Venue: Nairobi Safari Club

2018SCIENTIFIC REVIVAL DAY OF AFRICA

JUNE 28, 2018

VENUE: NAIROBI SAFARI CLUB

THEME: “The Kenyan Brain Drain and Brain Gain: Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Development”

Concept Note

In support of enhancing Science, Technology and Innovation, the African Union (AU) formally the Organization of African Unity(OAU) on 30th June 1987 during the 46th Ministerial Conference in Addis Ababa declared 30th June as a special day to commemorate Science and Technology in Africa. It is a day that should be dedicated to issues of Science and Technology and Innovation(ST&I) for African countries to think about the role of this important subject in development for Africa and to re-examine the role that Science and Technology plays in African lives. KNAS decided to link some of its activities with this effort and consequently started celebrating the Scientific Revival Day of Africa annually since 2004.

Brain drain is the movement (or migration) of the highly educated individuals from their countries of birth to other countries where they anticipate better opportunities. It denotes the migration of human capital as a strategic resource from countries where it can make the greatest contribution to national output to countries already well supplied with high-level of manpower (Ramin 1995). However, when the educated leave their home country, their remittance indeed boosts the economies and Gross Domestic Product(GDP) growth of their countries of origin and that is Brain Gain. Indeed, international migration pivots around the so-called ‘migration quartet’ of brain drain/brain circulation, the diaspora, remittances and return (Oucho, 2008: 49).

Some analyststalk of ‘skill drain’ or a drain of ‘the skilled’, who may include people who have worked their way up the corporate ladder, those with their own successful businesses and those who play a critical role in the public sector (McDonald and Crush, 2002:6-7). Skilled migration’ ( Iredale, 1999 ) encompasses brain drain, transitory or permanent movements of professionals and job transfers. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) prefers the term ‘highly skilled workers’, which includes degree holders or those with executive experience in a given filed or its equivalent (OECD-SOPEMI, 1997: 21). Recognising the potential of brain drain, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), since inception, has been seeking to convert ‘brain drain’ into brain gain, which also involves engagement of the African diaspora in Africa’s development. Yet it has been noted that for quite some time, there has been more rhetoric than action on the African brain drain and gain, diaspora and remittances (Oucho, 2008). While the latter has attracted growing attention over the last decade, very little has been done on converting brain drain into brain gain, with the exception of Western African countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Mali as well as Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa.It has also been noted that over time, restrictive policies in the western countries of destination, has increasingly transformed brain drain into brain circulation – a process whereby skilled emigrants move back and forth between their origins and destinations, with the latter sometimes changing.An obscured outcome of brain drain/brain circulation is ‘brain waste’- a situation in which emigrants are employed or receive remuneration that is incommensurate with their education, professions or skills.

In Africa, The African Union has acknowledged the brian drain problem and devised a new 10-year (2018- 2027) plan of action to stop migration to developed countries of African professionals with critical technical skills – estimated to reach up to 70,000 annually. According to a draft African Union (AU) report ( Wachira Kigotho, 2018) , the Revised Migration Policy Framework for Africa and Plan of Action (2018-2027), African countries must counter the exodus of skilled nationals, particularly doctors, nurses and engineers. But to achieve this objective, there is an urgent need to provide gainful employment, professional development and educational opportunities to qualified nationals in their home countries, notes the action plan. Current AU estimates indicate that there are over 100,000 expatriates who consume 35% of official development assistance to Africa with little to show interms of impact on development. At the same time , according to the African Union’s
position paper, African Critical Technical Skills: Key capacity dimensions needed for the first 10 years of Agenda 2063, the single biggest challenge to ownership of Africa’s development agenda is grounded in severe shortages of experts with critical technical skills.
The situation is compounded by the fact that current higher education in Africa is heavily focused on non-critical technical skills areas. The Brain drain situation in Africa can be illustrated by the following statistics:

• About 300 qualified engineers leave South Africa every year, according to the African Union’s study, Capacity Development Plan Framework: The Africa we want, effectively leaving the country with fewer than three civil engineers per 100,000 people.A similar situation occurs in Kenya where they are only about 7,220 engineers in a population of 46 million people that translates to a ratio of 0.155 engineers per 1,000 persons. The situation is more critical in Tanzania where there are only 2,615 engineers in a population of over 55 million people. There are only 55,600 engineers out of a population of 1.2 billion persons but the continent ought to have 4.3 million engineers.
• Accordingly, Africa is also lagging far behind in its numbers of medical doctors and specialists, taking into account the massive flow of its health professionals to high income countries. In its Capacity Development Plan Framework the African Union argues that there is an urgent need to stop outflows of doctors from countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.Available statistics from the African Union indicate emigration of doctors from Mozambique currently stands at 75% of all trained physicians. In Angola it is 70%, Malawi 59%, Zambia 57% and in Zimbabwe 51%. “Currently, Africa has an average ratio of 0.307 medical doctors per 1,000 people, or a mere 358,000 doctors for 1.2 billion people,” says the AU Capacity Development

The situation is equally critical in research in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields where there is another yawning gap that Africa needs to bridge if it is to make progress in its development agendas. Although during 2003-2012 Sub-Saharan Africa almost doubled its global research output from 0.44% to 0.72%, the African Union believes this is too little for a sub-region containing 12% of the world’s population.Sub-Saharan Africa relies on overseas collaboration and visiting academics for a steep share of its research output. “In fact, some 40%-80% of its science and technology innovation publications are with external partners and lack local collaboration,” it says. The African Union predicts that unless things change, by 2030 only about 12 million African youths
will have had a tertiary education.

