Digging deeper into subsets of immigration data like specific work or study visas provides further clarity about the brain drain. According to UK Home Office data, over 330,000 total visas were issued to Sub-Saharan African nationals in 2019, which was an increase of 95,000 compared to 2016. Work visa data ending in September 2023 shows over 78,000 visas granted to Nigerians alone. Zimbabwe and Ghana made the top 10 list as well, with 44,714 and 26,013 work visas approved. It’s a similar story for UK study visa numbers, which are vital as students often contribute to brain drain by settling long term and working in host countries. Nigeria is the African leader with 111,577 UK study visas out of a global total of 639,087. This global study visa total is up from 276,889 visas awarded for the year ending September 2019.
African scholars also continue to flock to America to study. According to the 2023 Open Doors report, there are around one million foreign students in America. Although still dominated by China and India, Sub-Saharan Africa had the highest rate of growth among world regions, growing by 18 per cent with 50,199 students. We see the most students from Nigeria with 17,640. Ghana was second with 6,468 and entered the top 25 places of origin for the first time.
Combining the above with more industry-specific data provides more insight into who is exactly leaving and why. The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) dataset, for example, shows tens of thousands of NHS openings now being filled by a growing number of Africans. New NHS nurses from Ghana rose 1,328 per cent between 2019 and 2022. There are now more Ghanaian nurses working in the UK than in Ghana. Since 2016, the overall proportion of African-born NHS staff has risen from 1.8 per cent to 3.1 per cent with Botswana and Kenya also featuring.
These rising numbers are having detrimental effects on Africa’s health staffing. A 2023 World Health Organization (WHO) report points out that 40 African countries or roughly 80 per cent of the continent have significant health staffing shortages and many are leaving to work in other countries. On average, according to the WHO report, 500 nurses leave Ghana for the West every month. Egyptian data shows around 9,000 medical students graduate annually from Egyptian universities, but 65 per cent go to work abroad. In Nigeria, there is now one doctor for every 5,000 patients, compared to the one in 254 ratio in developed countries. Around 9,000 Nigerian doctors moved to the UK, the US, and Canada between 2016 and 2018. More than 75,000 nurses have left Nigeria since 2017. The WHO believes the sub-Saharan Africa healthcare crisis will intensify and the region will be short 5.3 million health workers by 2030.
The story appears to be similar for African engineers. Engineering bodies see a South Africa plagued by losing quality engineers to emigration. International opportunities are part of the reason. Sometimes they switch industries. It can also be due to dysfunctional government institutions. The bigger problem: the individuals who leave are the more experienced engineers aged 45-60, which means young African graduates lose sorely needed mentors.
The positive news is that financial remittances have grown alongside the upward migration numbers. The UN stipulates that remittances are a “critical source of external finance for Africa, with over 200 million African family members” relying on this money for survival. Remittance flows to Africa have doubled over the last decade and reached £80 billion in 2022. This has even surpassed the level of funds received through Official Development Assistance and Foreign Direct Investment. The UN highlights that, in some African countries, remittances represent over 20 per cent of Gross Domestic Product.
Source link : https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2024/03/19/africas-migration-and-brain-drain-revisited/
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Publish date : 2024-03-19 07:00:00
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