The brain drain, curse for the third world

By Michael Kibaara Muchiri.

YOGYAKARTA (JP): The developed world has systematically cannibalized anything good from the Third World. With the capability to buy anything from well-trained but poorly remunerated human resources to offering enticing green cards and citizenship to the best brains from the poorer countries, the First World has not only abused this might but also used it to maintain a climate of backwardness in the poorer nations. The most affected continents include Africa and Asia.

At last month's conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) warned that the African continent had to act quickly to reverse the brain drain of 20,000 skilled professionals a year who emigrate to Europe or the United States.

Emigration by skilled workers trained in Africa is associated with African economic hardship, political volatility and the continent's poor record on human rights.

Organizers said Africa had lost 60,000 scientists, doctors, engineers and technology specialists between 1985 and 1990! A 1993 report by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) estimated that more than 21,000 Nigerian doctors had resettled in the United States.

Again, 60 percent of Ghana's locally trained doctors quit the country during the 1980s. The effects of brain drain in Zimbabwe were highlighted by statistics that revealed an average of 300 Zimbabweans -- unskilled as well as professional -- emigrate each month.

The paradox is that 100,000 foreign professionals work in Africa while 100,000 Africans trained in their native country have been lured to Europe or the United States.

The brain drain is a serious threat to all poor continents. For Africa, this does not augur too well. Africa has been conned by the wealthier nations. They give Africa educational aid with one hand and entice its experts with the other.

It is a calculated cyclic kind of circus, affecting poorer nations and deliberately inculcating a marginalized atmosphere. When the best brains leave for U.S. and Europe, who will kick start development?

As Africa braces for another miserable century, recovery is not only entirely dependent on the turncoat-trained human resources catching flights in droves out of Africa, but it is also as mind-boggling as any fairy tale.

Faced by a myriad of problems ranging from wars, economic meltdowns to the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, the continent is at a crossroads; it is unsure whether it can catch up with the rest of the pack which are signing a free market agreement, or whether it should give up the race.

The brain drain could not come at a worse time. Not only has Africa lost most of its skilled professionals to Europe and the United States through the brain drain, but it is simultaneously losing most of its workforce to AIDS.

Brain drain turns back the hands of time. If it continues, all the years of strenuous gains made on the education front and in all development sectors will be annulled. While other continents are making technological leaps, Africa will be chained to a poignant "decivilization".

Considering that attention to Africa's maladies has taken a backseat to other continents, someone other than the Africans in Africa need to do something. Considering that talk at Kofi Annan's United Nations is treated as much ado about nothing, the Africans in the Diaspora should stand up and be counted for their continent.

They could play a central role to a war ravaged, poorly portrayed continent. While immigrant Latinos, Asians and Jews have played central roles in enhancing the images and economies of their respective places of origin, there is no hard evidence that Africans in the Diaspora can provide.

They apparently have abandoned ship, too. With such talent in all fields, it is a shame that a continent should continue to swelter under such crisis. Don't they have a conscience? It is a shame that it was Bono -- an Irish musician, and not Michael Jackson or Jordan, who is arguing for Mozambique's foreign debt cancellation.

While the late princess of Wales, Diana, was crisscrossing the minefields of Angola, no African American took pride in much humanitarian efforts for this beleaguered continent.

Africans in the Diaspora can set up a fund or trust for Africa. The fund could be a permanent one to provide funds and Pan-African education to Africans lured to the West for better pay, so that their attitudes to Africa could change from hate to patriotism.

A respectable and charismatic African like Nelson Mandela could run the trust. With money from the fund, most professionals could get respectable pay while working in the comfort and discomfort of their home; East or West, home is best. This way a continent would still maintain some working government structure.

The Africans in the Diaspora should make the African problem as one of their own. A stable African continent could be a constant father or mother figure on whom to lean on.

It would mean that those African soccer players who are a constant target for racial remarks in Italian Serie A, or those Africans who are rained on with 41 bullets, as what happened to Ahmadou Diallo in New York, would have this figure to fall back on so that the dignity of the black race is restored -- with economic and war muscle if need be.

Currently, Africans, whether at home or in the Diaspora, command little respect from other continents because yellow journalism has only focused on the negative side, driving tourism away, and hardly finding anything worth covering except for wildlife and refugees.

South African leadership should lead the way for Africa if it is going to move out from the quagmire that it perpetually finds itself in. With its relatively stable economy and visionary leadership of its first two presidents, South Africa can engineer an African renaissance.

This was more so evident during Mozambique's flooding which left hundreds dead and thousands homeless. Not to be dragged into the delay by aid agencies and other continents' indecision to act on the crisis, South Africa's swift action helped save victims. This leadership assumption by an African nation to another Third World should serve as an example to other poor continents.

Some African leaders are world class -- charismatic and very inspiring. Take former South African president Mandela. A true African son, he is trying to gather support for a solution to the Great Lakes-Burundi war. He is exemplifying what African leaders should be doing -- solving their continental problems as well as involving world-class leaders like Bill Clinton.

True, Africa, like the rest of the Third World, has bountiful prospects for recovery. It only requires a push in the other direction -- like having the Africans in the Diaspora play a more pivotal role and by putting an end to the African brain drain. This way the Third World can effectively keep the tempo on development up and running.

The writer, studying for his masters in psychology at the Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, works for the Ministry of Education, Nairobi in Kenya.