From the most shameful international trade deal in human beings called Slave trade to natural resources exploitation and theft, now to brains and intellectuals’ theft. The greatest hindrance of African progress, the easy path to incapacity building and the super highway for systems collapsing. The African governments use their meagre financial resources and technical know-how to train their citizens and build human capacity to feed and sustain the flourishing western economies.
According to a dire warning, from Dr Lalla Ben Barka of the Unibted Nations (UN) Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), that “in 25 years, Africa will be empty of brains”. ECA mirrors the growing alarm over Africa’s increasing exodus of human capital. Data on brains and intellectual drains in Africa is scarce and inconsistent; nevertheless statistics show the continent losing the very people it needs greatest for economic, social, scientific and technological progress. The ECA estimates that between 1960 and 1989, some 127,000 highly qualified Africans professionals left the continent. Africa has been losing 20,000 professional each year since 1990. This trend has sparked claims that the continent is suffering from terminal illness and is dying a slow death from brains and intellectuals drain. And belated recognition by the United Nations that “emigration of African professionals to the West is one of the greatest obstacle to Africa’s development.”
All types of exodus from Africa have become an overhead cost to African continent. Brains and intellectual exodus in Africa cost the continent financially, institutionally and socially. African countries get very little return on investment (ROI) from their investments in higher education, since too many graduates leave or fail to return home at the end of their studies.
Due to this dwindling professional sector, African institutions are increasingly dependent on foreign expertise. To meet up with the human resource supply gap created by demand, African employs up to 150,000 expatriate professionals at a cost of US$4 billion a year.
It is worst in the health sector where the departure of health professionals has eroded the ability of the medical and social services in several Sub-Saharan countries to deliver even basic health and social needs. Thirty-eight of the forty-seven Sub-Saharan African countries fall short of the minimum World Health Organisation (WHO) standard of 20 physicians per 100,000 people.
In a report of June 2009, WHO used data from 30 member Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) to shed more light on the brains and intellectuals exodus in Sub-Saharan countries in Africa. The data shows that medical doctors (MDs) trained in Sub-Saharan Africa working in OECD countries make up 23% of the work force, ranging from 3% (those from Cameroon) to 37% (those from South Africa) just to name few countries. Nurses and midwives trained in Sub-Saharan Africa working in OECD countries makes up 5% of the workforce ranging from 0.1% (those from Uganda) to 34% (those from Zimbabwe) (P. 99). Also, according to this report, 109 MDs trained in Cameroon worked in OECD countries (p. 100). These have accumulative disastrous effects. When MDs and nurses leave their countries where they received their education and end up providing their services to wealthy countries, their countries of origin suffer great financial losses on return on investment. But this is not the most damaging outcome, the danger is the fragile and almost-near to collapse health systems whose consequences can be measured in the lost of lives. Lack of viable health systems affect work force and productivity and consequently the gross domestic product and it is a vicious circle with negative multiplier effects in the economy.
In this sense, the calculus of international migration shifts from brains and intellectual exodus/drain or gain to “fatal flow”. (P.101). The situation in Sub-Saharan Africa has shifted from simple brains and intellectual drains to “fatal flows” with a wide scale systems collapse a potential reality.
Furthermore, this continuous outflow of skilled labour contributes to a widening and lagging gap in science and technology between Africa and other continents. Africa’s contribution to global scientific output has fallen from 0.5% in the mid-1980s to 0.3% in the mid-1990s. There are now more Africans scientists and engineers in the USA than in the entire continent.
The exodus of professional from Africa endangers the economic and political systems in several African courtiers. As the crumble of the middle class and its contributions to the tax system, employment, and civil society disappear, Africa risk becoming a home to even greater mass poverty with only the political elites who are out of touch with masses at the top. Where the intellectual class and brains for civilization, development and advancement disappear, it remains a mind boggling to see the westerners going to the moon, while Africans are headed for the villages. The drains are occuring in all fields of life. Every intellectual in Africa is being carried away by the power wind of the the strong Dollars, the Euros, the Krones, and all types of currency forces. In the domain of sport, legs have been highly drained.
What are the solutions to these problems? In the entire four decades of Africa losing its best and brightest, the world debated the semantics of the issue and focused almost solely on remittances, overlooking the implications of the brains and intellectuals exodus on human resources, institutional and health/social services.
Efforts to stem Africa’s brain drain focusing on repatriation strategies were discouraging. Studies have shown that repatriation will not solve the problem so long as African governments fail to address the pull and push factors that influence emigration. Above all, the relationship between African governments and the African Diaspora remained a major barrier to finding solution. Besides, the sitting African governments are always afraid of the intelligentsia of the African Diaspora. Instead, when the they are supposed to consider them as human investments abroad by creating a strong link with them and registering every citizen as it is the case in India. Consequently, this will improve their Balance of payment (BOP) in international trade.
VIRTUAL PARTICIPATION
This is one potential solution to the exodus of human capital. It is the participation in nation-building without physical relocation. It is a means to engage the African Diaspora in development efforts. Mercy Brown of the University of Cape Town notes that virtual participation “. . . sees the brain-drain not as a loss but as a potential gain… Highly skilled expatriate are seen as a pool of potentially useful human resources for the country of origin… the challenge is to mobilizes these brains.”
The mind-boggling question is; will virtual participation work in a continent where government - Diaspora relations are adversarial, and information technology almost nonexistent, and where development needs are complex and require a sustain commitment?
Sanda
