Brain Drain in Kenya

Brain drain is defined as the flight of human capital through the emigration of talented and skilled professionals to other countries or jurisdiction meaning that they cease providing their skills and services to their country of origin. Over the past few decades, there has been a debate on the advantages and disadvantages  of the emigration of skilled professionals to developed countries. Some scholars argue that the brain drain phenomenon has a detrimental effect on countries in Africa such as Kenya because the professionals should be working to develop their own countries. On the other hand, others argue that the emigration of professionals is good because it provides remittances and when people work in advanced economies, they gain skills which can be important to the home countries if such professionals choose to return home. According to the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Africa has lost approximately one third of it human capital and is continuing to lose skilled professionals at an increasing rate. Kenya is one of the countries that exports large numbers of skilled professionals who go on to work in countries such as Canada, the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and other European countries.

The brain drain phenomenon is not new in Kenya as the country began to lose skilled professionals to the developed countries in the West since independence. One of the leading causes of the loss of professionals to wealthy countries is that people earn more money and get better living standards for themselves and their families in those countries. During the Kenyatta presidency, Kenya sent thousands of students to the United States to get university education. Some of those students returned to the country and went on to hold important positions in the society. However, some remained in the United States and decided to start new lives there. During the Moi era, the brain drain accelerated due to the poor state of the economy and the political repression which was especially common when the country was a one-party state. Since 2000, Kenya has continued to lose skilled workers to developed countries mainly because of the fact that globalization became a global phenomenon and it became easier to travel and live in any country around the world.

It is noteworthy that Kenya also exports workers including low skilled workers such as domestic servants, security guards, drives, and hospitality staff to countries in the Middle East such as Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Kenyan elementary school teachers were also hired to fill the shortages in countries such as the Congo, Seychelles, Rwanda, Comoros Islands and Burundi. Just recently, the Ruto government promised to export thousands of nurses to countries in the Middle East. It also signed a deal that would allow 250,000 skilled Kenyan workers to work in Germany. The government encourages people to work abroad because it is aware that the people in the diaspora always sends money back to their relatives. In fact, remittances are the second largest source of foreign exchange in Kenya after exports. In addition, the export of workers reduces pressure on the government to provide jobs especially due to the high youth unemployment rates in the country.

There is no doubt that Kenya is one of the countries which has some of the highest literacy rates in the African continent mainly because it provides free primary and secondary education to its citizens. In spite of the fact that Kenya has a large number of people with college degrees as compared to other countries in Africa, the country is also among the African nations which have experienced massive flight of skilled human resources to developed countries. This is an indicator that Kenya has a weak base of human capital. If this trend continues, it is clear that the country will face a deficiency of skilled workers in all sectors of the economy.

The Beneficial Brain Drain

One of the effects of brain drain can be considered to be the “beneficial brain drain”. This is manifested in circumstances when the migration of skilled professionals leads to an improvement in the welfare of the emigrants as well as the society left behind. As such, it is not accurate to say that brain drain only has negative consequences for countries such as Kenya. In fact, it can act as a catalyst for the formation of human capital and hence economic growth. The fact that developed countries often have educational requirements for one to move there encourages people in the developing countries to pursue higher education. Since not all the educated people will have the chance to move abroad, the human capital in the source nation is bound to keep rising and so will the economic growth. In addition, source countries such as Kenya  keep trying to fill the gaps created by emigration by investing more resources in education thus reducing the risk of having an uneducated underclass. The increase in the education levels in a country has a positive impact on economic development.

Factors Facilitating Brain Drain in Kenya and Africa

Like all other developing regions in the world, Sub-Saharan Africa is integrated into the global economy mainly as a source of cheap labor and primary goods/raw materials. The globalization phenomenon has had significant influence on the push-factors that make people to migrate internationally. There is no doubt that if the levels of income in developed and developing countries were equal, there would be no great need for international migration. As such, it is clear that the lack of political stability and development in the Third World countries, the globalization of economies and the existence of immigration policies which reflect the need for labour in the developed/industrialized nations are among the key factors explaining the migration from developing to developed countries such as Canada, the UK and the USA among others.

