Reversing brain drain is Africa's major challenge
Regional, Economics, 2/23/2000

A conference on brain drain and capacity building in Africa is currently taking place here to review issues pertaining to the causes, magnitude and implications of brain drain in Africa in the context of the current debate about capacity building in the continent.

The three-day conference will recommend at the end of its deliberations "practical implementation modalities" to African policy-makers "to stem or reverse the brain drain and build capacity at national and regional levels."

It is being attended by some 150 participants, including policy-makers and civil society representatives in Africa and representatives of international and regional organizations outside the continent.

Senior official of the UN Economic Commission for Africa Tuesday said "the need to reverse the brain drain as well as build and effectively utilize capacities have become major challenges for African development in the 21st century."

The pan-African news agency quoted the deputy executive secretary of the commission, Lalla Ben Barka, as saying that as the main objective of African governments and their development partners has been poverty reduction, every African country has been faced by the paradox of high rates of unemployment and underemployment, including university graduates.

"This has often resulted in a wave of migration of the highly educated and highly skilled to Europe and North America," she said.

To illustrate the point, Ben Barka cited the 1993 UNDP human development report which stated that there were more than 21,000 Nigerian doctors in the United States alone while Nigeria's health system suffers from an acute lack of medical personnel.

Some 60 percent of all Ghanaian doctors trained locally in the 1980's had left the country, while in Sudan 17 percent of doctors, 20 percent of university lecturers and 30 percent of engineers in 1978 alone had gone to work abroad.

She also noted that Africa's under-utilization of its indigenous capacities was most evident in the areas of science and technology.

Africa's share of investment in research and development is only 5% and 8%, according to the latest information on indicators in scientific publications.

Ben Barka emphasized that Africa cannot benefit from globalization "unless it develops and takes full advantage of existing opportunities to adopt and utilize science and technology."

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