Trying to keep the folks at home

An unpopular truth

[Reprinted from Issues & Views October 6, 2003]

In the July 2003 edition of Africa Recovery, we learn of attempts, often desperate and futile, by leaders of African countries to stem the endless waves of educated professionals who leave their home countries every year. Given the chronic chaos that afflicts so much of the continent, it is understandable that once one gets out, it's hard to be enticed to return.

The ongoing lack of skilled professionals will ensure minimum development throughout Africa. This is the other side of the immigration story, and the future, indeed, looks grim. In "Reversing Africa's 'brain drain,'" Gumisai Mutume writes:

Experts on the continent are increasingly engaged in strategies and programmes to reverse the brain drain or retain skilled professionals at home. They include restrictive policies aimed at delaying emigration, such as adding extra years to medical students' training. Various tax proposals have been put forward as governments realize that the large numbers of citizens living outside their borders are a potential economic resource. Proposals range from one-time exit taxes to bilateral tax arrangements, which would require the receiving nation to tax citizens of another and remunerate the home country. . . .

[T]he Kenya-based Research and Development Forum for Science-Led Development in Africa (RANDFORUM) has been exploring ways to repatriate African professionals and intellectuals, as requested in 1999 by the Presidential Forum on the Management of Science and Technology in Africa, a grouping of African heads of state. That year, a taskforce led by a former Zambian president, Mr. Kenneth Kaunda, recommended that RANDFORUM and its sister organization, the African Foundation for Research and Development, identify overseas-based Africans interested in returning home to offer their skills. Another RANDFORUM project aims to relocate professionals from "distressed countries" -- those that are faltering economically or politically, such as Liberia or Somalia -- to where they can be productive. . . .

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo is one of the leaders actively attempting to address the challenges of the brain drain. On his trips abroad, President Obasanjo often meets professionals and intellectuals who have left Nigeria to ask them how they can contribute to their country's development. President Obasanjo also is one of the architects of the continent's new development framework, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). . . .

Given the international nature of the brain drain and the covert support it receives from developed countries in need of skilled personnel, measures in African countries to contain it will only succeed with the support of destination countries, notes the Union for African Population Studies, a scientific, pan-African non-profit organization. It says that the international community needs to put pressure on developed nations to modify existing policies on the immigration of professionals from developing countries.

Industrialized countries are in growing need of two types of immigrant labour -- those willing to do poorly paid, dirty and dangerous jobs that their own nationals scorn, and highly specialized professionals, such as software specialists, engineers, doctors and nurses. The US has 126,000 fewer nurses than it needs and government figures show that the country could face a shortage of 800,000 registered nurses by 2020. Because of such shortages, industrialized nations have embarked on massive international recruitment drives. South Africa recently had to appeal to the government of Canada to desist from recruiting its medical professionals. . . .

[I]t may become even tougher to stem the outward flow of skilled professionals from developing countries in future. With falling birth rates and aging populations, demand for labour in Northern countries is forecast to grow, as younger people are needed to maintain productivity. In poorer countries, millions will continue to seek opportunities in richer countries to find better paying jobs and raise their standards of living. And in a globalizing world, where the dominant economic paradigm promotes the free movement of capital, it will become increasingly difficult to restrict the free movement of skilled labour.

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