Africa’s brain drain ‘critical’

anage talent in Africa and provides jobs, information and advice for job seekers and entrepreneurs around the world looking at career and business opportunities in Africa.
Explaining the need for ReConnect Africa, Interims for Development founder and CEO Frances Williams said: “The continent’s brain drain is posing an increasingly critical problem for African governments, with the loss of skills impacting severely on economic growth and enterprise development in many countries. Enticed by powerful international recruitment campaigns by the west, many of our most highly trained professionals are leaving.”
Skilled professionals working within Africa also experience difficulty in identifying better opportunities in their own countries and elsewhere around the continent. “ReConnect Africa is about bringing together the people of a continent where fractured communications can hamper the sharing of knowledge and information and the many examples of successful business practices and people management”, says Williams. Despite the often negative portrayal of Africa in the media, increasing political stability around the continent has led to a successful economic turnaround and business growth in many countries, while western and African multinationals continue to post significant profits in traditional manufacturing and exports as well as in the newer sectors of telecommunications, technology and business process outsourcing. The number of Africans living outside their country of origin has more than doubled in a generation. It is estimated that there are over 21,000 Nigerian doctors practicing in the USA and over 200,000 African scientists in the United States, more than on the entire continent, and 40,000 African doctoral graduates outside Africa. Since 2000, Africa has been losing 20,000 professionals each year. According to World Bank estimates, replacing the skills lost from Africa costs more than $4 billion a year in salaries for western expatriate human resources. While Africa today offers opportunities for both newly qualified and experienced professionals, attracting this talent back into Africa and reaching the African talent around the content can prove a challenge. ReConnect Africa offers convenient recruitment packages for employers in Africa and a range of careers, tools and services for job seekers.