Describing the Brain Drain
By Tumi Sotire, a Health Economist, 23rd September 2020
What is the brain drain?
Brain drain is defined as the “migration of nation’s most talented and educated workforce who aspire to attain a better standard of living and quality of life, higher salaries, access to advanced technology and more stable political conditions in different places worldwide compared to the countries they are migrating from” (1) . A significant proportion of Africa’s most talented workforce are not actually working on the continent. Across the population of the African continent, 1 in 9 people with a tertiary education did not live on the continent according to a UN report. This is about 2.9 million people — 50% increase between 2000–2013 , a rate higher than any other continent in the world (1) .
Despite the fact that Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 11 % of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s global health burden ,the region has only 3% of the world’s global workforce and less than 1% of the world’s expenditure on health (2). In Liberia the number of doctors 0.1 per 1000 which is the same as Sierra Leone. In Ethiopia and Uganda the numbers are 0.2 and 0.12 per 1000 respectively (3).
A direct quote from WHO about the above graph:
Available statistics show that over 40% of WHO Member States report to have less…
