RemitSCOPE.org is here, bringing remittance and remittance-related data to your fingertips in a way that’s informative, easy to access, and free to use. 

Launched by the United Nations’ International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), RemitSCOPE gathers and organizes the latest information on remittance flows, costs, market conditions, access, and structure with a special focus on the regions and countries that benefit most from remittances—particularly rural communities in low- and middle-income countries. 

For anyone interested in the world of remittances—whether you’re a remittance service provider, regulator, policy maker, or simply exploring the field—RemitSCOPE is a powerful, interactive tool that opens up a deeper understanding of global remittance markets and new market opportunities.

 Why remittances matter 

In 2023, officially recorded remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) were an estimated $656 billion. These funds, sent by migrants to support their families back home, are essential to many economies, especially in rural areas where they often matter most. Remittances have surpassed foreign direct investment (FDI) and official development assistance (ODA), making them the largest source of external financing to LMICs. This funding helps families meet basic needs, invest in education, healthcare, and businesses, and build financial resilience. 

Despite their significance, critical gaps in remittance market data persist, making it challenging to identify bottlenecks, track trends, or address issues with access and cost. RemitSCOPE fills this gap with a central repository of reliable, current remittance information from multiple sources, from public agencies to primary research. It provides comprehensive remittance data that fosters competition and supports initiatives aimed at reducing transaction costs, promoting digitalization, and improving access to formal and digital remittance services. 

Key features of RemitSCOPE 

RemitSCOPE is designed to simplify the remittance landscape and offer data-driven insights to a broad audience. Here’s a closer look at some of the features that make this platform unique: 

  1. Comprehensive Country Profiles RemitSCOPE provides individual remittance profiles for over 70 countries across Africa and Latin America, with plans to expand further. Each profile includes detailed data, such as the total remittance volume received, the main sending countries, access metrics, and an overview of the remittance market’s structure. This resource helps users understand how remittances support various economies and households, making it a valuable tool for exploring a specific country’s remittance landscape. 
  1. Country Diagnostics on African and LAC Markets RemitSCOPE is also home to specialized Country Diagnostics on seven African markets and five countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). These diagnostics offer in-depth analysis on remittance markets within these countries and provide specific recommendations for improving market functionality. This level of targeted insight is ideal for identifying actionable strategies that can directly enhance the impact and efficiency of remittance flows in key markets. 
  1. Interactive Dashboards and Thematic Insights RemitSCOPE’s interactive dashboards allow users to explore remittance data across multiple themes, from migration trends to financial inclusion, remittance costs, and market structure. The data is easy to filter and customize, allowing users to focus on the information that matters most to them. Carefully curated indexes deliver essential market intelligence across different countries. 
  1. Data on Costs and Accessibility RemitSCOPE provides detailed data on the costs of sending remittances, which is often a significant challenge in remittance markets. High transaction fees and unfavorable currency exchange rates reduce the funds received by families. By shedding light on cost disparities by country and corridor (from one country to another), RemitSCOPE supports policymakers and service providers in identifying cost bottlenecks and fostering more affordable options. 
  1. Focus on Digitalization and Financial Inclusion RemitSCOPE highlights trends in the digitalization of remittance services, showcasing data on mobile wallets, digital money transfers, and other fintech solutions that allow families to receive funds remotely. These digital options are becoming increasingly popular as cost-effective, safe alternatives, especially in rural areas with limited access to physical financial services. RemitSCOPE tracks the growth of digital remittances, helping users appreciate the benefits of these options. 
  1. Insights for Market Transparency For those interested in understanding market dynamics, RemitSCOPE offers valuable insights into the structure and regulatory environment of remittance markets. By outlining factors such as service providers, competition levels, and regulatory frameworks, RemitSCOPE provides users with a complete picture of how remittance markets operate. This transparency supports greater accountability and drives improvements in cost, accessibility, and service quality across the sector. 

