Migration

The report of the ILO Director General on the Decent Work Agenda in Africa (2007 – 2015) for the Eleventh Africa Regional Meeting in Addis Ababa has identified the lack of decent work opportunities and widening disparities between job creation, employment rates and increases in the numbers of job seekers joining labour markets as reasons for the heightening migration pressures in many Africa countries.

A critical policy concern in African and OECD countries alike is the effect of high rates of emigration to OECD countries among highly skilled Africans – doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers. Should similar concerns be expressed regarding people with middle-range technical skills? To answer that question, it is useful to look a little more closely at the patterns of mobility of Africans of various skill levels. Is Africa losing skilled workers critical to national development in large numbers? Recent work by the OECD demonstrates first of all that Africa, overall, is not an important source of immigrants in OECD countries, either among low-skilled or high-skilled workers. In 2000, only 8.8 per cent of foreign-born highly educated people in OECD countries were African; and only 9.6 per cent of the foreign born with low education levels were African. Among these, 49 per cent of the highly educated African emigrants came from the middle-income countries of North and southern Africa; 68 per cent of the poorly educated African emigrants came from those countries. By contrast, 50 per cent of the foreign born in OECD countries were born in other OECD countries. Thus, neither Africa in general, nor low-income countries within Africa particularly, are well represented among immigrants in the OECD.

From the perspective of African countries, however, the answer is more complicated. Because the number of highly-educated people is relatively small in most African countries, even moderate out-flows loom large in relative terms. Thus, if we define the brain drain as the proportion of a country’s university-educated nationals living in the OECD, we find that 21 of the 40 countries with the most acute brain drain problems are African. For some, more than half of their university educated population lives in the OECD. Another way of looking at these population flows is to compare the number of an African country’s highly educated emigrants to the OECD, to its total number of emigrants to the OECD. For most countries in sub- Saharan Africa, this ratio is well above a third, and around 50 per cent for many (Lesotho, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe). That means that the skill composition of emigration flows is not at all representative of the skill composition of these countries’ workforces over all.

Is the brain drain harmful to African countries? This is a controversial question. The loss of skilled people, especially for the poorest countries and in critical sectors like health and education, certainly imposes important costs on those countries. But there are positive effects as well. The prospect of emigration can encourage more people to acquire more training and education; if some of those people ultimately do not emigrate, this can create positive economic benefits for their countries. Moreover, emigration can provide people with opportunities to acquire further experience and skills that can redound to the benefit of their home countries through remittances, investments, diaspora networks, circular migration and the possible return of the migrant.

At the same time, the negative effect of the departure of skilled workers may not be as large as expected. For example, some sub-Saharan African countries are losing

worrisome numbers of nurses to OECD countries. But in some cases, the health care sectors in those countries are losing as many or more nurses to other sectors of the economy. In both cases, nurses are leaving health care because of poor working conditions and pay, but emigration of health care workers may, thus, be as much a symptom as a cause of problems in the heath care sector.

Will the acquisition of “middle-level” skills make Africans more mobile? In particular, if governments do a better job at training technicians and mechanics, do they risk losing a significant share of this investment to OECD countries? The evidence from the behaviour of more highly-educated Africans makes it hard to generalise. It suggests, nevertheless, that higher-skilled workers are more likely to emigrate to the OECD than low-skill workers. To minimise the cost to sending countries associated with the potential loss of workers of both high and middle level skills, an interesting policy proposal in OECD countries is the introduction of flexible instruments (e.g. visas, labour market access permits) to permit greater circular mobility. Circular movement holds the promise of reducing the costs of brain drain, by allowing or even encouraging greater participation by migrants in their home country’s economy. The skills deficit in some countries could be addressed by supporting projects which allow the professional reinsertion and gainful employment of skilled emigrants returning to their home countries.

Finally, if the beneficiaries of enhanced TVSD programmes find themselves tempted by opportunities outside their home countries, it is arguably the case that these opportunities will be in other African, not OECD, countries (as anecdotal evidence of Mozambican automobile mechanics working in South Africa suggest). If so, African governments may wish to study regional mobility schemes in appropriate forums (e.g. ECOWAS, SADC) to promote greater opportunities for legal movement of nationals. Evidence from migrant corridors around the world suggests that more regular, legal movement increases the ease with which migrants can send home remittances through legal channels. Creative solutions are clearly necessary since efforts to thwart cross-border movements typically come at a high price to the individuals concerned, are politically unpopular, and are usually ineffective.