Many countries are mining the Global South for one of its vital natural resources – its people. This creates a ‘brain drain’ of professionals and academics leaving the Global South in search of better opportunities abroad.
Why exactly is this happening, though, and what is the socio-economic harm done to the countries left behind? Is brain drain sapping the best and brightest from the Global South? Or is it just the effect of global mobility in an interconnected world?
First, we’ll hear from someone who is himself part of the brain drain, Kevin Njabo. He’s the Africa director and associate adjunct at the Center for Tropical Research, University of California, Los Angeles. The conservation biologist grew up in Cameroon but had to go to Nigeria to study and the US to pursue his academic career.
Host Maggie Perzyna then turns to two esteemed researchers delve into this topic: Ninna Sørensen, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, and Manuel Orozco, director of the migration, remittances and development program at the Inter-American Dialogue and senior fellow at the Harvard University Center for International Development.
Maggie is a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) in Migration & Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University and this podcast is Borders & Belonging. In it, Maggie talks to leading experts from around the world and people with on-the-ground experience to explore the individual experiences of migrants: the difficult decisions and many challenges they face on their journeys.
She and her guests also think through the global dimensions of migrants’ movement: the national policies, international agreements, trends of war, climate change, employment and more.
Borders & Belonging brings together hard evidence with stories of human experience to kindle new thinking in advocacy, policy and research.
Borders & Belonging is a co-production between the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration & Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University and openDemocracy. The podcast was produced by LEAD Podcasting, Toronto, Ontario.
Show notesBelow, you will find links to all the research referenced by our guests, as well as other resources you may find useful.
Art and documentary‘Arts of war: Ukrainian artists confront Russia’, by Blair Ruble, Wilson Centre (2023)
Below, you find links to all of the research referenced by our guests, as well as other resources you may find useful.
Media‘37 of 55 countries facing health worker shortages in Africa: WHO‘, by Madhumita Paul, DownToEarth (16 March 2023)
‘Brain drain: Migrants are the lifeblood of the NHS, it’s time the UK paid for them‘, by Natalie Sharples, The Guardian (6 January 2015)
‘Does migration harm developing countries? - five-minute debate’, by Alex Andreou & Paul Collier, The Guardian (7 October 2013)
‘‘Helicopter research’: who benefits from international studies in Indonesia?‘, by Budiman Minasny & Dian Fiantis, The Conversation (29 August 2018)
‘How we can stop Africa’s scientific brain drain‘, by Kevin Njabo, TEDTalk (6 Feb 2018)‘Meaningful collaborations can end ‘helicopter research‘, by Fernanda Adame, Nature (29 June 2021)
‘Migration is inevitable. Progress drives migration‘, by Shirin Karsan, TEDxPhiladelphiaSalon (4 March 2019)
‘NHS hiring more doctors from outside UK and EEA than inside for first time‘, by Denis Campbell , The Guardian (8 June 2022)
‘Stop stealing doctors from developing countries‘, by Martin Skladany, Scientific American (2 September 2020)
‘The slow brain drain of Nigerian doctors‘, BBC News World Service (6 November 2022)
‘WHO raises alarm over increased healthcare worker migration to rich countries post pandemic‘, by Megha Kaveri, Health Policy Watch (14 March 2023)
Research projects and policy‘Brain gain: Providing healthcare workers with opportunities to migrate can increase education and supply of medical workers in origin countries‘, by Caroline Theoharides & Paolo Abarcar, World Bank Blogs (16 December 2021)
‘Code of Practice red and amber list of countries‘, NHS Employers (23 March 2023)
‘The Congo Basin Institute‘
‘The race for global talent‘, by Lucie Cerna, Population Europe (2016)
‘Same but different: Strategies in the global race for talent‘, by Marissa Weigle, International Centre for Migration Policy Devlopment (1 February 2023)
‘The global talent race heats up as countries and businesses compete for the best and brightest‘, by Ejaz Ghani, World Economic Forum (23 November 2018)
‘WHO health workforce support and safeguards list 2023‘, World Health Organization (14 March 2023)
BooksAzadi, P., Mesgaran, M. B., & Mirramezani, M. (2022). ’The struggle for development in Iran: the evolution of governance, economy, and society‘. Stanford University Press.
