BRAIN DRAIN IN KENYA (
AND SSA NATIONS)
THE PROBLEM TO THE ECONOMIC GROWTH
1.1
INTRODUCTION
A brain drain is said to occur when a country
becomes short of skills when people with such expertise emigrate. The UN
Development Programme (UNDP) notes that in Africa, the loss of medical doctors
has been the most striking. At least 60 per cent of doctors trained in Ghana
during the 1980s have left the country. The phenomenon "is putting a huge strain
on the continent," notes IOM Deputy Director-General Ndioro Ndiaye. To fill the
gap created by the skills shortage, African countries spend an estimated $4 bn
annually to employ about 100,000 non-African expatriates. "It is high time
programmes and policies are put in place to reverse the devastating effects of
the brain drain," she says.
If you have ever
attended a fundraising function in Kenya meant to assist a student going for
further studies abroad you will surely never miss to hear a politician give a
piece of advice thus: “make sure you come back home to develop your nation, this
country needs your expertise.”
Do we have such a thing
as brain drain? If you dig a drainage channel outside your house to direct storm
water away from your compound, are you to reproach the storm water for escaping?
Will it be justified to import water when you allow your own to run-off? If
Kenya does not nurture an environment conducive for academic growth, holds
intellectuals with conjecture; what effect does it expect from its actions? If
you enslave men of ideas, if you discourage thinkers and murder reason-why
pretend to be seeking solutions to African problems? How can a system that holds
poverty as a virtue struggle for prosperity? Revulsion against intellectuals in
Africa is suicide to our economic and political stability.
THE REUTERS NEWS AGENCY
reporting over the cost of immigrants leaving the continent had this to say; “
NAIROBI - Africa has lost a third of its skilled professionals in recent decades
and has had to replace them with expatriates from the West at a cost of $4
billion a year, a new report shows.
Some 23,000 qualified
academic professionals emigrate from Africa each year in search of better
working conditions. The region (Africa) has lost an estimated 60,000 middle-and
high-level managers between 1985 and 1990.” the report says.
Experts say employing
expatriate workers, who are often more expensive than African professionals,
makes the process of sustaining economic and environmental development even
harder. The Pollution Research Group at Natal University in South Africa cites
World Bank estimates that 100,000 expatriates from the industrialized countries
are employed in Africa at a cost of $4 billion per year. “brain drain as a
“major cause of environmental degradation”, is one of several topics due to be
discussed at the conference in the Kenyan capital Nairobi. Nearly 40 African
ministers are attending the conference, which is intended to mould Africa’s
agenda for the World Summit. “
On 19th may
2003,
Health ministers from throughout Africa were meeting in Switzerland in an effort
to stop the continued drain of top health professionals from the continent. Tens
of thousands of doctors and nurses are leaving their native countries to work
abroad, primarily in the UK and United States, leaving Africa’s hospitals
desperately short-staffed. “We are asking that those [countries] who take people
on who are already trained, should at least allow our governments to be part and
parcel of what they are doing,” Kenya’s Health Minister Charity Ngilu told BBC
World Service’s Focus On Africa programme (6.30 pm east African time on 18th
may 2003). “Health centres are being left with no health workers.”
This goal of
intellectual recolonisation of the continent is carried on through various means
depending on the geographical location and socio-cultural realities. The
essential features thereof, however, remain the same: The basic mechanism for
the recolonisation of the African intellectual to think beyond satisfaction of
the very basic needs. The process of recolonisation is being done by creating
conditions in Africa under which Africans cannot produce on equal footing in the
world market of ideas - except of course, at the service and under the control
of ‘international’ agencies
·
CIVIL
UNREST/HUMAN RIGHT ABUSES:
While on my August holiday this year, I attended two-week international church
activity to train the youth on godliness, first aid and future survival skills
at Jamhuri park in Nairobi. I met a Rwandan doctor and she told me she never
admired going back home when she remembers the genocides and how she has only
escaped the insecurity back at home. Nearly all African countries suffer on this
euphoria hence the notion to move out of Africa.
In a report on Africa released last year, the Secretary-General called on
African nations to end their conflicts so that cooperation among them could
flourish. "Without peace and stability," he said, "no amount of aid or
assistance can make the difference between poverty and prosperity." UNESCO said
that war and armed conflicts have undermined the long-term stability, peace and
prosperity of much of the African region. In 1996 alone, it said, 14 of the 53
African countries were afflicted by armed conflict.