In Kenya, despite having been a relatively stable country in political and economic terms, Kenya is yet to come up withstrategies to account for its brain drain/brain circulation and for converting it into brain gain. Pundits of brain drain rarely take time to consider prospects for or realities of brain waste of emigrant highly educated and trained Kenyans. Since the US and the defunct Soviet Union and its satellites’ airlifts of the 1960s and with Kenya’s considerable expansion of secondary and above education, products of which have joined the bandwagon of brain drain, Kenya has produced one of the biggest and best qualified human resources in sub-Saharan Africa. Unfortunately, while anecdotal evidence abounds on the size and geographical spread in world regions of Kenyan emigrants (loosely dubbed’ diaspora’), including brain drain, empirical evidence is wanting. The most oft-quoted source is Docquier and Marfouk’s(2006) analysis which suggests that emigration rate of highly skilled Kenyans was 38.4 per cent in 2000 – one of the highest among sub-Saharan African countries. Indeed, Benie (2006), Docquier (2006), Docquier et al. (2006) have paid so much attention to the problem which affects most developing countries. Other studies – one based on Kenya’s 2009 Population and Housing Censuses (Odipo, 2013) and another study on the Kenyan transnational migrants (Mwangi, 2013)– provide useful insights for seeking to know more, albeit peripherally. Unfortunately, the studies fall short of estimating the country’s emigration rate that could indicate the rate of brain drain.[1]

The brain drain-brain gain nexus therefore constitutes an important topic that the Kenya National Academy of Sciences (KNAS) wishes to address, during the 2018Scientific Revival Day of Africa, in order to come up with recommendations on Policies issues and strategies that will help Kenya leverage Brain drain and brain gain to get solidly grounded in knowledge economy.

Sub-Themes

The conference will revolve around the following sub-themes:

1. Migration and Geographical Distribution of Brain Drain in the World

(a)Existing datasets and measurement of brain drain

(b)Growth and size , supply of and demand for the Kenyan brain drain

(c)Geographical spread of brain drain in world regions

1. Brain Drain and Brain Gain: Technology Transfer and Development

A number of Asian Countries have encouraged brain drain and have successfully leveraged this to establish very strong technology transfer and technology development regimes for industrial development. Their diaspora have played a critical role in this technology and innovation turn-around. Countries like Korea which were at par with Kenya slightly more than 50 years ago are now midlle-income economies, thanks to their strong technological base.

1. Economic Impact of Brain Drain

Diaspora remittances, diaspora sponsored projects and investments in their home countries play a significant role in the economic dynamics of those countries e.g the massive infrastructural development witnessed in Addis Ababa is partly due to diaspora effect. How is the situation in Kenya?

1. Policies and Strategies for turning Brain Drain and Brain Gain into Opportunities for Transformation of Kenya’s Economy into Knowledge Economy.

The Kenyan constitution 2010 provides for dual citizenship. The Country now requires robust policy frameworks and strategies that will enable the country, to not only benefit from brain drain but also brain gain, and to be able to realize her Vision 2030. There is need to attract top notch professionals and highly skilled workforce that will enable the country develop her domestic industry to internationally competitive levels.

1. Science, Technology and Innovation Capacity Building Frameworks

Kenya is spendingless and less on our higher education systems, and our research laboratories are in a state of decay. Government capitation is reducing in relation to the increasing admissions into institutions of higher learning. How then can we keep the best of our minds if we continue to pay less to our top researchers and skilled workers? [ Mugimu C.B, 2010]. Does our education system produce techno-savvy graduates ready for the local industries and churn out enough innovations to enable Kenya become a high-tech manufacturing destination? Where have we gone wrong?

Call for Abstracts

Abstracts addressing specific sub-themes should be submitted by May 18, 2018 to :

Response on Selected Abstracts for both Oral & Poster presentations: May 31, 2018

Publication and Outreach

All papers presented at the forum will be peer reviewed and published as special issue of refereed journals, as book chapters or occasional papers. Policy briefs will be prepared for Government of Kenya. Other outreach activities – media briefings, videos and others could be planned.

References

Beine, M., F. Docquier and H. Rapoport , 2006. Measuring International Skilled Migration:

New Estimates Controlling for Age of Entry, World Bank Research Report, July 2006. Washington, DC: The World Bank.

Docquier, F. (2006a). Brain Drain and Inequality across Nations, Discussion Paper Series, IZA DPP No. 2240.Bonn: Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit Institute for the Study of Labor

Docquier, F. and A. Marfouk (2006). “International migration by educational attainment (1990-2000)”, in Ozden, C. and M. Schiff (eds.), International migration, remittances and the brain drain. London: Palgrave-Macmillan.

Docquier, F., O. Lohest and A. Marfouk (2006), Brain drain in developing countries, Manuscript, Université Catholique de Louvain.

Mwangi, Jane N. (2013). The Potential of Transnational Migrants to Contribute to Kenya’s Vision 2030. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Ghana.

Oucho, J.O. (2008). African Brain Drain and Gain, Diaspora and Remittances: More Rhetoric than Action, in A.Adepoju, T. van Naerssen and A. Zoomers (eds.), International Migration and National Development in sub-Saharan Africa. Leiden: Brill, pp. 49-69.

Ramin, Taghi. 1995. Research Notes. International Advances in Economic Research

1 (1): 82.

Christopher B. Mugimu, Brain Drain to Brain Gain: What are the Implications for Higher Education in Africa? Comparative & International Higher Education 2 (2010).

Wachira Kigotho, African Union devises 10-year plan to stem brain drain

09 February 2018 Issue No:492

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