How RemitSCOPE can benefit you 

RemitSCOPE is a versatile tool for anyone curious about remittances—whether you’re sending money, receiving it, or interested in understanding the global economy. Here are a few ways it can support you: 

  • Remittance Service Providers: Gain insights that help identify market opportunities, enhance competition, and improve products. Providers can use country-specific remittance flows and barriers to tailor services to underserved populations, particularly in rural areas. 
  • Policymakers: Access data that supports effective policy formulation. Detailed remittance and migration insights enable governments to better address financial inclusion, promote formal remittance channels, and ensure regulations encourage innovation and competition. 
  • Donors and Development Agencies: Identify regions where remittances impact poverty alleviation and development. RemitSCOPE’s data helps align investments with high-need areas, especially in rural LMIC regions. 
  • Regulators: Use RemitSCOPE’s insights on pricing, competition, and operating environments to develop policies that lower remittance costs, enhance transparency, and improve formal financial service access. 

Get Started with RemitSCOPE Today 

Exploring RemitSCOPE is easy. Start with a country profile, explore interactive dashboards, or dive into cost data to see how remittances are evolving worldwide. Each feature on RemitSCOPE is designed to make remittance information accessible and actionable, putting you in control of this vital financial resource. 

Whether you’re a first-time visitor or a regular user, RemitSCOPE.org continuously updates with new data, visualizations, market insights, and expanded country profiles.  

As IFAD continues supporting economic resilience in rural areas, RemitSCOPE is a crucial step toward a future where remittances are more accessible, affordable, and impactful for the communities relying on them most. Visit thewww.RemitSCOPE.org  and watch the Video to explore the latest remittance data and discover how this platform can serve you. 

Remittances and diaspora investments offer vital support for sustainable practices and climate adaptation. IFAD’s initiatives in Nepal and Mali prove simple solutions can scale.

Nearly 40% of Nepalese households depend on remittances, which total around US$11 billion annually. While this supports families and builds the country’s foreign exchange reserves, it comes with a social cost. Samriddhi helps youth, migrant households, and returnees turn remittances into sustainable livelihoods.

Beyond remittances, diaspora investment is helping to address Africa’s financing gap while empowering local communities. Since 2022, with the support of the European Union, IFAD and I & P have partnered with the Malian diaspora to create Ciwara Capital—an investment fund owned and managed by Africans in Europe.

The world is getting hotter, rainy seasons less predictable, storms more intense and in many places there is either too much water, or not enough– always in the wrong place and the wrong time! Global climate change is experienced locally by people across very different places and circumstances. For the rural poor in Africa, Asia and the Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean this threat poses an ongoing humanitarian crisis. Extreme drought, floods, heatwaves, storms, and other climate hazards worsen poverty, threaten food and water security, health, livelihoods and settlements. 

Consider the smallholder farmer in Mali, Guatemala or the Philippines who looks skywards and observes that “the rainy season never starts or stops when it used to, sometimes it begins slowly and then at the end, we get floods…in other seasons we begin with heavy rains and end in drought.” For smallholders who rely on crops to feed their families and livestock, shifting precipitation patterns can be life threatening.  Fishers, herders and forest enterprises are also negatively impacted by a changing climate that contributes to land degradation, desertification, deforestation and shifts in the ranges of animal and plant species.  

Farmers in Mali

Smallholder farmers and other rural livelihoods struggle to adapt to this growing set of risks in the face of declining economic opportunities and life chances.  But most lack the know-how, tools, and finance needed to better protect themselves from climate change. Consequently, migration becomes a rational choice, particularly for rural youth.  Migration is in many ways an investment decision for rural families, and the financial returns from migration can help in creating the economic opportunities that make such decisions less necessary in the future. 

The main financial returns from migration are remittances – the money that migrants send to loved ones back home and they represent a vital financial lifeline for millions. In 2023, remittances to low- and medium-income countries were an estimated US$656 billion, resources that helped families with household expenses, including education and health and productive activities. In fact, remittances to these countries are more than three times Official Development Assistance (ODA) and for most developing countries these flows are more than the total of ODA and foreign direct investment (FDI).

Diaspora investment is another financial outcome generated by years of migration. These investors are migrants who settle in host countries and invest in productive activities in their countries of origin. These successful migrants invest across many sectors, including agriculture and land, and directly in enterprises. Many support entrepreneurial start-ups and bring a wealth of financial and business experience to local economies back home.

