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African brain drain
Africa is hemorrhaging its most valuable resource: its workforce. Wachira Kigotho reports on how skilled and professional Africans are undermining development in the land of their birth by opting to live and work abroad in the US and EU.
| The loss of professionals from sub-Saharan Africa to developed countries is becoming one of the greatest threats to economic development in the region. The emigration of qualified people, especially academics from African universities, was one of the central issues under discussion during last year's World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa. The meeting heard that in less than two decades sub-Saharan Africa has lost a third |
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of its skilled professionals and has had to replace them with over 100,000 expatriates from the West, at a cost of US$ 4 billion a year. Dr Chris Buckley, a senior researcher at the University of Natal and an expert on Africa's human capital flight says that, between 1985 and 1990, Africa lost over 60,000 middle-level and high-level managers to Western economies. Also, about 23,000 lecturers from African universities continue to emigrate each year. "The biggest migratory flows are from Egypt, South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana - in that order," say labor experts at the Addis Ababa-based United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. But despite the large number of academics leaving African universities, |
Central Africa that were examined. Zimbabwe was second to Kenya in the region with 67 scholars, Cameroon third with 56, followed by Ethiopia with 53. However, a major surprise drop was in Mauritius, which had 12 scholars in the US last year, as compared to 90 in the previous year. Yet, assuming that many African scholars are economic migrants, one cannot rule out the significant drop among Mauritian scholars. To date Mauritius textile exports are more than the rest from sub-Saharan African countries put together. Considering the large number of African academics who leave the continent each year in search of career and economic opportunities abroad, it is evident that most are getting employment outside academia. According to Prof |
| significant numbers of them do not find university teaching or research positions. According to a study by the Institute of International Education, a professional body that tracks the mobility of students and staff from and to the US, last year there were only 2,256 African scholars teaching in American universities, compared to 35,620 from Asia, 26,668 from |
Sub-Saharan Africa has lost a third of its skilled professionals and has had to replace them with over 100,000 expatriates from the West. |
Thomas Odhiambo, the reputed Kenyan scientist and founder of the International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), many highly qualified African scholars end up as teaching and research assistants abroad after failing to secure high profile teaching and research fellowships. |
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Europe and 4,676 from Latin America. The big picture is that most of the 80,000 foreign scholars in the American universities are engaged in high-profile scientific research. Statistics from the Institute of International Education show that 26 per cent of foreign academics are conducting research in health sciences and 14.7 per cent in biological sciences. Another group of 14.7 per cent is performing research in physical sciences and a small segment in engineering. Only a small minority are involved in teaching, says the report. Of the 2,256 African academics working in US universities last year, Egypt had the largest share of 671, a drop from 773 the previous year. South Africa came a distant second with 327 while Nigeria emerged third with 176. Although Kenya was placed fourth with 136 academics, the country had the highest number of scholars in US universities of the 21 countries in Eastern and |
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However, this scenario has not discouraged African scholars, among other skilled African workers, from going abroad in search of jobs that are scarce at home. In comparison to other developing regions with high migratory flows to developed countries, over 60 per cent of migrants from sub-Saharan Africa have tertiary education. "Migration of Africans with only a primary education is almost nil," says William Carrington, a labor economist at the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. But as the debate on the African brain drain takes center stage, one major issue likely to arise is whether African scholars are being used as cheap labor - and whether or not the expatriates, with whom many sub-Saharan African countries are, at enormous cost, replacing their migratory scholars and skilled workers represent the proverbial adage of someone trading his golden vessel for a polished calabash. |
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