed on migration, you see the negative aspect of it and yet we should be promoting migration as a tool and enabler of development. And we need to see how we can actually reduce those challenges that we face as migrants or as migrants relating with host communities to improve, to use it for development purposes but also to improve relations between countries, especially if we're talking about free movement. If we're talking about free movement in East Africa, what does that mean? We may share a language but we have cultural differences. How can we intermesh that and use it to benefit the free movement protocol? But also when you look at the state of globalization and technological innovation, it has actually opened the door to cultural integration on a digital platform. I don't have to travel to some place to make a decision of whether I want to stay there. I can just go on YouTube and Google and see what I like about it. But that becomes a bit biased because I'll always look at the good part but never look at the bad part. And that is something that informs someone's decision to migrate. You need to be able to balance the argument and to be able to see what are the cultural practices in the country? What are the differences? Are they accepting of migrants? Are they challenged by migrants? And what are the issues that I could encounter? What are the neighborhoods I can stay in? So we have more digitized platforms that we can use for understanding the cultural customs of the host country that we're intending to move to. And this is really important when you look at the state of indifference, when you see differences between different nationalities that has been seen in South Africa. South Africa, unfortunately, has been associated negatively when you look at xenophobia, the xenophobic attacks that have been taking place with foreign nationals, Zimbabwe and Somalis. And that's something that we can actually try to understand. And that is based on competition of resources when you look at employment opportunities. That is where it stems from, the history of the relations that if foreigners are coming in, employment opportunities are being taken away from the national. So these are important factors to look into. The historical importance of migrant relations was to understand where can we now address some of the issues concerning migrant integration and using the fact that diversity is positive if we understand the dynamics and relations between migrant groups. But at the same time, you can look at it from the perspective of the displaced persons. When you look at the refugee population, I always refer to the Uganda scenario because Uganda has a very progressive policy when it comes to refugee integration. Simply because their policy is to offer livelihood opportunities to the refugees once they arrive into the country so that they're not necessarily dependent on the support from international agencies, which is an added value. So we can actually learn from the Uganda case study to see how local integration works and how it can be used for the benefit of that region because now it's not only benefiting the local community, it's also benefiting the refugee community. So I just put this image to talk about now migrant integration within host communities. And I thought it was an interesting outline that was done by IOM. This is the recent compact they've done on the thematic area of migrant integration and social cohesion. And they were saying that integration is a two-way process of mutual adaptation. As a migrant, when I go to a country, I have to be willing and able to accept certain cultural customs and practices. By the same time, I'm challenged by the fact that I may have to reject my own cultural customs and practices in order to adapt. And that also depends on the length of stay a migrant will have in that particular country. So if I know I'm going to be in Ghana for six months, I don't have to learn a language, I just need to know how to navigate the country. But if I know I'm going to stay a little bit longer, it'll now determine what I'm going to do in terms of religion, what I'm going to do in terms of relating with different groups of people. And it also determines if I'm single, am I going to get married to a Ghanaian in that sense. So you just have to look at it very broadly. And when you look at the adaptation process, both hosts, for both hosts and migrants, they both have to learn to accept one another in the sense that host communities have to learn to know that there are differences between different populations that live and reside within their community. So they have to be able to understand these differences work in favor of them and how to mesh and understand it from a positive perspective, as opposed to negative, where you see competition of resources. And when you see the host community accepting different cultures, it makes it more progressive because there's some development aspect of it. And we saw that when we were looking at perceptions of migrants in host communities in Kenya, specifically we're looking at the areas of Vangatorongai and Narok, which is normally known as Masailand. And those areas, you can see a difference in the presence of migrants. You would find that there's cultural integration, there's intermarriages, and you can see that there's an intermeshing of cultures. You'll find that someone is mixing Masai jewelry with modern wear, and that's something that's very different that's not known within that area. And then you also see that they've contributed to development in those localities. They've changed business practices, which appeals to a wider audience, whereas before they may have appealed to just their neighbors. But now they realize that if this is an attractive product, for example, the Masai jewelry, it can appeal to a much larger population that's beyond their borders. But it also has introduced innovative practices of farming and also real estate. Before it was more of a traditional setup, you're just building a home for yourself, but now it has become a business seeing the potential of that happening. And that is something that we saw that was emerging within these areas, and it could be beyond that area. But at the same time, we realized the government does not really understand what is happening with migrant integration in Kenya. They know it exists and they can see the influence of it, but I think there's a lack of understanding at a policy level on what to do in terms of migrant integration and how to use it positively. And now that we have a devolved government, it makes it easier for each county to understand their population, the migrant and host population to now determine how to intermesh and benefit from that relationship to develop their counties. And that's something I believe that the government is taking positive steps in terms of understanding what do we need to do in terms of migration and use it as an enabler for development. I shouldn't have put graphics, but it's fine. And then also when you look at the negative aspect of migration, I wouldn't want to call it negative aspect, I think it's just a learning process in the sense that we need to understand that not all things go well as planned. You'd find that there are challenges, like I talked about competition of resources, resistance to different categories or different groups, and it could be lack of education at a community level. Maybe at the national level in city centers, you find a lot of communities understand and accept differences, but you also find at more rural and more remote areas, there's a lack of understanding of different populations. And in the same study we did in 2016, oh, I think that's a repetition, but we found that it's that lack of understanding stems from the government perspective. And the process of adaptation, you need to take into account the cultural shock that they experienced, because when someone comes to a country, they have