·
RIOTS IN KENYAN UNIVERSITIES:
As for me even in high school never wished to study in Kenya for fear of
completing only a 4-year degree in more than 7 years. Strikes are part of the
students and even a small matter of dialogue is only solved by a riot. 2000
JKUAT students rioted and destroyed a vehicle along Thika road (main road at the
gate
of J.K.U.A.T) due to absence of florescent bulbs in some hostels. Does it deserve this
response really? No at all. In Nairobi, student riots, which paralyzed its
central business district, are already a regular occurrence. The spark can be
anything from serious political issues like constitutional reform or
government corruption to poor accommodation standards. All the universities
follow the the same channel and a riot of one university is just a beginning of
similar riot in others with the same agenda that the rioting university are
their brothers and therefore they can’t stay and see their brothers suffer
WORST OF ALL IS THE LECTURERS STRIKE THAT
OCCURRED ON OCTOBER 2003 WHERE LECTURERS DEMANDED A PAY RISE OF 2000% CAUSING A CLOSURE OF ALL PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES.IF
LECTURES ARE STRIKING THOSE WHO TEACH THEIR STUDENTS WHEN THIS STUDENTS BECOME LECTURERS DO YOU THING THEY WILL STAY IN KENYA
- Efforts to stem Kenya’s
Debilitating ‘brain drain’ of smart young students are becoming mired
in controversy with critics accusing the government of devaluing degrees and
making them an expensive waste of time. Inevitably, the loss of its “brightest
and best” talent has made Kenya’s attempts to drag itself out of poverty and
progress down the road to development all the more difficult.
How to extend university education to satisfy the aspirations of
Kenyans is one question, which has troubled successive governments. In the last
couple of years Kenya has attempted to meet this through the Introduction of
parallel degree programmes. Parallel students have to pay all of their fees
themselves, whereas the government meets the bulk of regular students’ costs.
The two groups are taught separately, although they follow the same syllabus.
But the experiment seems to be turning into a serious mistake. Parallel degrees
have become devalued with Educationists complaining that academic standards are
being sacrificed. Even, the government’s own Koech Report, August 1999, admits
to a lack of “equity
quality control and quality assurance” in parallel programmes.
Students with grades as low as C plus are now gaining admission to
competitive professional courses like medicine and law on parallel degree
programmes. This is mainly students of the rich who can afford. Previously,
these demanding subjects were reserved for students with A minus or above. Not
surprisingly, many of these students are struggling to keep up with the rigorous
standards demanded of them.
“It is highly probable that there will either be a high number of
drop-outs from the courses or mass failures since universities cannot
possibly remedy deficiencies of secondary schooling,” says George Ogola, a
journalist who specializes in education.” Too many people are being encouraged
to undertake degrees even those not capable of study at that level.” Ogola
highlights another potentially dangerous flaw in the government’s programme.
·
MODE OF DEGREES OFFERED“A
number of universities are introducing irrelevant degrees. There is already a
surplus of Arts graduates. We don’t need anymore. Technical training should be
strengthened for it is here that Kenya has a deficit.”
·
FINANCIAL CONTRAINT (COST OF EDUCATION):In
Kenya, a paltry 150,000
Pupils manage to complete secondary education each year. Only 5 to
10 percent of secondary school graduates in sub-Saharan Africa go
on to university the government's decision to sink scarce resources into higher
education when millions cannot even afford school. A degree programme costs
Ksh120, 000 or 1,760 dollars a year.
The introduction of student fees in 1995 followed changes in donor
thinking, as William Saint, a World Bank consultant on education, explains.
''Fees are a
Means of increasing university funding. They make universities more responsive
to student needs by instilling the concepts of students as clients.'' But things
have not worked out as Saint envisaged. This is because of the mode of funding.
The more students an institution accepts, the more money the government grants,
regardless of whether it can deliver the services its ''clients'' are paying
for.
As a result students increasingly feel cheated. In other cases, the
''student as client'' theory seems to have been taken too literally with
lecturers being
accused of spending more time with parallel students because they earn more from
them. ''There's antipathy and resentment ... They hate each other,'' says one
anonymous student.
The finance issue
where the university fee was said to be increased by Ksh.8000 which was
raised on 15/09/2004. caused the students from the university of Nairobi to go
on Rampage hence the closure of the leading university in Kenya. This in turn
causes other universities to strike because their brothers have been sent home
for a cause they feel its unfair.
