Germany and Kenya have signed a migration agreement during Kenyan President William Ruto's visit to Berlin, where he met with Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
The agreement represents a dual challenge for Germany: on one hand, it aims to expedite the deportation of rejected Kenyan asylum seekers back to Kenya. On the other hand, the agreement is part of a broader initiative to recruit skilled labor from abroad, as countries like Kenya face high youth unemployment.
Berlin has already concluded similar cooperation agreements with Georgia, India, and Morocco. Following Kenya, a deal is also expected to be signed with Uzbekistan.
Colombia also hosted a German delegation earlier this year. Ghana, Kyrgyzstan, and Moldova are also being approached.
As noted by Tagesschau, the objectives vary. For Georgia, the goal was to reduce the number of protection requests in Germany. These requests have dropped by 60 to 70% since the agreement was concluded.
With Morocco, the aim was to restore long-strained diplomatic relations.
High-level German delegations have visited many Southeast Asian countries to accelerate recruitment in the healthcare sector.
800 Kenyans Required to Leave Germany:
In the case of Kenya, the aspect of deporting migrants seems secondary. During the first eight months of the year, only 225 Kenyans filed an initial asylum application in Germany. However, the protection rate is very low. Only a handful, about ten people, have obtained protection status.
According to official figures, around 15,000 people from Kenya live in Germany, and just over 800 are required to leave the country due to the lack of residence permits.
This is relatively low, considering that by the end of June, nearly 227,000 people were required to leave the country, according to the migration information platform "Mediendienst Integration."
The lack of travel documents often makes deportations impossible. In the agreement signed today, beyond efforts to identify individuals likely to be deported to Kenya, Nairobi should now accept expired passports and ID cards as travel documents.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has estimated that Germany needs to "massively deport" rejected asylum seekers.
Labor Shortages:
While the deportations' significance may seem marginal, the agreement further demonstrates Germany's effort to find labor wherever possible.
The biggest shortages are in the healthcare, hospitality, and IT sectors.
This translates into partnership programs between employment agencies and training programs to learn German.
Companies are specializing in recruiting nurses from as far afield as the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, or Brazil. In this specific case, Germany needs about 150,000 additional nurses.
The country also established a points-based immigration system this summer to issue work visas to skilled workers from countries outside the European Union.
Germany, like many European countries, is suffering from an aging workforce.
"Win-win":
During a visit to Nairobi in the spring of last year, Olaf Scholz praised the migration cooperation agreements as a "win-win situation for the participating countries."
Since his visit, the Goethe Institute in Nairobi reports being overwhelmed with requests to attend German classes. The waiting list is long, according to its director in an interview with Deutschlandfunk.
Whenever the German cultural institute opens new registrations, it takes no more than two hours for the next semester of classes to be filled.
In Kenya, it is mainly IT graduates who are expected to be targeted for recruitment.
In Berlin, President William Ruto praised Kenya’s creative and energetic youth while dismissing fears of brain drain, i.e., the emigration of graduates who are necessary for Kenya’s economic development.
At the same time, the President expressed hope that Kenya would be able to host German companies that could offer job opportunities to the local population.
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