From Africa Recovery, Vol.14#2 (July 2000), Watch page

CAPACITY BUILDING
Stemming the brain drain

The absence of opportunities at home and growing demand for skills abroad has turned the African "brain drain" into a flood. That was the message delivered to African finance ministers in Lusaka on 26 June at a regional meeting sponsored by The African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF). Foundation General Secretary Soumana Sako estimated that Africa loses 20,000 professionals annually to jobs overseas, draining the continent of technical and managerial skills and increasing governments' dependence on costly non-African "experts" for the design and implementation of development programmes.

The Lusaka workshop was the second major meeting this year on ways to stem the loss of African intellectual capacity. In February, the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) held a three-day conference in Addis Ababa to devise ways to keep African professionals at home. According to ECA, some 27,000 African intellectuals emigrated to developed countries between 1960 and 1975. Between 1985 and 1990 the number jumped to 60,000, and has averaged 20,000 annually ever since. Both the Addis Ababa and Lusaka meetings called on African governments to improve conditions for indigenous professionals and better harness their skills for development.

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