Migration Problems

As the term “global village” becomes a key definition of the modern world most of developed countries open their doors to professional immigrants from developing countries. Consequently, developing countries experience the lack of skilled people that could rise up the economic levels of their home countries. Recently, African countries have become the leaders of those states that significantly suffer from migration of its citizens to more developed countries. Although, African nations are even more than partially responsible for the “brain drain” they face as they encourage their citizens to receive experience in developed countries; after finishing training programs abroad and experienced better quality of life African citizens simply do not want to come back to their home countries. It is crucially important for the governments of African countries to stop such mass migration from Africa in order to have their home countries developing.

This issue turns out to be very controversial when we start looking for who is actually responsible for the effect of “brain drain” in Africa. If we view the problem from one side we might think that it is very simple to keep skilled, talented and well-educated people in Africa and let them develop their countries. From the other side African countries do not have a great number of higher-level learning institutions to prepare a desired quantity of professionals. A bad thing is that most of African countries do not posses money to create these facilities and besides they will have to dedicate a lot of time in order to create and develop decent educational system. Besides, in order to attract investment African states have to reduce the level of corruption that they presently have. Corruption greatly scares away investors, especially foreign. High crime rate in most African cities also has a negative effect on foreign investments as it makes investors feel unsafe about their capital and results then to seek other investment alternatives. To decrease the level of corruption, for example, South African government implemented “turn around” strategy in 2003. Barry Gilder, the director-general of home affairs, very often makes surprised visits to department’s regional offices to see if the subordinates are implementing the new strategy to life.

We can argue on and on who is responsible for the fact that well-educated people leave Africa, however, it will not solve the problem. What should be done is actually finding ways to decrease a number of emigrants from Africa. In order to accomplish that task the possible causes of mass migration from Africa have to be found and eliminated to the possible extend.

The most obvious cause for migration from African countries is high unemployment rate and a possibility to have a greater monetary income in the destination country. To resolve that problem Africa simply needs a lot of time and investments. However, what can be done right away is toughening of emigration rules in African countries and toughening of immigration rules in the developed destination countries. For example, make it mandatory for all the students that go studying abroad to come back to their home countries after some period of time. Developed foreign countries have to encourage African students to return to their home countries, although, it might be difficult for students to readjust to home conditions as they are exposed to higher living standards.

Another cause of mass migration from Africa is fairly poor living conditions in many African countries. The governments have to improve living standards by increasing economic growth and skilled labor absorption into the economy. The governments have to create favorable conditions for investments in their economy. (I have already mentioned above in my paper what should be done by the governments in order to attract investments.) Instead of spending about four billion dollars annually to recruit and pay foreign professionals African governments should spend this money on training their own professionals.

Africa is an immense developing region that has a great potential. It is logical that to continue the growth in the variety of fields Africa needs high quality workers. Unfortunately, the tendency for migration of African native professionals, mostly to northern more developed countries, increases every year. To keep up with the pace of development African governments’ primary task is to keep the “golden youth” in there home countries because the very same generation will be running African countries on the peak of their developing. It is vitally important to create beneficial and promising conditions for native smart young people in order to keep them enthusiastic about the developing of their region. Only then Africa can have promising future.

Jeff Stats
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