·
LACK OF EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES:
Among the major reasons people’s flights are lack of opportunities and
uncertainties caused by out recent experiences, which perhaps distracted us from
looking at the big picture. Students able to find overseas employment were
leaving Africa for greener pastures, while some of those trained abroad refused
to return home.
·
LOW PAY AND REMUNERATION PACKAGES:
poor salaries and bleaker prospects in African universities have forced trained
scientists and engineers to move on to civil service jobs or to business and
commerce. Western news agencies constantly report that African employees in
sub-Saharan are the worst paid.
Exemplary of this situation are the material conditions prevailing at the
universities in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, where the average wage of an
academic now provides for at best four days of subsistence, and even the most
minimal material conditions of intellectual production (stationery and
laboratory and workshop equipment) are beyond reach of the majority of faculty
and students.
With the
introduction of SAPs in most African countries, academicians found themselves
among the worst paid in the entire world. Perhaps an advert in 1992 in Nigerian
print media summed up the situation on the continent. It read: 'My employer is a
comedian, the pay he gives me is a joke. Imagine one calling a pay a joke
That was the reaction
by Nigeria's Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) to a devaluation of the
naira in the first quarter of 1992. With this devaluation, even the
vice-chancellors, who had worked for ASUU's proscription, found themselves
earning an annual pay of less than US$1,000 equivalent. So they also joined
those who were seeking redress.
The government's reaction was predictable: the SAP measures were
necessary; all needed to tighten their belts, after all, all sectors were
equally affected. The university dons needed to be told that just because they
lived in ivory towers they were not automatically insulated from the hard
realities in the country, and so on and so forth. All this will sound quite
familiar to anybody who has lived through Kenya's Universities Academic Staff
Union (UASU) struggle since November 1993
·
FORCED TO MIGRATE:
Resulting from this situation where the dons are forced to live on their
bellies, thousands of the best brains from the continent are being forced to
migrate to Europe or North America, in search of alternatives to 'academic
starvation' or reduce their teaching to a bare minimum in order to 'free' their
time for 'extra-curricular' occupations such as running kiosks, raising poultry
and any other activity that may help them to 'keep body and soul together'.
The second path to the
destruction of the autonomy of intellectual production is the defunding of
African academic institutions. This has been instrumental in their take-over by
international agencies keen on reorganizing and reshaping them to suit the
agencies' purposes.
·
FAILING ECONOMIES:
The devaluation of the Kenyan currency has greatly been blamed on the poor
governance. In 1986 the KShs. 20 (commonly referred as the pound) had an
equivalent of one British pound. Only 12 years down the line the shilling had
devalued tremendously (KShs.119.5 to £ 1) what a great change. For instance loaf
of bread used to cost KShs 5 .00
But now it costs KShs 25( a factor increment ) whereas one who earned KShs
4000/month is still earning the same amount or probably an increment of 1% in
this spell of
time.
(1)
Institutions to form formidable partnerships with their mainstream colleagues
and institutions to build the programs in their respective countries.
These partnerships include student exchange, faculty exchange, and performing
high-level research activities on common priorities. They formed powerful
scientific societies, which in turn joined the mainstream scientific societies.
At this time there is no single research activity that does not involve these
communities. If Nairobi university has affiliate degrees to oxford university of
the UK then we all like sheep shall flock to Nairobi for I have admired to be in
oxford and get a degree written oxford university.surpringly nearly 98% of the
students visiting the web want to know how to go UK and USA universities
(2)
Government on people’s behalf form global academic institutions;
Among the African communities who understood the importance of global
organizations are Ghanaians. For example, they are running African Association
of Universities (AAU!). They are also running the Edward Bouchet Institute (Bouchet
is the first African American who got his PhD. in Physics from Harvard). One
significant activity by Ghanaians in Diaspora is their Ghana Association of
Distance Learning and Computer Literacy. Around this concept they built several
other non-profit organizations to solicit financial and in kind support. The
success of the International Center for Theoretical Physics (Africa program) and
the Third World Academy of Sciences can be attributed to their associations with
powerful organizations. What should be known is that all doors are closed for
those who don't belong to the right organizations. Therefore for the African
Diaspora to be a viable human resource for Africa, it must organize within the
context of the international organization. Name is very important. I just
discovered that there is an African Association of Pure and Applied Chemistry (AAPAC),
which is an affiliate of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC).
