Friendlier Western Immigration Policies are Bad For Africa
Statistics show that the African brain drain has accelerated rapidly in recent years with the departure of high level academics and senior management personnel to Europe and the United States. The main attraction of course has been the pursuit of higher salaries and standards of living.
Anti-immigration policies in the west have been the bottleneck controlling this seepage. I know some consider this a bad thing, but in my opinion, this has been Africa's saving grace. It is now worrying that the US and EU are considering new policies that will do the following:
- Attract skilled labor
- Boost job creation
- Control illegal immigration
Countries like Germany are at record unemployment rates (10%), with almost 5 million people out of work. Ironically, there is a shortage of skilled labor and homegrown solutions to this problem are failing, forcing them and other EU countries to result to other means - specifically reassessing immigration policies. Immigration can of course provide them with badly needed skills, boost productivity, and raise living standards overall.
Unfortunately these policies will do nothing to alleviate Africa's dire state of poverty - but leave us worse off. More African scientists and engineers work in the United States than in all of Africa - leaving the entire African continent of 600 million people with just 20,000 engineers and scientists.
With globalization we can no longer think of the world in terms of the boundaries that in the past constrained us within the various geographical areas. Instead, as the world becomes more and more a single community, Africans are bound to move more where there are opportunities for them to maximize the compensation for their skills. The global market not only controls the flow of products but undoutedly services too. It is in my opinion, that the world, especially the asian nations will move more toward the under-developed nations where there are opportunities to invest their money while the skilled labor will move more towards Europe and the US where there is a shortage. Perhaps as Africa begins moving forward, there will be more paying jobs for engineers and doctors and in a free market, this skilled labor will return home. In the meantime, the future is bright, capitalizm is becoming the predominant school of thought and the choice is to adopt or get left behind…..
Maybe my opinion was a little naive. This truly is a global economy - and we can’t let opportunities pass us by.
Sure. But why is brain drain so rampant in Africa than in Asia or Eastern Europe? Africans are leaving home for countries where their services are in high demand, and thus well compensated. Asians are, on the other hand, leaving western countries for home, mainly because demand for their skills is receding in the west but rising in the East. The African demand for African skilled labor exists. But opportunity to satisfy that demand is diminished by bureaucratic and anti-entrepreneurial government policies. Going the free-market way will keep some of our best brains at home. It happened in South Korea, India, Singapore, China, and the so-called first and second world nations. Why not in Africa!
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