Africa to Lost Professionals: 'Come Home'
Pacific News Service, News Feature, Philip Ngunjiri, Posted: Dec 09, 2003
Editor's Note: Africa's best and brightest often leave the continent to live in the developed world. Now several African organizations are trying to lure them back.
NAIROBI, Kenya--Gichure wa Kanyugo, a Kenyan-born psychiatrist working in Boston, knows that Africa wants him back. But the naturalized U.S. citizen isn't going anywhere.
"You see, you cannot eat patriotism," he says.
Kanyugo, who has lived in the United States for 17 years, is one of more than 300,000 African professionals currently working in Western countries. The flight of human capital, or "brain drain," from Africa is nothing new. But recent years have seen a sharp rise in the numbers of African-trained experts and professionals leaving the continent -- as well as new strategies designed to lure them back.
Between 1960 and 1975, an estimated 27,000 professional Africans left for the West, according to a study by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a Geneva-based intergovernmental body, and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). This number increased to approximately 40,000 between 1975 and 1984, and then nearly doubled by 1987, representing 30 percent of Africa's highly skilled manpower stock.
Since 1990, Africa has been losing about 20,000 doctors, university lecturers, engineers and other professionals annually.
Critics say that the failure of so many Africans to return home is particularly damaging in light of the resources many African nations devote to educating their citizens. Especially in areas where the educational infrastructure is incomplete, nurturing a student up to the university level requires colossal amounts of money and energy, experts say.
"African professionals take a longer time and more money to train in their respective fields. They are the ones that are most needed to provide the expertise to develop Africa," says Kabuga Kabiro of the Kenya Institute of Policy Management (KIPM).
With little skilled manpower left, African nations trying to sustain economic development must employ foreign workers at wage levels much higher than local salaries. A new report by the Pollution Research Group, a sustainable development organization at Natal University in South Africa, found that the continent pays up to $4 billion dollars per year to replace lost professionals with expatriates from the West. This is 35 percent of official development assistance directed to the continent, the report says.
Zephania On'gata of the Kenya Institute of Policy Management blames the brain drain on "the politics of international economics and aid."
"When bi-lateral or multi-lateral donors release aid packages, expatriates appear as a 'must-string' on it," she says. That means expatriates must be hired. This, in turn, forces Africans who are equally qualified for the positions to divert their interests abroad.
Kanyugo, the Boston psychiatrist, says that time, in addition to poor economic conditions, may deter African migrants from returning. "After years of working abroad, the migrant's plan to return home becomes increasingly vague."
Maureen Achieng, head of the Nairobi-based Return and Reintegration of Qualified African Nationals (RQAN) program, says despite civil wars, abject poverty and massive unemployment on the continent, her organization still finds ways of facilitating the return of trained and experienced professionals back to Africa.
RQAN, which is funded by the European Union (EU), is implemented by the Geneva-based IOM, in cooperation with participating African governments. Many Africans, the IOM says, remain abroad because of inadequate knowledge of job opportunities back home, which might be attractive enough, or because of an inability to foot the relocation bill.
To attract Africa's lost talent, the IOM has launched a major campaign through advertisements in local papers that urge firms and businesses interested in various key professionals to contact IOM.
Currently, a handful of professional Kenyans are returning home annually under the IOM plan. IOM pays the returnees' airfare, pays for any excess baggage and provides a relocation allowance and a local salary supplement of up to $800 dollars per month for six to 12 months.
Still, it's an uphill battle, especially for the poorest African nations. IOM officials say that some of the professionals, after returning home, pack their bags and move to South Africa, which, in terms of economic development, stands a head taller than the rest of Africa.
PNS contributor Philip Ngunjiri is a Nairobi-based journalist who writes on social issues and development.
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