Excerpts from participants at a recent Development Research Institute conference:
Yaw Nyarko:
"No nation has ever developed because of aid and outside advice".
Andrew Mwenda:
“Aid money makes African governments accountable to the aid agencies rather than to their own people.”
June Arunga:
"Aid money is diverting African skilled professionals away from private enterprise to writing proposals for NGOs.”
From the Council for Foreign Relations Stephanie Hanson writes:
A small group of economists now argue that brain drain might have a positive impact on Africa. Those skilled workers, their research shows, are often sending significant quantities of money back to their home countries. A March 2008 paper by economists William Easterly and Yaw Nyarko says remittances to Africa are likely undercounted, but on average they are equivalent to 81 percent of the foreign aid (PDF) received by an individual country. A 2005 World Bank study showed that remittances from skilled workers to their families in Guatemala, Mexico, and the Philippines helped reduce poverty in those countries.Read the TEDBLog and Mootbox for related coverage.
In some cases, talented workers are even returning to their home countries to work or start businesses. Though research on this phenomenon in Africa is limited, economists have documented the effects of Chinese and Indian tech entrepreneurs returning to their home countries. This so-called brain circulation—in which entrepreneurs start new companies but maintain business links in the United States—has been extensively researched by Anna Lee Saxenian of the University of California, who calls these entrepreneurs "The New Argonauts." Some experts believe African skilled workers could have a similar positive effect on their native economies...[continue reading]