A good example of one such diaspora investor is an IFAD partner, Ciwara Capital, a venture capital fund owned by the Malian diaspora.  Ciwara Capital recently invested in SOPROTRILAD, a Malian rice company with 400 employees that supports over 3000 small rice producers. Ciwara investment has enabled the implementation of the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, water and fertilizer use and to increase crop yields.

Co-founders of Ciwara Capital

Is there scope for a programme to facilitate the use of migrant resources, both remittances and diaspora investment, for building climate resilience, generating local economic opportunities and eventually reducing the incentives to migrate?

For instance, evidence indicates that remittances help families better cope with climate change in agriculture and related rural activities. Remittances enable the purchases of resilient products and tools, such as new seeds, crops, water conservation tolls and a host of climate smart practices. IFAD pilot projects show that rural recipients will invest a portion of their remittances in climate resilience when given the right tools and incentives, thereby increasing agricultural productivity and the ability to withstand climate shocks. Scaling these models could empower more rural families to use their funds for resilience in sustainable ways.

These actions could include better financial options and know-how for families, such as low-cost microloans for resilient farming, climate insurance and other financial products that broaden the choices, information and know-how for remittance recipients and senders. Lower transaction fees for sending remittances for climate-related uses or savings programs designated for climate-resilient assets would also encourage greater resilience without infringing on the private nature of these resources.

Smallholder farmer in Mali

Toward this end, IFAD’s Financing Facility for Remittances (FFR) will launch a global programme, ResilientRemit, to maximize the impact of migrant remittances and diaspora investment for improving rural climate resilience and the sustainability of land use and other forms of natural capital, while increasing livelihoods, economic opportunities and reducing the incentives for migration.

ResilientRemit will scale innovative remittance-linked solutions, including technical and financial products that support climate resilience and sustainable practices, as well as business and financial models that facilitate diaspora investments in rural climate resilience. The programme will build know-how for smallholders and other rural enterprises, expand employment skills for rural youth, women and other disadvantaged groups.  ResilientRemit will leverage IFAD projects and partnerships to broker opportunities for youth training and apprenticeships for decent employment. These could include IFAD Agribusiness Hubs, where available, and building on the impact of other IFAD projects such as the Rural Enterprise and Remittance Programme (RERP) in Nepal that provided migrant households with financial education and training in climate resilient agriculture among others.

Financial literacy training to women in rural Nepal

ResilientRemit will conduct market assessments that provide the first standardized collection of data on “green remittances,” including the behaviour and strategies of remittance senders and receivers, diaspora investment and related opportunities for improving rural resilience and reducing the incentives for migration. The programme will share learnings and strategies for enabling frameworks that facilitate the use of remittances, and will forge partnerships with national and international public, private and civil society stakeholders on leveraging migrant resources for adaptation and resilience and reducing rural migration. ResilientRemit can provide the incentives, know-how and options that can enable the financial fruit of past migration to sow the seeds for rural resilience and opportunity that will allow more youth to remain and come home.


The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) have jointly developed this Policy Brief on unlocking the full potential of remittances and diaspora investment for Member States’ consideration in preparation for the FfD4.

Key messages from the brief include:

  • Migrants’ remittances are a major source of private finance for LMICs, surpassing foreign direct investment (FDI) and official development assistance (ODA). In 2023, remittances to LMICs amounted to approximately US$656 billion and are projected to reach US$5 trillion cumulatively by 2030.
  • Beyond remittances, migrants also invest back home and contribute substantial human and financial capital in the form of skills and networks into their countries of origin.
  • Remittances and diaspora investments significantly benefit rural areas and less developed countries by bridging financing gaps for millions of households. These funds help millions of people out of poverty, improve health and nutrition, and keep children in school, all development goals. They also enable people to acquire assets, start businesses and strengthen their livelihoods, and enhance resilience to climate-related challenges.
  • Unlocking Full Potential: Despite their importance, the full potential of remittances and diaspora investment for sustainable development remain unrealised. Enhanced international support and strategic commitment could harness these financial flows to address long-term goals, significantly advancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).