Retain: Keep the talent we already have
BEFORE trying to bring people home, Fiji should become better at keeping the talent it already has.
This is particularly important in the public sector. A country needs good teachers, doctors and nurses, but it also needs excellent economists, engineers, statisticians, planners, regulators and administrators to make the machinery of the State work.
Singapore offers an important lesson. It actively identifies talented young people through competitive public-service scholarships, develops them through structured career pathways and rotations across government, and systematically prepares high-performing officers for leadership positions.
Fiji cannot match Singapore’s salaries or resources, but it can adopt the principle: Talent must be identified, developed and rewarded.
There could be targeted scholarships linked to public service, accelerated career paths for exceptional performers, specialist career streams, international secondments, better professional development, and recruitment and promotion more clearly based on merit and performance.
But retaining talent means better salaries, career structures, and fairness. People need to believe that competence and hard work matter; that opportunities are genuinely open to everyone; and that recruitment, promotion and leadership appointments are not determined by ethnicity, personal connections, favouritism or nepotism.
People stay where they feel valued, respected, treated fairly, able to progress and build a future for their children. Good governance, meritocracy and equal opportunity should be part of Fiji’s talent strategy.
Return: Make coming home worthwhile
Many Fijians abroad have accumulated what Fiji needs: skills, experience, qualifications, networks and capital. Yet returning can mean lower salaries, uncertain careers, bureaucracy and difficulties relocating families.
Mauritius provides an interesting small-island example. Its Mauritian Diaspora Scheme deliberately encourages qualified Mauritians abroad to return. Eligible professionals and entrepreneurs can receive substantial incentives, including income-tax exemptions and relief from certain customs, excise, VAT and registration duties.
Fiji could establish a Fiji return talent program, targeted at occupations and sectors where skills are scarce. It could combine time-limited tax incentives with fast recognition of overseas qualifications, relocation assistance, easier business establishment and support for accompanying spouses.
The message should be simple: If you have built expertise abroad and want to bring it home, Fiji will make that journey easier.
Reconnect: You don’t have to return to contribute
Not everyone will come home permanently. Nor do they need to.
A Fijian surgeon in Sydney could spend a month each year training doctors. An academic in Auckland could supervise USP students. An engineer in Brisbane could advise infrastructure projects. A technology professional in California could mentor Fijian start-ups.
Fiji could establish a Global Fiji Talent Network, identifying skilled Fijians abroad and connecting them with universities, government, businesses and communities at home.
Short-term “return fellowships” could allow diaspora professionals to spend several weeks or months in Fiji transferring knowledge and building institutions.
This changes our definition of return. Instead of asking only, “How many migrants came home permanently?”, we should also ask: how much knowledge came home?
Remote: Bring global jobs to Fiji
Barbados approached migration from another direction. Its 12-Month Welcome Stamp allows people whose jobs are based overseas to live and work remotely from Barbados. Applicants must meet an income threshold, and their employment remains outside Barbados.
Why not explore a Fiji Global Work Visa?
It could target high-income remote workers, including members of the Fijian diaspora who might happily spend 6-12 months in Fiji if the process were easy and digital connectivity, housing and services were reliable.
They would earn abroad, but live and spend in Fiji. Some would mentor local entrepreneurs, build professional networks or eventually invest.
Instead of always sending workers to jobs overseas, technology increasingly allows us to ask the opposite question: Can we bring overseas jobs to people living in Fiji?
Reinvest: Turn migration’s financial success into productive assets
Fiji should think differently about remittances. With 72 per cent of remittance recipients now receiving money through mobile-phone transfers, Fiji already has much of the digital infrastructure connecting its diaspora to families at home. Why not use that connection to offer voluntary savings, pension and investment products as well?
Mexico’s 3×1 program provides an interesting model: Organised migrant groups invested in projects in their communities of origin, with federal, state and municipal governments contributing matching resources. Fiji could develop a diaspora matching fund for productive community investments, agricultural processing, cold storage, renewable energy, tourism or small-business infrastructure.
Fiji could also explore a diaspora development bond, allowing overseas Fijians to invest their savings in clearly identified projects at home. Diaspora bonds have been used particularly successfully by India and Israel; World Bank research estimates that their diaspora-oriented bonds raised tens of billions of dollars.
But trust would be essential. People need to know where their money is going, how projects are governed and what return they will receive.
The journey must also lead home
Fiji cannot close the door to the world. Let our young people study abroad. Let our nurses, teachers, engineers and graduates experience other countries. Let them earn, learn, succeed and discover what the world has to offer.
But let us build something powerful enough to pull in the other direction: A public service where our brightest minds want to serve, an economy where talent is rewarded, opportunities that can bring our diaspora home, and productive investments through which those who remain abroad can still help build Fiji.
T. S. Eliot, writing in a very different context, left us a line that relates ot this challenge: “A man’s destination is not his destiny, Every country is home to one man, And exile to another.”
For the Fijian who leaves for Sydney, Auckland, or elsewhere, destination need not become destiny. People can leave. Skills can return. Knowledge can return. Investment can return. And sometimes, people themselves can return.
