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What Is to Be Done? A Look at Some Causes and Consequences of the African Brain Drain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2016

George J. Sefa Dei  and
Alireza Asgharzadeh
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Extract

Defined primarily in terms of the exodus of the highly talented from the Southern countries to the North, the phenomenon known as “brain drain” has gained in importance during recent decades and years. Changing global conditions, unprecedented developments in information and electronic technology, globalization, and widening of the gap between the South and the North have focused attention on the brain drain. We begin this article by discussing the nature of the brain drain, briefly noting that it occurs in three settings: internal, regional, and global. Our argument here is that brain drain occurs in almost all societies, initially from poorer and impoverished rural areas to relatively rich and developing urban centers within national boundaries and later (or sometimes concurrently) to more developed and wealthy regions and neighboring countries.

Type
Part II: Conceptualizing Capacity Building and the Brain Drain
Information
African Issues , Volume 30 , Issue 1 , 2002 , pp. 31 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2002 

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References

Notes

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4. According to the 1996 census, from the mid-1980s until 1997, the permanent immigration to Canada increased 15-fold for computer scientists, 10-fold for engineers, 8-fold for natural scientists, and 4-fold for managerial workers. From 1991 to 1996, the rate of employment for computer engineers, systems analysts, and computer programmers increased from 124,000 to 163,000, with immigrants accounting for one-third of the increase. See Zhao, J.D.D. and Murray, S., “Brain Drain and Brain Gain: The Migration of Knowledge Workers from and to Canada,” Education Quarterly Review 6, no. 3 (2000): 4–21 Google Scholar.

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