Any thing that has to do with subject of Chemistry in the world goes first to
IUPAC, and anything that has to do with chemistry in Africa goes to AAPAC. You
can now see how money is spent on Chemistry. If Kenyan chemists wish to build an
international presence, they must work through these channels to form their
organizations. The right type of organizations are those which work not only
within a mainstream context, but also establish a powerful network with
international and local organizations (in case of US, the organizations could be
USAID, National Summit for Africa, Constituency for Africa, TransAfrica, ECA,
UN, etc) and including industries.
(3)
Compensation by the countries taking the elites:
recruiting nations should be made to pay compensation. "What I personally would
like to see take place is that if we as a government are developing and training
these health workers, then those governments who are hiring them should pay," Ms
Ngilu once stressed while addressing BBC reporters."We trained them, we spend
our meager resources - they should just pay back what we spend." This idea by
the health minister if implemented can yield better fruits.
(4)
Increase
salaries to the graduates from graduates employed:
A Kenyan
doctor from the medical school is said to receive a basic salary of $3000 per
year whereas in USA just a middle class employee is said to receive a salary of
$50,000 per year what a converse.who do you thing will stay when a green pasture
has been found? Ms Ngilu said she would like to see an arrangement where
developed countries put requests to African countries to train the staff they
needed, although she conceded that that would not solve the problem of talented
medics leaving the country. She added that in the end the root of the problem
remained money. "We had to improve our compensation for the doctors - so much so
that they have actually returned - we have now 600 who have now come back," but
what one say of this statement she again added. "However, we're still not able
to match the developed nations." When will they march? Other faculties like
LAW, IT, ENGINEERING etc are in the same cocoon of money.
(5)
Improve
University conditions:
The surprise is - if Education Editor Wamahiu Muya's facts are authentic - the
revelation that the universities spend only 1% of their budgets on the
libraries, the spinal cord of any university anywhere. What a wonder it can be
to any nation wishing to be industrializedby the year 2020 like Kenya. So our
public universities are in a financial fix? That's hardly surprising. While the
domestic political considerations in appointing top managers at our higher
institutions of learning have contributed no less significantly in lowering the
standards at these institutions, the biggest blame goes to external donors and
'friends'
The economic
and political recolonisation of the African continent by the Bretton Woods
Institutions - World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) - through currency
devaluations, structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) and the transfer of
economic and political decision-making authority into the heavy hands of these
agencies and countries is a fact now well known by many. Less known, however,
are the extent and the means by which the continent of Africa is undergoing
intellectual recolonisation The process of recolonisation is being done by
creating conditions in Africa under which Africans cannot produce on equal
footing in the world market of ideas - except of course, at the service and
under the control of 'international' agencies. Through a carefully and
specifically packaged and targeted aid regime, these agencies determine the
direction of research, the content of what is to be studied, written and voiced
on the continent. For how long shall we be slaves of in our own home? Just as we
say NO to AIDS and other economy destroyers so is the government initiative to
say to this enslaving act.
This goal of
intellectual recolonisation of the continent is carried on through various means
depending on the geographical location and socio-cultural realities. The
essential features thereof, however, remain the same: The basic mechanism for
the recolonisation of the African intellectual to think beyond satisfaction of
the very basic needs
(6)Include restrictive policies aimed
at delaying emigration, such as adding extra years to
Medical
students' training. Immigration laws in some industrialized nations require
migrants
to
remain in the country for a specified period or risk losing their residence
status. On the
other hand,
those who have been naturalized in their new country often have to make a
choice
between thator their home state, as some African countries do not recognize dual
citizenship.
(7)Various tax proposals have to be put forward as governments realize that the
large numbers of citizens living outside their borders are a potential economic
resource.
Proposals range from one-time exit taxes to bilateral tax arrangements, which
would require the receiving nation to tax citizens of another and remunerate the
home country.
(8)The
adoption of international agreements by industrial and developing nations
under which wealthy countries pledge not to recruit skilled people from
developing states.
(9)Building networks for the
professionals and immigrants:
Because many people are reluctant to return to politically or economically
unstable countries, some countries are now trying to find other ways to tap the
knowledge and skills of their professionals based overseas. This approach is
popular because it does not require participants to relocate to their home
countries.
