Staff Writer
Now Is The Time To Pool Africa's Resources – Wealth and Mind
There have long been many stereotypical truths
about Africa, one of which has been the devastating and increasing departure of
the continent’s most prolific talents—brain drain. The phenomenon and it’s impact
is not unique to Africa, which sees thousands of its best minds move overseas
to better their lot in parts of the world where they can realize a higher
standard of living. Now, however, the effects of Africa’s brain drain can be
reversed or, at the very least, drastically minimized. With the widespread
availability of social media and communication technologies within the last
decade, both in the diaspora and on the continent at large, Africa can now
crowd-source solutions to, and funds for, its problems from African experts, most
importantly in the diaspora.
African countries have decried their loss of
skilled labor to the West for decades and are now employing strategies to
retain those still on the continent and entice those looking to return. The
efforts are noble, but the fact that Africa cannot yet, or in the immediate
future, make available to these Africans the same standard of living they enjoy
in the West, they will not return in the numbers that matter. Allowing for this
group of people to pool together ideas and investment capital for projects in
Africa will be the best means of tapping into this African resource. What
Africa needs most, amongst other things, are innovative ideas and the capital
to fund them. It now has access to both.
Each year, according to the United
Nations, at least 20,000 highly skilled Africans leave the
continent for the developed world. Many of them are fleeing serious economic
woes, gross human rights abuses, lack of justice, and overall breakdown of
society in their home countries. Regardless of their reasons for departure, the
truth is that this group represents a massive economic resource to their
respective home countries. According to the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA)
and the International
Organization for Migration (IOM), an estimated 27,000
Africans left the continent for industrialized countries between 1960 and 1975.
The figure rose to 40,000 during the period of 1975 to 1984. The current trend,
which began in 1990, according to the same organizations, has roughly 20,000
people leaving Africa annually.
The wealth of knowledge and know-how that this
group holds has an invaluable impact in their countries of residence. In fact, members
of this expatriate group go on to become a vital aspect of their alien country’s
economy. One’s imagination is not being stretched to belief that this group can
make the same level and quality of impact in their home countries. What social
media and the proliferation of communication technologies allow is the marriage
of investment capital and the entrepreneurial ideas that Africa needs. At this
vital junction in African development, the continent and its people have the
necessary tools to collectively work to move Africa forward. All that is needed
for Africans to write their own bright future is available in African hands—the
money and the brainpower.
For example, in the United States, Nigerian
immigrants have the highest levels of education, surpassing whites and Asian
Americans, according to census data bolstered by an analysis conducted by Rice
University in America. Although Nigerians make up a tiny portion of the U.S.
population, 17
percent of them in the country held master's degrees while 4 percent
had a doctorate, according to the American Community Survey conducted by the U.S.
Census Bureau in
2006. This percentage can be expected to have increased in the past 6 years. To
add to this, the World Bank estimates that African immigrants living
abroad—mostly in North America and Europe—send home between US$32
and US$40 billion annually. This figure dwarfs the U.S., U.K.,
and E.U. foreign aide expenditures in Africa.
It is true that the reasons for this group’s
flight in the first place have not changed. The economic and social conditions
in Africa have, arguably, gotten worse over the decades—continual,
continent-wide GDP growth year after year is undercut by an even higher rate of
wealth gap and social inequality. But these problems need good ideas to tackle
them, and Africans can now be the source of those ideas. They can also be the
tools that fashion these ideas into reality. African governments need to start
creating channels that will make collective efforts by Africans in the diaspora
on specific projects and investment opportunities in Africa easier. Africans
can pool together to build universities; hospitals; create capital for business
ventures through banks and other financial institutions; and they can
collective launch news channels that can tell truth to power in their home
countries and contribute to transparency.
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