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| Zambian economist, Dr. Dambisa Moyo |
There are many African professionals that work outside their home countries. The World Bank estimates that about 30,000 African PhD holders work outside the continent. The reasons why such brains leave are many. One of the reasons is the low pay and working conditions in most sub Saharan African countries. Many nurses, teachers and doctors earn pitifully low salaries that make them want to explore options outside their home countries. It is for example, estimated that there are more Malawi doctors in Manchester than in Malawi. Proponents of brain drain argue that such professionals bring back foreign exchange to their countries of origin. The money remittances that they send home helps to kick start economic activities at home. Remittances in deed act as the chief foreign exchange for many African countries. It is however never acknowledged that much of the remittance is used for consumption and not for productive economic development. Additionally, those left behind are likely to be dependent. Just like aid, remittances serve to make the recipients non-proactive. In her book,
Dead Aid and why there is a new way for Africa, Zambian economist Dr. Dambisa Moyo argues against such aid, which she believes forestalls development in the continent.
Some small brain drain should in deed be encouraged. Since the African professionals will have been exposed to the outside world, they tend to come back with new perspective. Some African professionals have in deed
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| Patrick Awuah, Founder of Ashesi University in Ghana |
come back home and set up worthwhile ventures. One such example is Mr. Patrick Awuah, who founded Ashesi University in Ghana. While still a teenager, he won a full scholarship to pursue studies at Swarthmore College, an exclusive private College in the US. He went on to work for Microsoft and was one of the thousands of multi
millionaires churned out by Microsoft. Afterwards, he enrolled for an
MBA degree at the Haas Business School of University of California, Berkeley. Using his capital and that of fellow partners at Microsoft, he was able to found Ashesi University in Ghana, with a start up capital of about half a million dollars. The College now attracts some of the sharpest minds in West Africa and beyond. Recently, the University opened up a state of the art campus in Africa.
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| Ethiopia Commodity Exchange (ECX) |
Another returnee, Ethiopian Eleni Gebre-Medhin, holds a PhD in Applied Economics from Stanford University. She worked for the World Bank, and the International Food research Policy in Washington. She returned in Ethiopian to help found the Ethiopian commodity exchange (ECX) in 2004.
It’s a first of its kind in Sub Saharan Africa. The Commodity exchange acts as an exchange of sorts for agricultural produce. Modeled after the Chicago mercantile exchange, farmers use their produce as a store of value, and in some way dictate the price at which they are willing to sell their produce.Farmers are now able to get a better return of investment for their produce. Of course, their have been critics, with some alleging that the exchange is being used by Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to hold a grip on the farmers.As the above two examples demonstrate, expertise is what really Africa needs, and not the remittances. For even a trillion dollars poured into Africa would amount to nothing without any intrinsic value.
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