The second most populated continent is Africa with over 1.216 billion people across its 54 countries and has over the centuries trained professionals in all fields of work.
Africans in the world live within rural and urban settlements with vast differences in living conditions and living standards, which sets the agenda on Brain Drain that is the emigration of highly trained or qualified people from a particular country. Many countries are over populated in Africa and this idea of the high population has coined its own economic consequences, making the economy unstable with skilled labor being under used.
International Organization for migration recorded that African scientists and engineers are currently employed in the USA than there are in Africa. This is to sound a warning made by Dr. Lalla Ben, former Deputy Secretary of the United Nations economic commission for Africa UNECA in which he said in 2005 that in 25years time, Africa would be empty of brains. In thinking thoroughly with his claim one would wonder if we are near his predictions after critically analyzing the increasing number of Africans that migrate abroad.
This brain drain affected Ghana to the effect that Cuban Doctors were imported into the country to salvage the situation.
In December 2017, the medical brain drain in Ghana, for instance, became a concern to the government when qualified doctors and nurses kept leaving the country for greener pastures in Europe mounting pressure on the government to adapt to new changes that will ensure their stay.
Brain drain affected the teaching field as well as leading to poor quality of education and academic performance of students.
In a study published by the journal of economic perspectives 2008, it contends that education levels of the home work force are slowly rising globally at a similar rate as the skilled migrants. Consequently, the educational development mitigates the home country’s brain drain and the question is still asked. What makes people migrate?
With brain drain being a subset of the broader topic of migration and even so, push and pull factors are likely causes of the brain drain. Low wages, sub standard living, lack of research facilities, disintegrating political situation all push the skilled labor to migrate. According to continuous reports around the globe, Brain Drain has affected the whole of Africa and it is one of the causes of its current underdevelopment.
Questions such as will political leaders in Africa rise to ensure their highly trained persons do not leave the country are asked with little to no hope being manifested amongst successive governments. Noting continuous political interpretation to so many little things that can be settled.
Brain Drain can be stopped in Africa but how and when it would happen is still a lingering thought to many with few people willing to wait for it to manifest for the development of Africa, looking at how nothing seems to be done about the means of living on the continent.
For many, Africa is losing its highly trained and skilled work force because of its incompetent leaders who only care about themselves than the people and does not place value on the human resource. A country that does not place a high value on its human resource is set to lose them to one that sees that value and make good use of it.
Gifty Amoateng -African Post
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