THE AFRICAN BRAIN DRAIN: USING INTELLECTUAL DIASPORA TO MANAGE THE DRAIN: WHAT ARE THE OPTIONS

1
THE AFRICAN BRAIN DRAIN USING INTELLECTUAL
DIASPORA TO MANAGE THE DRAIN WHAT ARE THE
OPTIONS?
OCTOBER 2007

• PRESENTATION TO THE ASSOCIATION OF
• AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES (AAU),
• CONFERENCE OF RECTORS, VICE CHANCELLORS AND
  PRESIDENTS OF AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES (COREVIP)

By Dr. Patrick Onsando Ph.D Moi University
Eldoret Kenya
2
Abstract

• There is an increasing realization that the next
  society will be a knowledge society, enabled by
  the rapidly developing information and
  communications technology.
• This is despite the fact that the brain drain has
  brought harmful effects to Africa as some of her
  best talents have emigrated resulting into lower
  rates of growth, less productive educational
  investments and poorer health care.
• The endogenous growth model provides evidence on
  these effects.
• There has also been a loss of actual and
  potential innovators who might have led the way
  to modernization, as they migrated to educational
  systems and working environments that have
  supported their innovative and creative
  abilities.
• This study shows that in order to exploit its
  full potential, Africa will have to depend
  increasingly on the acquisition, creation and use
  of knowledge.
• However having the storehouse of treasure in the
  form of knowledge workers is not enough. In order
  to carry out those functions well, and be on the
  cutting edge, Africa needs an effective
  innovation system, linking up with, innovation
  friendly enterprises the various research units,
  universities, consultants, and other
  organizations that are able to access the growing
  stock of global knowledge and create new
  knowledge and new technologies.
• We conclude that, the intellectual Diaspora may
  constitute a key resource for Africa, by
  providing contacts of many types, contributing
  know-how and investments and enhancing
  international trade and creation of wealth.

3
CONTEXT

• Because of low training capacity, a large
  proportion of Africans are still trained outside
  Africa, exposing them to the challenge of the
  Brain drain.
• Millions of Africa Science and technology
  experts are stuck in western countries as part of
  this brain drain.
• According to the International Organization for
  Migration (IOM), Africa has already lost one
  third of its human capital and is continuing to
  lose its skilled personnel at an increasing rate,
  with an estimated 20,000 doctors, university
  lecturers, engineers and other professional
  leaving the continent annually since 1990.
• There are currently over 300,000 highly qualified
  Africans in the Diaspora, 30,000 of which have
  PhDs.
• Africa spends US4 billion per year (representing
  35 of total official development aid to the
  continent) to employ some 100,000 Western experts
  performing functions generically described as
  technical assistance.
• Africa as a whole counts only 20,000 scientists
  (3.6 percent of the world total) and its share
  in the worlds scientific output has fallen from
  0.5 to 0.3 as it continues to suffer the brain
  drain of scientists, engineers and technologists.

4
CONTEXT
Continuation

• The problem of brain drain has reached quite
  disturbing proportions in certain African
  countries, with Ethiopia ranked first in the
  continent in terms of rate of loss of human
  capital, followed by Nigeria and Ghana.
• Ethiopia lost about 74.6 of its human capital
  from various institutions between 1980 and 1991.
• While Ethiopia has 1 full-time economics
  professor, there are more than 100 Ethiopian
  economists in the United States.
• According to the estimates of the Presidential
  Committee on Brain Drain set up in 1988 by the
  Babangida administration, Nigeria, between 1986
  and 1990, lost over 10,000 academics from
  tertiary education institutions alone.
• Total estimates, including those who left
  public, industrial and private organizations, are
  over 30,000. 64 of Nigerians in the United
  States aged 25 and older have at least a
  bachelors degree.
• The Zimbabwe National Association of Social
  Workers estimates that 1,500 of the countrys
  3,000 trained social workers left for the United
  Kingdom over the past 10 years.
• African countries are funding the education of
  their nationals only to see them end up
  contributing to the growth of developed countries
  with little or no return on their investment.
• In Kenya, for example, it costs about US40,000
  to train a doctor and US10,000-15,000 to educate
  a university student for 4 years.
• The health sector is particularly affected
  indeed, desperate shortage of health
  professionals is the most serious obstacle as
  Africa tries to fight AIDS and support other
  health programs.
• Kenya loses on average 20 medical doctors each
  month.
• Ghana lost 60 of its medical doctors in the
  1980s, 600 to 700 Ghanaian physicians are
  currently practicing in the USA alone, a figure
  that represents roughly 50 of the total
  population of doctors in Ghana.

