Is it Brain Drain or Brain Waste ...

...that perturbs Ghana (the appetizer)

We have all heard big talks on brain drain in Ghana, and Africa as whole. Even without looking at data, it's indisputable that the best human capital of Africa are being used in non-African lands. This has deceived numerous African leaders and thinkers to attribute the "tortoise" progress of the continent to this famous phenomenon called brain drain. Though brain drain, without an iota of doubt, is a reality, whether or not, Africa (Ghana) could have currently done better without it is debatable. I would therefore like to ask patronizers of Ghanaweb this seemingly easy but tricky question, "Is brain-drain the reason behind Africa's slow economic growth?".

In my opinion, any one who responds "yes" to the above question might have taken it for granted, and thus, like our leaders, might have not paid attention to detail. This cursory approach in tackling (finding causes of and solutions to) problems is, unfortunatley, rather a reason to africa's unsatisfactory performance (Ghana's current energy crisis, high unemployment rates, low gdp per capita, etc). I once remember a whole Finance Minister of Ghana (Mr. Wiredu?) say that, he intends to promote agricultural production as an attempt to curb inflation since he has observed that anytime prices of agric produce are low, inflation is low. Though the plan of Kofi Wiredu, in fighting inflation, seems natural(and might actually work), I expected him to research more into the matter to provide a more solid reason (than just the correlation of prices of agric produce and inflation) to support his plan of attack. It's a pretty famous fact in the social sciences that correlation never implies causality. For instance, the fact that it rains whenever Devilus (a once notorius Presecan) goes to Presec Scripture union meetings doesn't necessarily mean the presence of Devilus at the scripture union causes the rainfall. I am being unsympathetically critical of the Finance minister (than i will be of say, Kofi Wayo) because little mistakes of people in government are very costly to the nation.
(sorry i digressed... now back to the issue of whether brain-drain poses a serious threat to Ghana currently). Brain-drain could potentially be a serious threat to economic growth of any nation because it distorts both the quality and quantity of human capital available for production. However, I would be more willing to associate Ghana's slow growth to brain-waste rather than to brain drain. Why? Ghana is currently not using its human capital to full potential (with exception of a very few sectors like health). For instance, Yaw Natwu graduates with 1st class Honors in Electrical engineering at KNUST;he applies to a number of potential electrical firms where he could put his knowledge to use; he waits for several years but gets no response from the employers; with time, Yaw becomes discouraged and finally accepts to become a teller at Kwabibirem rural bank; finally and rather unfortunately, Yaw loses his specialized knowledge in electrical engineering exponentially and quickly becomes unsuitable material to any potential electrical firm. The path-trajectory of the life of Yaw after graduating should at least send us a message that controlling for brain-drain might not actually solve Ghana's problem.
There is a famous optimization rule in Economics and I share: If you can not make good use of what you happened to have got, you never could have made good use of what you ought to have got. We all have friends, brothers, relatives etc who are going through a similar life situation as that of Yaw Natu in Ghana. Numerous students graduate from our tertiary institutions and even don't find jobs. So I ask, if Yaw Natwu, who graduated as one of the top students in his class, is not being used optimally, what shows Asamoa Totoe (a US trained engineer) would be of any substantial benefit to Ghana.
Therefore, I boldly claim: UNLESS, EVERY GRADUATE OF GHANA IS BEING USED, THERE IS NO NEED FOR ANYONE TO WHINE ABOUT BRAIN DRAIN;THOUGH BRAIN-DRAIN EXISTS, IT CURRENTLY DOESN'T POSE A THREAT YET.
Brain drain would become a problem when we have opened enough opportunities to make necessary the need for extra human kapital.Thinking deeply ("and in english") about it, the on-going so-called brain drain could be of benefit to Ghana some time in the future when,hopefully with the right policies,Ghana creates the need and environmnt for specialized knowledge.