Reversing The Brain Drain

By Kwame Karikari Gyarteng

A World Bank study on Census and Population published in 2005 indicated that 47% of Ghana’s college-educated citizens were living abroad. Even more worrying is that most of them balk at the thought of returning home. It is not the case that the Ghanaian graduate is any less patriotic than their colleagues from China, India and the rest where their foreign educated nationals return home in droves after their training. Fact is, most development oriented countries have put in place mechanisms to attract their foreign legion back home.

The Israeli cabinet has just passed a $350 million plan that will create thirty centers of academic excellence to attract their foreign based scientists and professionals. In their estimation, this will raise the level of excellence at their institutions of higher learning and strengthen the supply of skilled workers to their economy. As such, a forward looking nation such as Israel will continue to progress economically and scientifically at a pace that the likes of Ghana can only watch, albeit painfully, from the sidelines with admiration. Last year, China launched the Thousand Talents Program, offering top scientists grants of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars and generous lab funding. The purpose was to address the biggest roadblock to that country’s aspirations of becoming an innovation powerhouse: An acute shortage of seasoned scientists. This is just one other reason why China is booming economically and surging and leaving the likes of Ghana behind.

The import of this feature article is not to attempt to coerce our Ghanaian authorities to provide similar facilities to our foreign trained nationals as bait. The nation just doesn’t have the resources for that venture. However, there is a lot that can be done to influence the return of Ghanaian rising stars at Harvard, USC, Yale, Stanford and the rest. It can’t be stressed enough that when you have the right people (both foreign and locally trained) at the right places, change happen spontaneously. Foreign Direct Investment and Remittances stimuli could spark development but they are not substitutes for internal reforms that would promote the return of budding entrepreneurs and professionals with impressive blue chip track records.

Brain drain will not be reversed unless returnees are confident that they will not be subjected to economic predation and hardship. Averagely, it takes about a year for a skilled professional returnee to secure a job in the Ghanaian economy. Get a sample of ten returnees and nine will give harrowing details of their job search experience. People have been turned away from offices just because they dared prospect and go cold-hunting for jobs. It doesn’t end there. Those that have entrepreneurial tendency talk about their not too pleasant experience with bureaucracy. Ghanaians with great business ideas and sometimes capital are hindered and halted by red tape in their tracks to building fledgling businesses. Statistics might be abstract, yet the havoc caused the nation by such occurrences is real and debilitating.

While the Chinese government creates venture capital funds to finance returning entrepreneurs to launch their businesses, we here frustrate them. When the Mexican government is providing three to one matching funds for donations raised by Mexican-American hometown associations to support social and economic projects in Mexico, we here put impediments in the way of our people with such drive. For brain drain to be reversed, the nation must make itself more attractive by providing opportunities and avenues especially to those returnees with entrepreneurial orientation. Reversal of brain drain can only have one beneficiary—Ghana. There is no gainsaying the fact that returnees not only bring their experience, skills and education but also their international connections or social capital. The nation must wake up to the idea that a reversal of the brain drain syndrome will help the country escape a downward cycle of reduced growth , rising unemployment and economic instability. Enough has been said on the various talk-shops, now is the time for action to not only halt brain drain but to reverse the trend.

The writer is an MBA graduate from the Ken Blanchard College of Business in Phoenix, Arizona. He returned home in 2009 and is presently with EMPRETEC Ghana Foundation. He can be reached at pa_k2020@yahoo.com