            Moreover, structural adjustment programs (SAPs) aimed at solving the economic problems in Africa often create conditions that increase the pressure on the skilled and educate to emigrate. Institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) often encourage African government to lay off public sector workers, lower wages and allow foreign competition. This increases the pressure on the economy and forces people to seek greener pastures in the Western countries. In addition, the poor quality of higher education in Kenya and other countries in sectors such as engineering and technology forces young people to pursue their education abroad. A significant portion of students who are educated abroad often do not return to their home countries because they can earn more money and have better lives abroad.

Finally, there is the argument that the brain drain is a part of the cultural lure of the Western countries. This is because there is a widespread belief in the “Myth of superiority of the West.” Even though most of the countries in the Global South are considered to be politically free, the power of this myth has not declined. This is a phenomenon that plagues all sections of the society in Kenya and other African countries from the film stars who travel to the West for a holiday to the intellectuals who salivate at the possibility of a foreign jaunt. The education system in Kenya has not done enough to fight this tendency. In fact it strengthens it because almost all the education in Kenya is done in English, which is a foreign language thus providing primacy to a foreign culture. One would argue that the education system in Kenya provides a perfect preparation for a career and life in the West.

The Impact of the Brain Drain in Kenya

The Loss of Human Capital

One of the negative impact of emigration of skilled professionals is that it is a net loss for the country because it finances the education as well as training of professionals who choose to emigrate at the moment they start becoming productive. This means that the country loses critical human capital in which it has invested significant resources via training or education and for which it does not receive compensation from the recipient country. As such, brain drain is often defined as “the international transfer of human capital that is not recorded in any official balance of payment statistics.” This means that the country that makes investment in its human resources does not get to enjoy the return on its investment. At the same time, the recipient country makes a net gain because it receives trained professionals without having to invest in their education.

The loss of human capital is particularly painful for a country like Kenya because skilled professionals are needed for the upgrading of exports and in improving the sophistication of domestic businesses and industries which benefit the economy. Without a sufficient number of trained scientists, information technology professionals, biologists, nurses, agronomists and doctors, it is impossible for Kenyan companies and farms to increase their productivity meaning that they would be unable to face foreign competition

In Kenya, it is estimated that the cost of training a doctor is US $40,000 and that it costs $15,000 to educate a university student. The Kenya Medical Association (KMA) consistently warns that the emigration of health professionals is a threat to the very existence of the nation’s health sector. The association warns that health professionals are leaving the country to work abroad because of the low pay in the country. In fact Kenya is now one of the largest sources of trained nurses for countries such as Canada and the United States. As such, the KMA warns that the brain drain has been one of the causes of the deterioration in health services for the population. Increasingly, it is becoming clear that high quality health care in Kenya is only available to the wealthy.

Class Stratification

The emigration of the middle class and the skilled professionals from the country carries the risk of creating a large gap between the poor and the rich in the country. The absence of skilled professionals such as IT workers, engineers and doctors among others reduces the income, income taxes as well as other forms of taxes such as the value added tax. This can affect the government’s allocation for key sectors such as health, education and law enforcement. There is no doubt that Kenya requires a large middle class which can act as a tax base needed to finance and upgrade public services to its population. The emigration of the middle class can cause the country to stagnate leading to an increase in poverty and a large gap between the rich and the poor. The positive thing is that there are a lot of skilled professionals who prefer to live and work in the country meaning that the country does  not face a shortage of key workers. As such, the middle class in the country is growing at a steady rate in spite of the increasing emigration.

Remittances

One of the advantages of the emigration of people from Kenya to the West is that they send back money to the country in the form of remittances. The World Bank’s Migration and Remittances Factbook defines remittances as “the sum of the workers’ remittances, compensation of employees and migrants’ transfers.” The IMF defines remittances as “ the current private transfers from migrant workers who are considered to be residents of the host country to recipients in the worker’ country of origin.” In Kenya, remittances have been on the rise and have become a major source of income for households as well as the country at large. Remittances are particularly important as they are the least unstable source of foreign exchange flows to the country. They also tend to be immune from global business cycles as well as regional or global economic crises. The remittances to Kenya are crucial because they help improve its balance of payments especially at a time when the country is struggling to repay its debt and is highly dependent on imports.

