A country or region is said to be affected by a brain drain when its lacks enough skilled people because of emigration of such (skilled personnel) to other countries, in search of opportunities and resources not available in their home countries.

The African brain drain is on the increase. Every year, more and more people migrate from Africa to developing countries. And the majority of those who move have at least a college education. There are consequences to this brain drain. Below, I touch on a few of those:

The continued influx of skilled people from Africa has both its pros and cons. I will mention a few major ones on each side.

NEGATIVE EFFECTS:

Loss of critical skills necessary for development. Themost demanding fields of engineering, medicine, and other specialties train less people yet they are the ones losing more people due to emigration. This leaves Africa with shortages in such areas that are essential for development. A region’s human capital is the strongest source of economic development. Therefore with a brain drain, Africa lacks the essential skills that would boost its economic development.

Resource wastage and thus worsening development levels. All over the world, governments spend huge amounts of their budgets on education, hoping that it will pay off in the future when they get enough skills to develop the country. It is every government’s priority to educate its citizens if it is to further develop. Therefore, spending money on someone you are going to lose is not helping but making things worse. African countries have been a victim to this. They have invested huge sums of money in education, only to see their skilled people leave the country. Such resources could have been spent on other sectors that would develop the country.

Limited innovation. When the skilled personnel leave the continent, some countries resort to hiring foreigners in the name of expatriates’. These just come in and don’t help the country’s citizens become more innovative for long term growth. What is ironical about this is that these foreigners are paid more than the local intervals with similar skills, thus forcing the local ones to leave the country for greener pastures. So in addition to losing its own human resource, Africa ends up spending more money hiring foreign expatriates to fill the gap.

POSITIVE EFFECTS:

Remittances. Africans in foreign countries send a lot of money back home, which is invested or spent on services that help develop the country. Therefore, Africa benefits from the foreign currency generated by its Diasporas.

Acquisition of skills and new knowledge. Those who return after a certain period of time usually bring with them a lot of skills acquired from abroad. This creates some degree of innovation and long term development that would be lacking if some of these people had remained at home.

It is therefore important to consider both the good and the bad side of Africa’s brain drain, and then decide whether it is good for development or not. In most cases, this would depend on the resource needs and development level of each country.