5
CONTEXT
Continuation

• The loss of nurses, in particular, is growing
  phenomenon, fueled principally by the shortages
  in developed countries.
• The United States has 126,000 fewer nurses that
  it needs and government figures show that the
  country could face a shortage of 800,000
  registered nurses by 2020.
• Because of such shortages, industrialized nations
  have embarked on massive international
  recruitment drives, offering African nurses the
  opportunity to earn as much as 20 times their
  salaries.
• The 1993 UNDP Human Development Report indicated
  that more than 21,000 Nigerian doctors were
  practicing in the United States alone while
  Nigeria suffers from a shortage of doctors.
• If we were to add the number of Nigerian doctors
  in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, Europe,
  Australia and those in other African countries,
  the figure would be close to 30,000.
• One third of Ethiopian medical doctors have
  already left the country.
• In Zambia, the public sector only retains about
  50 out of 600 doctors trained in the countrys
  medical school.
• The flight of health professionals is not limited
  to doctors and affects nurses, pharmacists and
  social services personnel as well.
• It is not only the medics that are affected it is
  the entire spectrum of professionals.
• African is thus fascinated with how it can
  utilize the African Diaspora to improve the lot
  of Africa.

6
CONTEXT
Continuation

• To acquire the scientific knowledge and
  technology required for a technological regime,
  Africa will have to strengthen its capacity to
  use wisely a mix of channels, including, copying,
  imitating, duplicating, intelligence gathering,
  resource engineering, licensing, FDI, partnering
  networking with the Diaspora, overseas studies,
  technical assistance and international and
  regional cooperation.
• Africa may adapt innovation systems based on a
  catch-up model which favors the acquisition of
  advanced technologies from abroad in selected
  sectors rather than a broader strengthening of
  its knowledge base.
• However, reliance on foreign technology results
  in heavy dependence on foreign sources of
  materials, parts and components. This limits the
  beneficial linkage effects and amplifies
  vulnerability to external shocks.

7
Endogenous Growth Model and the Brain Drain

• Endogenous innovation models embrace a
  neo-Schumpeterian framework of endogenous
  technological change based on three premises
  (Gross man and Helpman, 1991, 1994 Crafts, 1996
  Aghion and Howitt, 1998).
• First, the basic driving force behind economic
  growth is technological change, that is
  improvement in knowledge about how we transform
  inputs into outputs in the production process.
• Second, technological change is endogenous, being
  determined by deliberate activities of economic
  agents acting largely in response to financial
  incentives.
• Third, the defining characteristic of
  ideas/knowledge is that once the cost of creating
  a new set of instructions has been incurred, the
  instructions can be used over and over again at
  no additional cost (Romer 1990). Therefore ideas
  are non-rivalries outputs and their use by one
  firm or person does not in any way reduce their
  availability to other firms or persons.
• The new growth literature therefore suggests
  that, the negative implications of a brain drain
  on the source country are magnified. For example,
  Hague and Kim (1995) posits that the emigration
  of people with high levels of human capital
  reduces the growth rate of the effective human
  capital that remains in the economy, and thus
  generates the reduction of the per capita growth
  in the source country.
• Under this scenario not only is high skilled
  labour complementary with capital and low-skilled
  labour, but high-skilled workers enhance
  technological innovations and their diffusion.
• The main implication is that a continuous outflow
  of high skilled labour would deplete the source
  countrys level of human capital and thus reduce
  the capacity of the country to achieve as much
  technological progress as other economies.