Boucher, A. (2016). ’Gender, migration and the global race for talent‘. Manchester University Press.
Brock, G., & Blake, M. (2014). ’Debating brain drain: May governments restrict emigration?‘. Oxford University Press.
Clemens, M. A. (2009). ‘Skill flow: A fundamental reconsideration of skilled-worker mobility and development‘. United Nations Development Programme.
Mpande, S. M. N. (2021). ’The diaspora’s role in Africa: Transculturalism, challenges, and development‘. Routledge.
Walton-Roberts, M. (2022). ’Global migration, gender, and health professional credentials: transnational value transfers and losses‘. University of Toronto Press.
World Bank. (2018). ’Moving for prosperity: global migration and labor markets‘. World Bank.
Academic worksBeine, M., Docquier, F., & Rapoport, H. (2008). ‘Brain drain and human capital formation in developing countries: winners and losers‘. The Economic Journal.
Docquier, F., & Rapoport, H. (2012). ‘Globalization, brain drain, and development‘. Journal of economic literature.
Orozco, M. (2002). ‘Globalization and migration: The impact of family remittances in Latin America‘. Latin American politics and society.
Orozco, M. (2004). ’Remittances to Latin America and the Caribbean: Issues and perspectives on development‘. Organization of American States.
Selwyn, B., & Leyden, D. (2022). ‘Oligopoly-driven development: The World Bank’s Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains in perspective‘. Competition & Change
Sørensen, N. N. (2012). ‘Revisiting the migration–development nexus: From social networks and remittances to markets for migration control‘. International migration.
Sørensen, N. N., Van Hear, N., & Engberg-Pedersen, P. (2002). ‘The migration-development nexus: evidence and policy options‘. IOM Migration Research Series.
TranscriptMaggie Perzyna
Welcome to Borders & Belonging, a podcast that explores issues in global migration and aims to debunk myths about migration based on current research. This series is produced by CERC Migration and openDemocracy. I’m Maggie Perzyna, a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration program at Toronto Metropolitan University.
Many countries are mining the global south for one of its vital natural resources, its people. The Global North has an ageing population and a declining birth rate. Many countries are anxiously trying to attract skilled labour to fill the gaps in their economies. It’s dubbed the ‘global race for talent’. Coupled with this is a phenomenon informally referred to as the ‘brain drain’. This happens when professionals and academics leave the Global South in search of better opportunities abroad. In a moment, we’ll speak with two esteemed researchers on the origins of this phenomenon and on the socio-economic impacts the drains have on the country’s left behind. But first, we’ll hear from someone who is part of the brain drain phenomenon, Kevin Njabo. He’s the Africa director and Associate Adjunct at UCLA’s Center for Tropical Research. He says, there’s one thing that most people can agree on as a motivating factor to stay in one’s home country.
Kevin Njabo
We always know our mothers cook the best food. So, we always want to stay home and eat what our mothers will cook for us. So that is general across the board.
Maggie Perzyna
Sadly, Njabo had to leave his mother’s home cooking far too early. The conservation biologist grew up in Cameroon, a country where French is the dominant language. Coming from an English-speaking family, Njabo’s options for higher education were limited. So, he decided to leave the country.
Kevin Njabo
So, I moved to Nigeria for a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in ecology and environmental biology. So, at the time, it was really difficult to practice my trade when I went back to Cameroon. So, I got a scholarship from Boston University, where I moved to the US, and I’ve since lived in the US since 2001 when I moved to Boston.