certain perceptions and then they realize it's not the true reality of it. So there's an aspect of resistance that they experience and they do not want to accept or reject certain practices of their own, but the process of adjustment allows them to now negotiate or compromise on certain aspects that will work in favor for them and that will help them to adapt and live easily within a community. So there are platforms of integration. When you look at employment, I won't go through all this, but employment is a platform of integration. You can find that job opportunities are there, but the challenge is some of them don't take into account integration as migrants. They don't realize that there are different practices, different ways of working. There's a high expectation of what type of jobs they'll get, the salary, the environment, and that's something that even migrants and host community have to take into account. Housing is also another platform where migrant integration takes place. It determines our neighborhood choice. It determines our, in terms of security, and if you don't take those into account, it makes it difficult for integration to take place. So I'm going to skip some of this because I think I'm running out of time, and I wanted to just highlight the same study of, actually I have discussed this, so I won't actually go through it because I'm running out of time. When you look at social cohesion, we're looking at how can migrant groups collaborate and work together in a positive way, and that's something that I feel my observation is that there's a challenge in many African countries because there is one strategy, but it's never effective across board, and you find that research is important to understand those issues in terms of migrant integration and social cohesion. There's very little focus on that unless they're looking at it from the perspective of displaced persons, but I think that there's places where we can actually learn from other countries, from other regions, where we can actually understand how can social cohesion work for the benefit of the country and for the groups of the population, the host population. So I just extracted these statements from the study we did in 2016, and you could see differences. The first statement, the person is a 45 year old, female responded from Guy, who was basically complaining that outside of meaning immigrants or migrants, internal migrants included, brought challenges to the area. They changed, they're basically saying they lost their land, labor is cheaper, so they've actually influenced the labor market in terms of what services they can provide. So it's actually cheaper, it's difficult for them to have a source of livelihood if they wanted to. Then the 34 year old male responded was saying that they have control of the local economy. Now, Narok is where we have Masai Mara in all those areas and all those tourist spots, but you find that a lot of the local population that is running businesses are not the local population. It's actually internal migrants from other regions or immigrants that have come in. And I think there's a lack of understanding of how that can work, how the government can actually improve that and harness relationships between the local population and the migrant population. But on the flip side, you find this last statement, which is looking at the positive side of migration, saying that migration has taught people, besides the value of education, which is something that was lacking at the time. So when you extract such positive stories, how can we harness that and change people's perspective to work for the better of the community? And that means that the country has to have a proper strategy on migrant integration. So I just outlined a few strategies that are not all complete. And the first one is there's a limited understanding of migrant integration. There are few studies that are there, but they're looking at it from the perspective of course displaced migrants. There's also a disconnection between research and policy, or rather there's something that you cannot see a connection between the two. There's also lack of comprehensive policies that include migrant integration. And if they do exist, there's a lack of implementation. And that's more evident in the case of Kenya because they say, we are very good at developing policies, but implementing is very difficult. Then there's a lack of a platform for migrant and host communities to address their primary concerns stemming from difficult integration. I say this that it's not a platform where if there's a conflict between one migrant population and the host population, they cannot go to a center or community center to discuss and to address those issues. And again, this is in reference with Kenya. It may not be the same in other countries, or it may be the same. Then there's a lack of understanding of the migrant integration policy, migrant integration at policy level, which relates to the first point. So in conclusion, these are some of the strategic solutions that have been proposed by the recent IOM, Global Compact, schematic paper on integration and social cohesion. One of them is ensuring that there is a comprehensive and coherent policy responding to the diverse community. And this relates to bilateral agreement between countries. So developing safer migration practices at national and regional level, regional and global level, which can be used to inform and design the national policy on that takes into account migrant integration, which is currently happening. Then there's sensitization for the host communities and migrants themselves, which can be done through pre-departure training or pre-departure training, but also they have to understand what are the bilateral and multilateral agreements between countries to know what they can benefit from. A lot of these agreements are very technical and they're never really translated to the national level. So it's important to engage them and inform them about the process and how it works for them, how it benefits both of them. Again, they need policies, countering xenophobia and all forms of discrimination. And xenophobia was something that wasn't quite present in Kenya as much, but it's something that started to emerge when extremism was associated with Somali national, both refugees and those who are resident in Kenya as labor migrants. So they need to find effective ways of having an actual policy that works, but is based on evidence on the ground. Again, I mentioned pre-departure training and migrant orientation programs, which are currently being done for refugees being resettled, but I think it's something they can do for migrants who are planning to resettle in another area as a labor migrant or as a student in preparation. It may be happening, but it's the scale and the impact we need to understand or to improve. There's also an aspect of engaging the public private sector as integration partners because they actually work with international labor migrants from the region and also from the continent and beyond. So the government has to see them as integration partners to promote diversity through the equal opportunities policies, but also provide training to enforce legal obligations concerning labor and migrant rights. And finally, I think technology is a very useful tool for doing that. We need to use it as a platform to promote migrant diversity and also use it to inform people about certain perceptions we have of migrants and challenge them to think differently and see what they can do to improve relations between different immigrant and migrant groups within the country. But these are not comprehensive. These are just some suggestions that have been extracted from the recent global compact on integration and social cohesion. And it's something that research can actually help to see the connections between policy and practice. So with that, I will just conclude. Thank you very much.