BRAIN DRAIN – A MISNOMER?

There has been much discussion on the subject of brain drain: the movement of professionally trained people from developing to developed countries. In this interview, Professor Karega-Munene discusses the question with Julius K. Kipng’etich, the Managing Director of the Investment Promotion Centre in Nairobi.

WAJIBU. As a developing country, Kenya appears to have suffered considerable brain drain. What are the reasons for this?

KIPNG’ETICH. I don’t want to call it brain drain; I prefer to see it as an activity in a market place. In a market place, the buyer and the seller meet because they have a product of mutual interest. In this case, in the brain market people bring their skills, experience and knowledge; they put it on offer and it goes to the highest bidder.

Kenya, and Third World countries in general, must make themselves competitive in order to attract the best brains. Today’s world is an open place because of globalisation. You cannot force your compatriots to remain in Kenya out of love for their country. The fact that Kenyans work, say, in Uganda does not make them less Kenyan: they are still Kenyans. So we need to look at our country in a virtual framework: Kenyans working in America, Europe, or Australia are still Kenyans. It is only that our government has not created conducive environments for those brains to remain here or to come back. So, it is upon Third World governments to make the market attractive to their own people. That way, a government can say to its own people: “If I employ you to do a particular job, the emoluments and conditions of service will be competitive.” This calls for very creative rewards systems in Third World countries. How do you reward the most talented individuals? This is important because if you don’t, developed countries will take them. We can reverse the so-called brain drain if the necessary conditions are put in place.

Do you feel that economic reasons are the only ones that encourage people to leave their country and work elsewhere?

If you look at our history in Africa, we have gone through much turmoil: political problems, civil wars, ethnic conflicts; name it. All these have impacted on well-educated and talented Africans, who feel that if their country does not value them because of their political views, they can settle elsewhere. What we need to do–and that is the aim of the new African Union–is to strengthen governance in Africa in order to make it conducive for people to live and do business here.

If you look at the principles that support NEPAD (the New Partnership for Africa’s Development), all of it is aimed at good governance. There will be peer reviews, meaning that other African countries can come and tell a leader of an African country that he is spoiling things for the others on the continent. This is promising. So, we need to look at the necessary conditions for somebody to come and live in a particular country on the continent. There must be:

- Good governance;

- Respect for human rights;

- Respect for the rule of law;

- Good security;

- Infrastructure to support professionals in their work.

If this happens, you will see a new movement pattern, with professionals moving from other countries to Africa.

We need to ask ourselves: are we putting the right environment in place for the best brains in the world to come and settle here? Let me give you the example of India. Sometime ago India noticed that she had highly talented people. So, she approached the software companies in the United States of America’s Silicon Valley and told them, “We have highly talented people here, they are cheaper than Americans, and perhaps smarter.” The companies saw the point. India then informed the companies, “The people need not come to the US, they will work for you from here at a lower price if you can facilitate their work through modern technologies.” So through modern technologies and creativity on the part of India, most of the Microsoft programmers are now Indians living in India. Since the cost of living in India is much lower than in the US, Microsoft pays the employees lower salaries than they would if those employees were in the US. Given that the salaries are commensurate with the employees’ qualifications and productivity, the employees can enjoy a high quality of life without leaving their country.

It is upon us, as Kenyans, to address these problems creatively. Kenyans need not leave Kenya to work for Ugandan, American or British companies. We can facilitate their work, for better returns, through technology. But this requires government strategies on how to tap and utilise our highly talented human resources. The government must develop well thought-out strategies on how to develop and retain our brainpower.

Yet, if we are to take the path of facilitating foreign employment through modern technologies we have to rely on Telkom Kenya,an entity that requires major changes if the desired level of investment in the modern technologies necessary for this type of employment is to be realized.

That is precisely why we must support the government’s privatisation program. A very good example of successful privatisation of a parastatal in Kenya is Kenya Airways. By the time Kenya Airways was being privatised, it was making losses: it was giving poor service, it was bloated. The government at the time realised that the situation could not last for long and it therefore invited KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines) as a strategic partner. KLM bought into the airline and today Kenya Airways is truly the pride of Africa. Kenya Airways’ service is moving towards world class: it has modern planes, it is spreading its wings, and is now profitable. We should use the success of Kenya Airways as an example and admit that the Government has no business being in business. We should just sell Telkom Kenya and other ailing parastatals.

Inefficient parastatals like Telkom Kenya and Kenya Railways impact negatively on the growth of Kenya’s economy as well as on the economies of our neighbouring countries. It thereby compounds the problem associated with utilisation of our human resources. Kenya Railways, for example, is a major handicap for economic growth in countries like Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Southern Sudan, and the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. These countries use trucks to transport goods because Kenya Railways does not work properly. Similarly Telkom Kenya’s inefficiency impacts negatively on the economic growth in Kenya and in the Eastern African region in general. So, why should we cling to Telkom Kenya and Kenya Railways, regarding them as precious jewels? We need to inject new capital and business sense into these parastatals by, for example, getting strategic partners who know how to run modern telephone and rail services. When Kenya Railways starts operating efficiently, our roads will last longer and we shall all be happy. When Telkom Kenya starts operating efficiently, modern technologies will function as required. Creatively utilised, those technologies could help reverse the so-called brain drain.