Maggie Perzyna
Njabo went on to pursue his PhD in the United States. And he quickly realized that many of his academic peers in the Global North would do what he terms, ‘helicopter research’ or ‘parachute science’.
Kevin Njabo
What you see is when issues arise in Africa, like we had an outbreak of Ebola, we send in the scientists and specialists from the West. They fly in get the samples, come back to New York or to Paris, or to Los Angeles, analyze the samples and send back those results. So, you see, Africa just becomes a continent of where people can fly in and get samples out.
Maggie Perzyna
So, when Njabo moved to California to pursue his postdoctoral studies, he sought to change that. And he met someone else who was thinking along the same lines. His boss and professor, Tom Smith. Smith had worked in Cameroon for over 35 years and came up with the idea of creating a permanent research center called the Congo Basin Institute. It’s a foreign affiliate of the University of California, dedicated to finding solutions to climate change, food and water security, and preserving biodiversity in the Congo Basin.
Kevin Njabo
So, we’re building capacity in Africa to make sure Africans can stay in Africa and be the solutions of issues that arise from the continent. So, we work in collaboration with the local people. We’ve built a school of indigenous and local knowledge, where we tap from the knowledge of these local people and build our curriculum. So, that even when we get students from the University of California who move into Africa, they’re being taught by the professors of the forest.
Maggie Perzyna
Njabo and his colleagues hope that by investing in local knowledge and research, more people will be inspired to stay in the region, and that those who have left will consider returning. Njabo himself now visits the Congo Basin approximately five times a year as part of his work.
Kevin Njabo
Once you start training people and you give them those different opportunities, they’re going to come back. And when they come back, they can really create that - they’re going to fill that void where the best and the brightest were taken out before. By bringing them back in to fill those voids, they could be able to now practice that trade and make sure you take those countries out of that cycle of poverty.
Maggie Perzyna
An example of a tangible change that could arise out of more local involvement and expertise, says Njabo, is a more profitable and better-informed cocoa production industry.
Kevin Njabo
For example, when you look at a trade in cocoa, we see that there is a huge imbalance of those that produce and work hard to get the raw materials and the final product. The cocoa industry, for example, is $100 billion. But the benefits that trickle back to the local people is about 6%. And when you look at Central and West Africa, they produce more than 75% of the raw materials for cocoa. How do you make sure that people who produce 75% of a product, they get 6% of the benefits? Because we have a lot of middlemen in between that value chain. So, once you train and make sure those people are empowered, and you cut out those middlemen, we put the consumers directly in connections, in contact with the producers. And then you can increase that value. But that value can only be increased if you know what they’re doing, the capacity is built and they understand that they have to, they need to have a say in our value chain in production systems. So that is what we’re trying to do. Empowerment.
Maggie Perzyna
Many thanks to Kevin Njabo for sharing his experience with us. Many of you might still be wondering, is brain drain sapping the best and brightest from the Global South? Or is it just the effect of global mobility in an interconnected world? Joining me to delve into this topic are Ninna Sørensen, a senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, and Manuel Orozco, director of the Migration, Remittances and Development Program at the Inter-American Dialogue, and senior fellow at the Harvard University Center for International Development. Welcome to you both. Thanks for joining me.
So what does brain drain look like in the Global South? Ninna let’s start with you.
Ninna Sørensen
Thank you. Well, I think it looks differently in different countries. I mean, we know that skilled migration, which is usually what we talk about when talking about brain drain seems to be rising more than other migration flows, especially when we talk about, sort of, regular migration - people traveling with permission to travel. But we also know that it might affect countries differently. When a brain drain is occurring, I think what it looks like is that that country lacks skilled persons that are important for development of that country. So, we will see that the fact that skilled persons migrate in high numbers from that country will lead to a lack of people who can participate in development, but it may not always be the case. So, we would have to look to each country, right, because brain drain can look in many ways and will not necessarily be a drain, it could also be ‘brain gain’ or...