8
Endogenous Growth Model and the Brain Drain
Continuation

• Scenarios from the standard model of production
  and endogenous growth models reflect the drain
  of brains view that dominated migration research
  from the 1950s to the 1970s.
• However, these, two scenarios ignore the fact
  that migration can induce skill formation.
• The standard and new growth models have been
  challenged in various theoretical papers that
  examine the impact of migration on human capital
  formation within a context of rational migration
  flows (see Beine et al. 2001, and mount fold
  1997).
• The theory assumes that workers weigh the costs
  of acquiring skills against prospective market
  rewards for enhancing skills, both at home and
  abroad and thus making optimal decisions.
• Scherer (1999) advocates that human capital is
  the most important input in the process of
  advancing technology.
• A growing body of literature has addressed the
  complementarities of human capital and
  technological progress.
• One of the earliest models developed is by Nelson
  and Phelps (1966), which suggested what the level
  of education, speeds up technological diffusion.
• Their simple illustration was that of an educated
  farmer, possessing ability to discern profitable
  ideas and thus adopting new processes or products
  more quickly than his uneducated counterpart.
• Benhabib and Spiegel (2002), using cross data
  obtains results consistent to Nelson and Phelps
  hypothesis and extends the role of human capital
  to be an engine of domestic innovation besides
  being a facilitator of technology adoption.

9
Endogenous Growth Model and the Brain Drain
Continuation

• Romer (1990) challenges and augments the Solow
  neoclassical growth model, which assumes
  technology to be exogenous and hence available
  without limitation everywhere across the globe.
• In order to explain continuous growth of output
  per worker in the long run the Solow model must
  incorporate the influence of sustainable
  technological progress.
• Y At KaL1-a (1)
• Where ? and 1-? are weights reflecting the share
  of capital and labour in the national income.
  Assuming constant returns to scale, and for a
  given technology, At0, output per worker is
  positively related to the capital-labour ratio
  (K/L). We can therefore rewrite the production
  function equation (1) in terms of output per
  worker as shown by
• Y/L A(t0)(K/L)A(t0)KaL1-a/LA(t0)(K/L)a
  (2)
• Letting y Y/L and k K/L, we have the
  intensive form of the aggregate production.
• yA(t0)ka (3)
• For a given technology, equation (3) tells us
  that increasing the amount of capital per worker
  (capital deepening) will lead to an increase in
  output per worker.

10
Endogenous Growth Model and the Brain Drain
Continuation
Fig 1. Technological progress
The impact of exogenous technological progress is
illustrated in figure 1 by a shift of the
production function between two time periods (t0
gtt1) from A(t0)ka to A(t1)ka, raising output per
worker from ya to yb for a given capital-labour
ratio of ka. Continuous upward shifts of the
production function, induced by an exogenously
determined growth of knowledge, provide the only
mechanism for explaining steady state growth of
output per worker in the neoclassical model.
11
Endogenous Growth Model and the Brain Drain
Continuation

• Continuous upward shifts of the production
  function, induced by an exogenous determined a
  growth of knowledge, provides the only mechanism
  for explaining steady growth of output per
  worker in the neoclassical model.
• Insights on the impacts of technology on
  production are also provided by (Kumar and
  Rusell) decomposition.
• This decomposition exploits the assumption of
  constant returns to scale, in which case the
  benchmark technology sets can be drawn in ltk, ygt
  space, where k K/L and y Y/L.
• Using these hypothetical technologies for two
  periods, as we have already shown, say a base
  period b and a current period c, are drawn in
  figure 2. In this example, the single kink in
  each of the polyhedral technologies would
  indicate that a single economy the only efficient
  economy defines the frontier.
• The two points (kb, yb) and (kc, yc), represent
  observed values of the two ratios in the two
  periods for some hypothetical economy.

12
Endogenous Growth Model and the Brain Drain
y
Yc(kc)
D
T
Yc
Yc(kb)
E
C
Yb(kc)
Yb(kb
B
yb
A
kc
kb
k

• By construction, potential outputs for this
  economy in the two periods are ?b(kb) yb/eb and
  ?c(kc) yc /ec, where eb and ec are the values
  of the efficiency indexes in the two periods,
  calculated as in (2) above.