One cannot help noticing that we have more people from West Africa working for international organizations like the United Nations from as far back as the 1960s and 1970s, while Kenyans started only becoming visible in some international organizations in the 1980s. Is it reasonable to assume that West Africans were encouraged to look farther afield from the 1960s by political turmoil in their countries, while Kenyans stayed put because the country enjoyed economic and political stability?

Yes, but only to a certain extent; the situation goes beyond that. International appointments, especially in the UN system, do not just happen. West African governments actively looked far and wide for opportunities and encouraged their citizens to apply for international jobs. That did not and still does not happen in Kenya. If, for example, there is a job in the United Nations system, Kenya’s ambassador in New York should inform the government so that the country can identify a qualified Kenyan and encourage him/her to apply. So, whereas there was instability in West Africa, which forced out some people into an international brain market, their governments also deliberately pushed their citizens to the international public service. We need to do the same here.

Do you think what we describe as brain drain is necessarily bad for a developing country like ours?

No. We should not see it as a drain because when we talk about the phenomenon in those terms, we imply nothing comes in return, which is not true. The Kenyans who are working abroad remit money here. Indeed, for many countries, their citizens working overseas are one of the biggest sources of foreign exchange. In Uganda, their citizens in the diaspora account for the number two position in foreign exchange earning, after coffee. We need to look at Kenyans overseas as a resource that we can tap into. The remittances to Kenya from abroad, through Western Union for the year 2002 were about 5 billion shillings and they are growing very fast.

One of strategies of the government now is to make it easier for Kenyans working abroad to remit money. The government thinking at present is: how can we facilitate the movement of this money further? So, when you call it a brain drain it denotes a negative flow of resources but there is also a positive flow. The Kenyans concerned have moved from a resource deficit area to a resource rich area and they remit part of their earnings. What we need to do now is to tap into them. Now that the Government is reforming, we need to bring some of them into our public service because of their international experience. They have, for example, witnessed things in other countries which people here have not. Their international work environment has exposed them to the trends and workings of the so-called global village. We need to take advantage of that potential. So their being out there is not necessarily a drain; you are giving your citizens international experience by having them work overseas. Although it was not a deliberate government policy as such, there is a positive aspect to it.

In other words, they have become an asset that we should tap into. And they are probably remitting more money to Kenya than the Kenya Revenue Authority would be collecting from them in taxes if they were working here.

In fact, my own encouragement to those who are working outside Kenya now is that they should not come home until the economy is able to absorb them. After all, they are in a position to remit money to the Kenyan economy. If they come here now, where there are no jobs for them, they will just stay idle, which is a waste the country cannot afford.

Kenyans working abroad are remitting a lot of money in foreign currency, which is good. We cannot afford to have them idling here. The Philippines for example, enjoys remittances of about several million US dollars a year from their maids who are working in the Arab countries. To the Philippines those maids are a resource.

Some Kenyans appear quite uncomfortable with the employment of expatriates in this country, forgetting that we too have our own expatriates overseas. What are your views on this?

One of the key tenets of movement of investment is that investments move with people. Therefore, if you want to attract investment to Kenya, you must allow the owner of the business concerned to bring himself/herself to the country. I do not think expatriates are a cause for worry. Kenya has a very low number of expatriates, about 16,000, compared to the 2 million or so Kenyans working abroad. If foreign investors were to leave because we do not want expatriate workers in the country, we would be the losers. Similarly, if the countries hosting the 2 million or so Kenyans hit back, we would equally be the losers.

As countries expand and we become a global village, there is no way Kenya can operate as a closed economy. So we should not put any restrictions on the number of expatriates the country should have. An investor feels good when they find local people who can do a job at a lower price. In fact, an expatriate is more expensive to a foreign investor than a local employee. Investors do not really like it when they have to send expatriates here to work because it reduces their profits. So, when foreign investors bring an expatriate, usually it is somebody they really need. Therefore, we need not worry unnecessarily. There are a few problem cases, but they are too few to preoccupy us.

Do you feel that we misallocate our highly qualified human resources in this country by appointing, for example, a medical doctor to run a university or to a parastatal that has nothing to do with his/her professional training, yet we have a shortage of personnel in the areas where these people trained?

Yes, to some extent. If you look at the trends in many countries, people tend to move to areas where they are best suited. Some universities now in Europe and America, for example, are not necessarily run by the best dons, but by business people. The dons are encouraged to remain in the classroom or in the laboratory where they excel. What we have not done in Kenya is to introduce a promotion and reward system that rewards you while you remain in the classroom or in the laboratory. That is our problem.

The posts of vice-chancellors in our public universities and parastatal directors, for example, have so many rewards that it is more attractive to them than being in the classroom or in the laboratory. Some of our professionals lobby tirelessly for appointment to those positions because of the accruing monetary rewards rather than the professional rewards that should come with the jobs they trained for. If we were to change our reward system so that our professionals can be adequately compensated, they will opt to remain in their areas of professional training.

This reminds me of the situation at the University of Pennsylvania. When I was there as a Fulbright Scholar in Residence in 1998, I learnt that the University President earns considerably less than the Professor who is in charge of the University’s Medical School.

We must adopt a just reward system if we are to reap maximum benefits from our human resources. Look at the private hospitals around Nairobi, for example. Doctors hardly run them. Instead, it is people trained in business studies, holders of MBA degrees, that do. But a doctor in any of those hospitals earns more than the hospital director because it is the doctor who generates the income by attending to patients. So it is our reward system that is the problem. We need to amend our reward system in order to attract the best in the world, including the fellow Kenyans who are working overseas.