Roundup: Africa faces serious brain drain

The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has warned in a latest report that Africa is facing a severe brain drain, with more than 20,000 high-quality personnel leaving their native countries in Africa for developed countries in a year.

The report also warned that it is high time to make efforts to stop immediately the brain drain of Africa.

According to the statistics of the World Health Organization (WHO), many African countries face the serious issue of lack of qualified medical personnel and cannot attain the lowest level of at least two doctors every 10,000 people.

However, at the same time, around half of the doctors whom African countries spend a large amount of money to educate and train migrate to Europe and America.

In Zimbabwe, the rate is even as high as 68 percent.

A Cameroonian newspaper recently disclosed that a total of 646 African football players from 33 countries serve for elite European football clubs.

According to official statistics, because high-quality African personnel have continued to flow to developed countries, African countries have to pay high salaries to foreign experts, totaling more than 4 billion US dollars every year.

Outflow of highly trained personnel has seriously stagnated the economic and social development of Africa.

Experts attribute Africa's brain drain to four causes, namely, poverty and war, constraints on personnel from the existing system, lack of good pays, and mediocre environment for scientific research.

Actually, the issue of Africa's brain drain has both internal and external causes, and needs the efforts of the whole international community.

The governments of developed countries should not evade their responsibilities for the issue, while African countries should do their best to encourage overseas students to return.

The Chinese government attaches importance to cooperation with African countries in the issue by setting up a fund for development of African quality personnel, which in recent years has held hundreds of training classes for African countries in the fields such as diplomacy, management, agriculture, health, education, technology, culture and service.

Meanwhile, China has dispatched a large number of experts and teachers to help African countries train personnel in a variety of related fields.

Source: Xinhua