The Global Sociology Blog

In the World Press Review, Ravinder Rena, writing from Eritrea, tackles the question of the African brain drain.

One of the major effects of globalization has been the major increase in migration. Migration flows come mostly from peripheral countries to core countries as global inequalities increase (also a product of globalization).

This migration, according to Rena, is an additional way in which developed countries benefit from globalization at the expenses of developing countries. Case in point: the emigration of the educated class out of Africa to core countries.

On the modernization side of the sociological spectrum, or the convergence school, the brain drain is a good thing because the educated class, once settled and employed in core countries, sends back money to the countries of origin in the form of remittances whose level can be high. In other words, it makes sense for poor countries to invest in the education of a middle-class and then send it away for it gets a good return on that investment. For instance, the 10-million strong African diaspora sent home $264 billion in 2006. Similarly, Asia received $115 billion. Remittances can be higher than foreign assistance. From this perspective, it is an effective means of directly increasing a family’s income and therefore fostering development. What’s not to like about migration, then?

As usual, modernization can be profoundly wrong, as Rena argues. The brain drain represents a major loss of human capital that Africa can hardly afford. In this sense, the author adopts a position close to the dependency theory, or divergence perspective.

“Some authors hold that brain drain represents a major development constraint both in terms of development opportunities and lost investment and that it drains areas of human capital that took enormous resources to nurture and produce. The country with an outflow of emigrants, it is argued, loses critical human capital in which it has invested resources through education and specialized training and for which it is not compensated by the recipient country. It is in this view that brain drain is often referred to as an international transfer of resources in the form of human capital that is not recorded in any official balance of payments statistics. For example, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has estimated that one highly trained African migrant between 25 and 35 years old, the age group into which most of the Africans going abroad fall, represents a cash value of $184,000 at 1997 prices.”

In strict capital terms, a country invests resources in educating its members, something that requires time, capital and resources. However, these individuals leave when they could start producing a return on these investments. The only real beneficiaries from this are the receiving countries that received skilled workers without having to invest in their training. In this sense then, Africa’s education budgets should be seen as extension of the Western countries’ own education budgets. The irony then is that African countries are providing development assistance to the core countries, something which increases the gap between core and peripheral countries.

Conversely, this is a net loss for Africa. The educated middle-class, which would be the most able to assist in development, is being pulled away. And as high as the remittances seem to be, they represent nothing compared to the benefit to the receiving country’s economy.

“Africa needs a large middle class to build a large tax base, which, in turn, will enable the continent to build good schools and hospitals and provide constant electricity. What few people realize is that Africans who immigrate to the United States contribute 40 times more wealth to the American economy than to the African economy. According to the United Nations, an African professional working in the United States contributes about $150,000 per year to its economy.”

Moreover, the reliance on remittances constitutes a persistence of dependency and unproductive capital.

“Those who argue against the issue of remittances often emphasize their unproductive nature. They say remittances are insufficient to compensate for human capital losses, and what’s more, they increase dependency, contribute to political instability, engender economic distortions, and hinder development because they are unpredictable and undependable and encourage the consumption of goods with high import content. The remittances fail to enhance development because they are not spent on investment goods but mostly on unproductive purposes—housing, land purchase, transport, repayment of debt, or, to a smaller degree, wasted on conspicuous consumption or simply saved as insurance and old age pension funds.”

Rena’s main points with these developments is that Africa needs human capital more than it needs the unpredictable, unproductive financial capital in the form of remittances. Remittances do not significantly alter the class structure of the country. They just temporarily alleviate household’s cash flow problems. They are not a long term solution to development and elimination of poverty. African countries need their educated classes to invest their human capital into their own countries, which, in turn, will generate wealth.