September 4, 2003	Thursday	Rajab 6, 1424

NEW YORK: For thousands of Africans living overseas and seeking ways to contribute to the development of the continent, initiatives aimed at staunching the outflow of professional expertize are offering new possibilities. Now, more than ever before, exists “a major opportunity to transform the historical brain drain ... into a new African ‘brain trust’,” notes Mr John Sarpong of the Digital Diaspora Network Africa.

He was among 130 heads of technology firms, non-profit organizations and UN agencies who launched the network in July 2002 as part of a resurgence of initiatives to reverse the loss of professional skills from Africa. Among those targeted are scientists, medical doctors, engineers, lecturers, economists, technologists and other highly skilled people in short supply on the continent.

African professionals have tended to migrate to Western Europe and North America. Many are dissuaded from returning home by the economic and political crises that have bedevilled the continent over the last few decades. Failing economies, high unemployment rates, human rights abuses, armed conflict and lack of adequate social services are some of these factors.

The UN Economic Commission for Africa and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimate that 27,000 Africans left the continent for industrialized countries between 1960 and 1975. During the period 1975 to 1984, the figure rose to 40,000. It is estimated that since 1990 at least 20,000 people leave annually.

A brain drain is said to occur when a country becomes short of skills when people with such expertize emigrate. The UN Development Programme (UNDP) notes that in Africa, the loss of medical doctors has been the most striking. At least 60 per cent of doctors trained in Ghana during the 1980s have left the country.

The phenomenon “is putting a huge strain on the continent,” notes IOM Deputy Director-General Ndioro Ndiaye. To fill the gap created by the skills shortage, African countries spend an estimated $4 bn annually to employ about 100,000 non-African expatriates. “It is high time programmes and policies are put in place to reverse the devastating effects of the brain drain,” she says.

Increasingly, development planners are seeking ways 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 also been put forward as governments realize that the large numbers of citizens living outside their borders are a potential economic resource.

Another strategy is the adoption of international agreements by industrial and developing nations under which wealthy countries pledge not to recruit skilled people from developing states. However, the two most popular strategies involve transferring skills through networks of professionals and intellectuals and the time-tested approach of repatriation.

BUILDING NETWORKS: Because many people are reluctant to return to politically or economically unstable countries, some countries are now trying to find other ways to tap the knowledge and skills of their professionals based overseas. The South African Network of Skills Abroad (SANSA) is an example. Through its website, it invites professionals to sign up.

SANSA estimates that about 60 per cent of the country’s expatriate graduates are located in six countries, with Australia, the UK and the US accounting for more than half of them. It reports that at least 22,000 graduates from five major South African universities resident abroad remain in touch with their universities. A significant proportion of the University of Cape Town’s graduates in medicine, commerce, education and engineering, all areas in which South Africa has an acute shortage of skills, are living abroad, SANSA notes.

Once professionals join SANSA, they may offer to train their counterparts aback home or assist them to conduct research.

Rather than blame departing professionals for the shortage of skills on the continent, SANSA views “these highly skilled South Africans located abroad as a potential asset,” note Mr David Kaplan and Mr Jean-Baptiste Meyer. In a report for SANSA, they however stress that the success of networks depends largely on the commitment of expatriates.

RELOCATING EXPATRIATES: Other programmes to counter the brain drain involve physical relocation of expatriate Africans either to their home countries or elsewhere on the continent. A major limitation, however, is that large sums of money are required. Some expatriates may wish to be repatriated with their entire families. Others may request salaries comparable to what they earn in their host countries, along with up-to-date technological resources. Another limitation is that repatriation only allows for the return of the individual expatriate and not the knowledge networks to which he or she may belong.

Despite such challenges, the 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 identify overseas-based Africans interested in returning home to offer their skills.

However, organizations involved in repatriation face the challenge of attracting larger numbers of participants. IOM’s Reintegration of Qualified African Nationals Programme, which ran from 1983 to 1999, only managed to relocate about 2,000 nationals to 11 countries. Immigration regulations are cited as one of the concerns of potential returnees, notes Mr Chernor Jalloh of IOM. People are concerned, for example, about whether they would be able to return to their adopted country once they leave.

While past IOM programmes focused on permanent relocations, they are now evolving to cater for the needs of those Africans who prefer to remain in their new countries.

CONDUCIVE ENVIRONMENT: Many Africans long to return but their aspirations are “vigorously thwarted by negligent governments whose priorities ... ignore national welfare,” says Mr Kwaku Asante Darko a lecturer at the National University of Lesotho.

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.

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.

As a result, industrialized nations have embarked on massive recruitment drives. South Africa recently appealed to Canada to desist from recruiting its medical professionals. In the rural province of Saskatchewan, Canada, more than 50 per cent of doctors are foreign trained and at least 1 in 5 of the 1,530 doctors there earned their first medical degree in South Africa. According to UN secretary-general, there is a clear need for international cooperation. “There are no easy choices or simple solutions,” he says.—Courtesy: UN Africa Recovery.