The brain drain, curse for the third world

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.