On the other hand, critics argue that remittances can have a negative impact and cannot replace other forms of capital flows such as foreign direct investment (FDI). For example, remittances can be a disincentive to work thus reducing people’s economic productivity. In addition, most of the remittances are used to facilitate or increase the consumption of the receiving agents especially during periods of adverse economic conditions.

Economists also argue that for a country like Kenya to develop, it needs to accumulate sizeable amounts of human capital. As such, although emigration increases the remittances, it has a negative impact on a country’s ability to accumulate human capital. Moreover, economists also claim that remittances are unproductive, insufficient and cannot compensate for the loss of human capital. They also increase economic dependency especially at a time when countries such as Kenya are working to become as economically independent and productive as possible. The long term objective for Kenya should be to eliminate poverty and not merely reduce it by sending money to relatives. In addition, human capital is always more valuable than financial capital in any country and money alone is not enough to eliminate poverty.

Nonetheless, it is true that the remittances to Kenya have helped reduce poverty mainly because they go directly to poor households unlike foreign development assistance which is channeled through national governments and other development agencies and have little direct impact on households. Some of the emigrants also start and support productive ventures as real estate, construction, commercial farms and small industries/businesses among others.

Relieving Unemployment

It is argued that international migration is beneficial and promotes economic development for the sending and recipient nations. The developed economies benefit their international competitiveness by importing both the unskilled and skilled labor. On the other hand countries such as Kenya benefit because the emigration helps in relieving unemployment. Some economists argue that brain drain does not necessarily affect the home country negatively because there are workers who can easily replace the emigrants. The primary assumption is that countries have surplus labour that can easily produce replacement workers. This can be said to be the case in Kenya because the country has a large pool of educated workers.

One of the problems that Kenya faces is that it has some workers who are underemployed and cannot find jobs that reflect their education and training. Allowing such people to migrate to other countries whether in the Middle East or the West can be important in helping them to gain experience and improve their skills which could later be important for the home country. As such, the government of Kenya works with partner nations in the Middle East to help both skilled and unskilled workers get jobs in the Middle East. The emigration of workers to the Middle East may be more preferable for countries such as Kenya and other African countries because people who go there tend to return unlike the West which attracts permanent migration and hence a permanent loss of human capital.

Experienced Returnees

Return migration is very important for Kenya and other source countries because the returnees do not only return with their original skills but also those that they have acquired in their host nations. These include personal connections, improved skills, increased access to technology, knowledge and trade from ties with expatriates. As such, the original loss to the source country may then be compensated by the valuable skills acquired abroad. There is no doubt that Kenya has benefited enormously from returnees. Famous people in the country such as Kiraitu Murungi and Jeff Koinange once worked abroad and returned to become productive members of the Kenyan society.

Brain Circulation

Scholars argue that as globalization develops over long periods of time, brain drain eventually leads to brain circulation which can be viewed as a win-win situation where everybody becomes better off. For example, it is well known that Silicon Valley was built using the heavy input of Taiwanese and Indian engineers who then returned to their home countries to build IT companies in Hsinchu-Taipei and Bangalore. As such, it can be argued that brain drain can be positive because the brains that leave today end up coming back tomorrow thus benefiting the source and recipient countries. Moreover, today, there are a lot of engineers from developed countries such as Europe, the UK, the US and China who are working in developing countries in the global south including African countries such as Kenya. They are mostly involved in sectors such as technology and energy because countries in the global south often lack the skills and technology to build their own energy plants and technology. These people are very important to the developing economies meaning that this can be seen as a reverse brain drain where skilled workers from developed countries move to the developing countries. Some companies from the developed countries also set up companies in the developing countries and bring their employees to work  there in sectors such as agriculture, ICT, energy and finance. This is a part of the brain circulation which has been enabled by globalization over the past few decades and has enabled people to share their skills and experiences throughout the world.