Remittances and the future of African economies.

African nations have, with the passage of time, over‐relied on remittance inflow to augment domestic savings for growth and development. Although remittance—both as a viable investment financing option and as a growth complementary factor—helps drive growth and development, concerns of fading altruism exist. As regards altruistic giving, decreasing external financing options might overwhelm growth and development. We argue that the altruistic connection, which has been the bedrock of sending remittances to African countries, could eventually fade into oblivion. We assigned numerical weights to establish the influence of remittances on the future of African economies. We took cognizance of endogeneity of regressors and accounted for cross‐sectional dependence. We found a positive relationship between remittances and financial development besides the influence of exchange rate, technological change, inflation and population on the latter. African governments, donors, investment partners and the society at large should be concerned about fading altruistic connections from old and young African migrants. Altruism could be a springboard to the diversification of external capital sourcing and creation of a migrant policy that puts Africa at the forefront of development ahead of seeking increased worker remittances from abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]