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Spend more wisely to tame brain drain
2007-05-15 09:39:23
By Editor
A just-released report by the United Nations Development Programme paints a stark picture of the roll the brain drain is having on Africa.
The term `brain drain` gained currency decades ago and refers to the skilled personnel that keep fleeing Africa and other parts of the developing world in hope of finding greener pastures elsewhere, particularly in Europe and North America.
The authoritative report says the drain has been costing Africa an annual 200,000 professionals for the past sixteen years.
The continent has, meanwhile, been spending a monstrous USD4 billion a year employing 150 expatriates to plug the human skills’ gap created by this exodus of its own qualified sons and daughters.
Foreign embassies in Tanzania are daily swamped with young Tanzanian talents scuttling for visas to leave the country.
For some of those fortunate enough to land overseas scholarships, it is usually goodbye Tanzania.
This is as pathetic as it is bothersome when one considers that the local experts flee after having been educated and trained on taxpayers’ money.
It is especially saddening seeing Tanzania in this sorry state when the economies of some advanced countries are driven by smart Tanzanians living abroad, including doctors and engineers.
In a very important way, the brain drain is a self-inflicted calamity that has assumed alarming proportions and it would serve nobody any good if we fail to make our own human capital feel comfortable enough at home to stay.
Africa is faced with insidious poverty, diseases and many other social and economic problems.
Few of us have ever imagined that fly-by-night power supply and chronic water shortages are a sufficient incentive to make talents hate their motherland.
In the midst of omnipresent unemployment, most of our urban centres harbour ever-swelling hordes of young professionals who have long lost hope of finding a decent job.
The only logical way they see themselves ending their frustrations is stowing away or turning to crime.
Without consistent creation of decent jobs, many of our brothers and sisters in the Diaspora would swiftly resist temptations to return home.
UNDP Administrator Kemal Deris calls for an urgent adoption of economic strategies and policies that would enable Africa to make its pattern of growth pro-poor and economic-centred.
Measures to eliminate poverty and produce more bread and butter in Africa would act as incentives to Africans in the Diaspora to return home and help in development initiatives.
But many African economies will just not refrain from unnecessary public expenditure and massive embezzlement of public funds so as to retain their human capital even by offering better engagement terms.
With the continent experiencing the pangs of the erosion of its human capital largely thanks to socio-economic deprivations, stable democracy and human development are hard to attain and figures inspiring economic data will not mean much unless the citizenry gain from the growth factors through decent jobs and decent life.
African leaders must create this conducive environment to develop, maintain and retain its human capital.
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