13
Endogenous Growth Model and the Brain Drain
Continuation
. Therefore,
Multiplying top and bottom by ?b(kc), the
potential output-labor ratio at current-period
capital intensity using the base-period
technology, we obtain
This identity decomposes the relative change in
the output-labor ratio in the two periods into
(i) the change in efficiency i.e., the change
in the distance from the frontier (the first term
on the right) (ii) the technology change i.e.,
the shift in the frontier (the second term and
(iii) the effect of the change in the
capital-labor ratio-i.e., movement along the
frontier (the third term).
14
Endogenous Growth Model and the Brain Drain
Continuation
The decomposition in (4) measures technological
change by the shift in the frontier in the output
direction at the current-period capital-labor
ratio-from point C to point D in Figure 2 and it
measures the effect of capital accumulation along
the base-period frontier-from point B to point C.
we can alternatively measure technological change
at the base-period capital-labor ratio-from point
B to point E in Figure 2 -and capital
accumulation by movements along the
current-period frontier-from point E to point
D-by multiplying the top and bottom of (3) by the
potential output-labor ratio at base-period
capital intensity using the current-period
technology, ?c(kb), yielding the decomposition,
(5)
15
Endogenous Growth Model and the Brain Drain
Continuation

• Thus, the decomposition of (discrete)
  productivity changes (not attributable to
  efficiency changes) into the technological-change
  and capital-deepening components is path
  dependent, and the choice between (4) and (5) is
  arbitrary.
• There is no avoiding this arbitrariness, unless
  technological change is Hicks neutral, in which
  case the proportional vertical shift in the
  frontier is independent of the value of the
  capital-labor ratio.
• It is this assumption (along with constant
  returns to scale) that enabled Solow (1957), and
  the legions of growth accountants who have
  followed his lead, to unambiguously decompose
  productivity growth into components attributable
  to technological change and capital deepening.
• But without constraining technological change to
  be Hicks neutral, the proportional (vertical)
  shift in the frontier varies in unspecified ways.
• In fact, this arbitrariness is not, per se,
  attributable to the decomposition itself.
• It is endemic to the basic task of measuring
  technological change, as is evident in the
  necessity of normalizing on one of two
  technologies in the (Malmquist) productivity
  index proposed in the pioneering paper of
  Doughlas W. Caves et al. (1982a).

16
Endogenous Growth Model and the Brain Drain
Continuation

• Within this framework it is inferred that
  technological innovation is a chronic disturber
  of comparatives and the rules of the game are
  rapidly changing.
• The emerging trends have far reaching
  implications for Africas sustainable development
  and competitiveness.
• Global firms are steadily upgrading their
  technological capacity and performance and
  progressively raising entry barriers to new
  entrants.
• In this process inefficient producers such as
  African ones, are often squeezed out.
• Africas competitiveness in its traditional
  areas of comparative advantage is eroding.
• This is well documented The continents share of
  global export trade fell from 5.9 in 1980 to
  less than 2 at the end of the 1990s, while
  sub-Saharan Africas market share at global
  manufacturing value added (MVA) was halved from
  0.69 in 1970 to a low 0.3 in he 1990s.
• Globalization and liberalization compel
  companies to compete not only in foreign markets
  in order to prosper, but also in their own
  national markets.
• Africa, therefore, needs to act promptly to
  counter the possibilities of this double internal
  and external squeeze.

17
Causes and Impacts of Brain Drain

• CAUSES
• Push factors
• Pull factors

18
Causes and Impacts of Brain Drain
Continuation

• PUSH FACTORS
• Focus on those pay, working conditions and
  broader management and governance factors that
  encourage professionals to exit their own systems
  and leave their country.

