What is the economic potential of the Welsh diaspora?

[This article was originally published in Businessin Wales in July 2026 >>]

In the recent Welsh Government election the Plaid Cymru manifesto proposed a comprehensive Diaspora Strategy to engage the estimated 3–4 million Welsh people living abroad, treating them as a valuable asset for creativity, skills, and investment to boost innovation and growth in Wales.

The question I am asked more than any other is this: how big is the opportunity, really? When we talk about mobilising the Welsh diaspora for economic benefit, are we talking about a handful of goodwill gestures from successful expats, or something that could genuinely move the needle for the Welsh economy?

Having spent years building GlobalWelsh, a not-for-profit Community Interest Company, and having now accumulated the most comprehensive body of research ever conducted into the modern Welsh diaspora, I can answer that question with more confidence than ever before. The economic potential is substantial, it is quantifiable, and it is currently going almost entirely to waste.

Start with the scale

Any honest assessment of the economic opportunity has to begin with the sheer size of the community we are talking about. There are an estimated three to four million Welsh people living outside Wales. That is roughly equivalent to the population of the country. Wales is, in effect, a nation of six to seven million people, half of whom live somewhere else.

For most of our history, we have treated those people as a cultural footnote rather than an economic resource. That framing needs to change fundamentally because the diaspora we are talking about is not a homogeneous community of nostalgic expats. It is a globally distributed workforce operating at the highest levels of international business, technology, finance, and the professions.

Our Brain Drain to Brain Gain research, which surveyed 1,709 diaspora members across 45 countries, found that 45% hold master’s degrees or higher. Twenty-four percent work in technology. Significant clusters work in finance, healthcare, engineering, and the creative industries. Thirteen percent are self-employed. We identified 437 business owners and managers within that survey sample alone, and that sample represents only a fraction of a percent of the total diaspora population.

If we extrapolate conservatively from those figures, we are looking at a global community that collectively controls an extraordinary volume of capital, expertise, and network influence. The question for Wales is what proportion of that can be redirected homewards and how this can be achieved.

The investment opportunity

Let me put some numbers around the most direct economic lever: investment.

Of the business owners and managers in our survey, 25% told us they were likely to invest in Wales within the next 12 months. That figure alone, extrapolated across even a modest estimate of Welsh diaspora business owners globally, suggests an investment pipeline of significant scale.

Moreover, our research identified 500 specific diaspora direct investment leads from within our 1,709 survey respondents. These are people who expressed an active interest in exploring business opportunities in Wales, not vague sentiment, but qualified intent. If just 20% of those leads could be converted into Welsh-based operations, and each created a conservative two to five jobs, that would generate between 200 and 500 high-value roles from a single survey cohort.

Now consider that our survey reached only a tiny fraction of an estimated three to four million people. The extrapolated pipeline, if properly managed, is transformational.

Critically, these are not the kind of jobs that conventional foreign direct investment typically delivers. Diaspora-led businesses tend to operate in high-growth, high-value sectors such as technology, fintech, medtech, advanced manufacturing, and the creative industries. They are built by people with global networks, international market access, and the entrepreneurial mindset needed to create companies with disproportionate growth potential. Sam Altman of OpenAI has predicted that we will soon see ten-person companies valued at a billion dollars. Several of those companies could be Welsh if we create the right conditions.

The knowledge economy opportunity

Beyond direct investment, the economic potential of the diaspora extends into something that is harder to quantify but arguably just as valuable: knowledge transfer.

Sixty-two percent of our survey respondents said they were willing to mentor Welsh professionals. Fifty-six percent expressed an interest in industry partnerships, while 44% were open to academic collaboration.

In practical terms, this means Wales has access to a global network of experienced professionals, people who have built companies, led international organisations, navigated complex global markets, and are actively willing to share that knowledge with Welsh businesses, universities, and entrepreneurs.

The economic value of that mentorship and knowledge transfer, if properly channelled, is considerable. It accelerates business growth, reduces costly mistakes, opens international markets, and builds the kind of ecosystem that attracts further investment.

Ireland’s experience is instructive. The diaspora networks that helped scale companies like Stripe and Intercom contributed not just capital but also market access, credibility, and global connectivity that would otherwise have taken years to develop. Wales has access to equivalent networks. We are simply not using them.

The return migration opportunity

There is a third dimension to the economic opportunity that deserves serious attention: the potential for skilled return migration.

Our research found that 54% of recent emigrants, those who left Wales between 2021 and 2024, said they would consider returning. Even among those who have been away for more than a decade, 40% said returning was something they would contemplate. These are not people who have given up on Wales. They are people who left because the economic conditions gave them little choice and who would come back if those conditions improved.

The economic significance of this cannot be overstated. Return migrants bring with them the skills, capital, international networks, and business experience they have accumulated abroad. In effect, Wales exports raw talent and has the opportunity to re-import finished products, if we can create the conditions that make returning viable.

The barriers identified in our research are largely practical and addressable: economic conditions, housing affordability, healthcare quality, educational provision for children, and employment opportunities for partners. These are not unique to Wales. They are the standard friction points of return migration globally. Countries that have successfully tackled them, such as Ireland through its diaspora return programmes and Estonia through its e-residency and entrepreneur support initiatives, have seen measurable economic dividends.

The commercial opportunity beyond investment

Our work with Dragons RFC on the Gwent diaspora opened an additional dimension of economic potential that I believe applies across Wales: the diaspora as a commercial market in its own right.

We found that more than 90% of Gwent diaspora members were familiar with Dragons RFC, and 70% had previously attended a match. More importantly for the wider economic argument, we identified senior professionals and business owners with direct economic ties to the region. Forty-three percent had worked in or run a business in Gwent and expressed an active interest in commercial and partnership opportunities. Around 73% of those individuals explicitly opted in to being contacted.

This points to an often-overlooked dimension of diaspora economic potential: procurement, sponsorship, partnerships, and commercial relationships. Welsh businesses, not just sports clubs, but professional services firms, technology companies, tourism operators, and food and drink producers, have a natural, relationship-based market within the diaspora community that they are barely engaging with.

A diaspora member in Dubai or Sydney is not just a potential investor. They are a potential customer, supplier, brand ambassador, and commercial partner.

What would it take to realise this potential?

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