The South African
Network of Skills Abroad (SANSA) is an example. Through its website, it invites
professional South Africans to sign up. It reports that at least 22,000
graduates from five major South African universities resident abroad remain in
touch with the universities. SANSA estimates that about 60 per cent of the
country's expatriate graduates are located in six countries, with Australia, the
UK and the US accounting for more than half of them. Looking at the nature of
their skills, the group estimates that about 30 per cent of the University of
Cape Town's contactable doctoral graduates are living overseas. They comprise
significant proportions of the university's graduates in medicine, commerce,
education and engineering, all areas in which South Africa has an acute shortage
of skills.
Government to make Kenya part and parcel of the world
information society: African ICT leaders converged in Bamako Mali on May 28-30
at the invitation of President Alpha Oumar Konare with one objective - to assess
key challenges, opportunities and constraints and develop a common vision and a
plan of action to address the challenges of an information society for Africa.
After three days, the 51 countries assembled came up with a declaration on the
framework for the long march into the information society as a negotiating
platform at the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) to take place in
Geneva in 2003, writes Muriuki Muriethi.
The African Regional Conference also known as a Bamako 2002
made declarations on the following issues:
- Those global information societies address the interests of
all nations big and small.
- Local content have space in the information society and
indeed be accorded high priority.
- There must be a guarantee of fair access for African
people.
- To create partnerships to build the global information
society without leaving out the small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Bamako 2002 also set out principles to achieve the
declarations cited above that;
- All citizens be provided with means of using ICT networks
as a public service.
- Every citizen be guaranteed freedom of expression and
protected access to information in the global public domain as part of an
inalienable right to access information constituting a heritage of mankind.
- The technology supply is diversified by removal of
regulatory, political, and financial obstacles to meet to the needs of the
citizens.
- Promote free software
to spread technology at least cost
(10)Relocating kenyan expatriates:
Other programmes to counter the brain drain involve the
physical relocation of
expatriate Africans either to their home countries or elsewhere on the continent. A major
limitation, however, is that such operations require large sums of money.
Some expatriates may
wish to be repatriated with their entire families. Others may request salaries comparable to
what they earn in their host countries, along with up-to-date technological resources.
Another limitation is that repatriation only allows for the return of the individual expatriate
and not the knowledge networks to which he or she may belong.
Despite such challenges, the Kenya-based
Research and Development Forum for Science-Led Development in Africa (RANDFORUM) has
been exploring ways to repatriate African professionals and intellectuals, as
requested in 1999 by the Presidential Forum on the Management of Science and Technology in
Africa, a grouping of African heads of state. That year, a taskforce led by a former
Zambian president, Mr. Kenneth Kaunda, recommended that
RANDFORUM and its sister organization,
the African Foundation for Research and
Development, identify overseas-based
Africans interested in returning home to offer their
skills. Another RANDFORUM project aims
to relocate professionals from "distressed countries" -- those that are faltering
economically or politically, such as Liberia or Somalia – to where they can be productive. Rather
than confine professionals and intellectuals from such countries to refugee camps, they are
utilized elsewhere and returned once the situation in their countries normalizes.
Ø
There seems be to
some hope however which we thing may bring change:
the recent election of a new president, Mr. Mwai Kibaki, has spawned a period of
euphoria and a wave of returns by exiles hoping to rebuild a country that had
all but collapsed under the weight of 24 years of rule by former President
Daniel arap Moi. President Kibaki has been quick to invite Kenyans "who have
been hounded out of our shores by repressive policies of our predecessors to
come back home and join us in nation-building." He notes that the country
desperately needs "the genius of its citizens wherever they are. It's time for
healing and we need every hand on deck."
MORE
REFERENCES
TO READ
1.
KENYA TIMES FRIDAY 12TH SEPTEMBER, 2003 –MAGAZINE PG-13 JKUAT
LIBRARY
2. BBC NEWS REPORT –focus on Africa
3
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE, October 18, 2001 ALSO
http//www .reuters .com
4.
FRIENDs ABROAD PREVIOUSLY
STUDENTS FROM JKUAT
LEAVING IN DIASPORA,
5.
IREN Kenya Articles publication dated May 20 2000
6.
http//www.Uneca.org/aisi/aisi.htm,
7.
PLANET ARK BRAIN DRAIN COSTS AFRICA $4 BLN A YEAR - REPORT. TM DOC
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