• Low and eroding wages and salaries
• Unsatisfactory living conditions, lack of
  transport, housing, etc
• Under-utilization of qualified personnel lack of
  satisfactory working conditions low prospect of
  professional development
• Lack of research and other facilities, including
  support staff inadequacy of research funds, lack
  of professional equipment and tools
• Social unrest, Political conflicts and wars
• Declining quality of educational system
• Discrimination in appointments and promotions
• Lack of freedom

19
Causes and Impacts of Brain Drain
Continuation

• PULL FACTORS
• Direct attention to the factors that encourage
  professionals to move to
• other countries, including shortages and active
  recruitment from high
• income countries.

• Higher wages and income
• Higher standard of living
• Better working conditions job and career
  opportunities and professional development
• Substantial funds for research, advanced
  technology, modern facilities availability of
  experienced support staff
• Political stability
• Modern educational system prestige of foreign
  training
• Meritocracy, transparency
• Intellectual freedom

20
Causes and Impacts of Brain Drain

• IMPACTS
• The brain drain crises can also be seen as a
  process that Africa can theoretically capitalize
  on.
• Virtually all of Africas major export sectors
  are struggling to compete on world markets, yet
  without any policy effort whatsoever Africa has
  demonstrated its competitiveness in the training
  (or production) of doctors and nurses.
• Such exports allow Africa to bypass the formal
  trade facilitation challenges (from the world
  trade organization) that so hamper exports.
• The mobility of highly skilled labour is
  associated with a number of positive feed back
  effects as skilled emigrants continue to affect
  the economy of their origin country.
• The main benefits are associated with the
  remittance of income, the knowledge and skills
  acquired by returnees, and spillover effects when
  migration increases the urge to obtain higher
  education, increasing the stock of education in
  the source country, with only a proportional of
  this accumulation of skills lost to
  out-migration (see mountfold 1997).
• An illustration of these spill-over effects is
  the degree in which the educational level of
  applicants in nursing schools in Ghana has risen
  to the equivalent entrance level and the number
  of applicants has also risen sharply, as
  applicants start to view a nursing qualification
  as an investment in leaving the country (Mensah
  et al. 200519).

21
Managing the Drain.What are the options?
Continuation

• The brain drain has brought harmful effects to
  many countries as some of their best talents have
  emigrated.
• Some of the consequences have been lower rates
  of growth, less productive educational
  investments and poorer health care.
• There has also been a loss of actual and
  potential innovators who might have led the way
  to modernization, as they migrated to educational
  systems and working environments that better
  supported their innovative and creative
  abilities.
• The conception about the migration of skills is
  now evolving, putting stronger emphasis on brain
  gain, which is based on the idea that the
  expatriate skilled population may be considered
  as a potential asset instead of a definite loss.
• There are two main options to implement the
  brain gain either through the return of the
  expatriates to the country of origin (return
  option) or through their remote mobilization and
  association to its development (diaspora option)
  .
• The return option has been successfully realized
  in various new industrialized countries (NICs)
  such as Singapore and the republic of Korea or
  big developing countries such as France and China
  (Charum, Meyes eds, 1999).
• Strong programmes to repatriate many of their
  skilled nationals abroad have been put in place
  since 1980.

22
Managing the Drain.What are the options?
Continuation

• The experience of the Asian countries like the
  republic of Korea, Singapore and Taiwan, can
  provide very useful lessons from which African
  countries can learn from.
• These nations did set up incentive schemes and
  mechanisms within a benign socio-economic
  framework that helped to attract back home quite
  a lot of their own highly trained expatriate
  people from the various industrialized countries
  who helped to fuel the revival of agriculture,
  commerce, higher education and hi-tech research
  within these nations and to transform them into
  the so called newly industrializing countries
  (MICS).
• However, the IOM highlights difficulties of
  facilitating return in relation to African
  professionals abroad.
• The challenges highlighted include prolonged job
  search arising from cumbersome processes, lack of
  trust in African government amongst the diaspora,
  and weak government ownership. (IOM cited in
  WHO/World Bank).

