Trends in Migration, Unemployment and Population: A Post-Covid-19 Forecast of Capacity Development in the Gambia

Abstract

As a developing economy, three major economic problems witnessed in the Gambia are the growing unemployment rate, migration (immigration and rural–urban drift) leading to urban population growth and the growing semi-skilled working population in the face of unemployment. This study seeks to answer the question of how the Gambian economy can plan to overcome these problems, coupled with post-COVID-19 global economic shocks, through a technically planned capacity development. In this paper, the trends in variables representing capacity development indicators, migration, unemployment and working population in the Gambia are studied using the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model. To project a system of interrelationship among these variables in the Gambia, the study employs the Vector Autoregressive (VAR) forecast analysis for the period between 1990 and 2019, thereafter generates a five-year forecast. The findings confirm that investment into the educational sector in developing economies is bound to yield increasing return to scale in the next five years. Investment into education, training and skill acquisition, if done, will attract the transfer of technical and managerial skills and technology for the purpose of building up general national capacity in such a developing economy.

Unveiling Sri Lanka’s brain drain and labour market pressure: A study of macroeconomic factors on migration

“…In contrast, influence on migration, while GDPPCI and EG had a statistically significant negative impact on migration. These results align with Mohamed Aslam and Alibuhtto [ 36 ] findings on GDPPCI’s negative impact on migration in Sri Lanka and Ayeni and Shaib [ 52 ] discovery of unemployment’s negative impact on migration in Gambia. Additionally, the study supports Khan and Bin [ 40 ] observation of HE’s positive impact on migration in China and Tipayalai [ 42 ] identification of EG’s negative impact on migration in Thailand.…”