"If everyone leaves, who will stay to take care of the country and bring about change?" worries Vanessa Aboudi, a PhD student at the University of Yaoundé in Cameroon and an analyst at the Nkafu Policy Institute. This heartfelt question deserves serious consideration.
Among the thousands of students who go to Europe and North America each year, many choose to remain in their host countries after completing their studies. During a forum in Oxford, held this summer, speakers emphasized that many African talents contribute to the economies of the host countries where they studied, which negatively impacts the development of their home continent, which is desperately losing its brightest minds. The numbers are alarming.
Between 2015 and 2020, around 39,000 engineers decided to emigrate, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics of Tunisia. Kaies Samet, an economics professor at the University of Sfax, warns of a growing sense of despair. In Senegal, the shortage of positions in the public healthcare system also pushes young doctors to seek opportunities abroad, as noted by Bara Ndiaye, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Pharmacy, and Dentistry in Dakar.
To combat this, more and more countries are implementing mechanisms to attract their young diasporas established in Europe or North America. It is the countries of departure that train the future graduates, but it is the host countries that reap the economic benefits of such a phenomenon. The cost of training doctors who emigrate from Anglophone Africa is estimated at 1.5 billion euros, while host countries like the UK benefit from gains of 2 billion euros.
Unfortunately, the least developed African countries suffer the most from the negative consequences of this phenomenon. Among the most affected countries are Cape Verde, The Gambia, and Mauritius. This trend particularly impacts qualified professionals, such as engineers, doctors, and financial specialists, who leave their home countries for promising opportunities abroad. As a result, Africa today has only 169 researchers per million inhabitants compared to 742 in Asia, 2,728 in the European Union, and 4,654 in North America. Furthermore, only 3% of Africa’s population holds a higher education degree.
However, on the ground, several studies indicate a growing return of African graduates trained abroad to their continent, attracted by new opportunities. A 2013 study by Jacana Private Equity Africa reveals that 70% of African graduates return to work in their home countries, motivated by the prospects on the continent and the increasing challenges of finding employment abroad, where labor markets are becoming more saturated. Yet, those leaving still far outnumber those returning.