23
Managing the Drain.What are the options?
Continuation

• The diaspora option is based on network
  approaches where a network can be defined as a
  regular set of contacts or similar connections
  among individual actors or groups (Granoveltes
  and Suedberg 19229).
• These networks of highly skilled expatriates are
  referred to as expatriate knowledge networks.
• The main feature of the diaspora option is that
  it tries to set up connections/linkages between
  highly skilled expatriates and between them and
  the country of origin.
• This allows for information and knowledge
  exchange between expatriates and between them and
  the country of origin.
• It allows expatriates the opportunity to
  transfer their expertise and skills to the
  country of origin without necessarily returning
  home permanently.
• In this way the country of origin has access to
  the knowledge and expertise of the expatriate,
  but also the knowledge networks that he/she forms
  part of in the host country.
• A crucial element of the diaspora option is
  therefore an effective system of information to
  facilitate transfer and exchange of information
  between network members and between them and
  their counterparts in the country of origin.
• Intellectual diaspora members therefore can
  enable and promote collaboration with African
  people, institutions and enterprises

24
Managing the Drain.What are the options?
Continuation

• However Diaspora Option requires good
  organizations of networks to ensure communication
  information exchange and coordinated actions.
• This is where an interface or coordinating body
  becomes necessary.
• The function of such a coordinating body would be
  to collect, organize and maintain the information
  needed for the systematic search of partnerships,
  but also o manage and promote the interests and
  actions of the multiple entities in a network of
  this kind.
• Diaspora option is based on information transfer,
  and studies have shown that, the next society
  will be a knowledge society, enabled by the
  rapidly developing information and communications
  technology. According to Peter Drucker, it will
  have highly competitive characteristics and will
  use knowledge as a key resource.
• Knowledge has become the most important factor
  for international competitiveness, the creation
  of wealth and the improvement of living
  conditions.
• The knowledge society will rely heavily on
  knowledge workers, both traditional professionals
  like doctors, scientists and engineers, and also
  "knowledge technologists" such as IT technicians,
  lab analysts and manufacturing experts, who need
  a basis of theoretical knowledge acquired through
  formal education.

25
Managing the Drain.What are the options?
Continuation

• Innovation, a knowledge-intensive endeavor,
  requires creative people to put knowledge to
  work. It also needs a favorable environment.
• A culture of innovation has indeed become a
  prerequisite of development in the 21st century.
• "To understand peoples ability to innovate and
  their ability to adapt to change", says a recent
  report from UNESCO, "one has to take into account
  the social and cultural components of innovation,
  our environment - including our belief and value
  systems - shapes the way we view the world around
  us and determines how we react to ongoing change.
  
• Technological change has often-overlooked social
  effect or consequence namely, it alters social
  hierarchies and the power structure of groups
  within society and in some cases society itself.
• In order to understand peoples ability to
  innovate and their ability to adapt to change,
  one has to take into account the social and
  cultural components of innovation.
• In the end, these factors are the tools that
  enable us to create a culture of innovation".
• The experience of many countries has clearly
  shown that the loss of high level people cannot
  be stemmed successfully by restricting mobility,
  but rather by a favorable political and economic
  climate together with better work facilities,
  adequate pay and advancement through merit.
• This helps retain exceptional talents within the
  country and utilize them for the countrys
  benefit. It may also help to bring back some of
  those who had previously emigrated.

26
Managing the Drain.What are the options?
Continuation

• Members of the intellectual Diaspora may be
  induced to participate actively in new,
  innovative productive ventures in the home
  country.
• Emigrants that have accumulated abundant capital,
  developed novel technologies, and generated
  successful enterprises may be willing to create
  new ventures at home on the basis of such
  resources, often in association with a local
  partner, if there is true support for these
  efforts.
• A promotional mechanism and adequate incentives
  may help here, such as has happened in Korea,
  Taiwan and China, where the respective
  governments have catalyzed and nurtured such
  initiatives.
• Several "brain exporting" countries have become
  aware of these potential benefits, and are
  attempting to organize their intellectual
  Diasporas so as to better utilize their high
  level nationals abroad.
• This requires a significant effort to survey the
  Diasporas human resources, create an active
  network, and develop specific activities and
  programs.
• China, Colombia, South Africa (with the motto
  transform brain drain into brain gain) and to a
  lesser extent other countries are putting efforts
  into this.
• India has also embarked on a similar enterprise.
• It has begun the process admirably, and should
  follow up with intensive, creative efforts to
  connect the network in meaningful endeavors in
  order to effectively assist the country.

27
Managing the Drain.What are the options?
Continuation

• Even more can be done by identifying those
  members of the Diaspora who have acquired
  exceptional innovative capabilities, utilizing
  them to spur the home country talents to a more
  innovative level, and providing easier access,
  open attitudes and opportunities to bring about
  meaningful change.
• Within the intellectual Diaspora, some
  individuals have developed truly innovative
  capabilities. We may call them Diaspora
  innovators having acquired cultural traits and
  specific knowledge that are essential to
  innovation in science, technology, education and
  entrepreneurship.
• "Diaspora innovators" who have studied and worked
  for extended periods in a modern, open innovative
  environment have acquired different beliefs and
  values from those of their original societies.
• They view the world differently and are able to
  react to ongoing changes in a more flexible,
  dynamic and positive manner.
• Many have acquired good managerial expertise and
  technological competence, as well as "cultural
  literacy (the ability to recognize and exploit
  social, cultural, lifestyle, and ethnic
  distinctions)" and "a reflexive approach to
  knowledge and practices" (UNESCO).
• These core competencies are crucial in creating a
  culture of innovation.
• Diaspora innovators indeed embody a specific
  capital that may be tapped for the purpose of
  building a culture of innovation in the home
  country, and thus contribute to developing a
  knowledge society there.

28
Conclusions and Policy Implications

• Supply of well-qualified labour is a key
  ingredient in the generation and diffusion of
  innovation. Increased human capital not only
  raises labour productivity, but also serves as a
  driver of technological progress through a
  significantly positive effect on business
  sector RD.
• The OECD Growth Study estimated that the long
  run effect on GDP per capital of one additional
  year of education ranges from 4 o 7 (OECD,
  2003g).
• Governments invest in its citizens human capital
  through training and education and expect a
  return on their investment when the individual
  becomes economically and start paying taxes.
• Within this perspective migration of highly
  skilled human resources present a loss to the
  sending country, because they loss out on returns
  on the capital they invested in the individual.
• However, the intellectual diaspora takes a
  fundamentally different stance to traditional
  perspectives on the brain drain in that it sees
  the brain drain not as a loss but a potential
  gain to the sending country.

29
Conclusions and Policy Implications
Continuation

• To realize its full potential, there is need for
  a democratization and domestication of
  science and technology in Africa.
• All key stakeholders must be involved, through
  national dialogues, in the policy formulation and
  implementation process, so as to transcend
  policies that tend to be too narrowly focused on
  a few number of isolated, ill-equipped and under
  paid researched and academicians.
• This will contribute to moving a way from
  elitist policies, and to defining and
  strengthening the respective role of public
  institutions, international partners,
  universities, NGOs, women organizations, civil
  society and the private sector.
• It would also ensure that policies are tailored
  primarily with a view to meeting specific needs
  of end-users and clients.

30
Annex Reference Tables
Table 1.Emigration of Skilled Africans to
Industrialized Countries
Source IOM
Table 2 Intellectual Diaspora Network
31
Annex Reference Tables
Table 2 Continuation
32
Annex Reference Tables
Table 2 Continuation
33
Annex Reference Tables
Table 2 Continuation
34
Annex Reference Tables
Table 3 Country of medical school of sub-Saharan
African international medical graduates (IMGs)
in the US and Canada
Source Hagopiuan et al. (2004 5) Noteother 12
countries with at least one graduate in the
United States.
35
Annex Reference Tables
Table 4 Overseas trained nurses registered per
annum in the UK 1998-2005 (Excluding the European
Union)
36
Annex Reference Tables
Table 4 Continuation
Source NMC (2005). Listed by most numerous
country applicants in 2004-05
37
THE ASSOCIATION OF AFRICAN UNIVERSITIES (AAU),
Thank You
FOR THE OPPORTUNITY