How Do We Reverse the Brain Drain? Keynote speech by Emeagwali [emeagwali.com] delivered on October 24, 2003, at the Pan-African Conference on Brain Drain, Elsah, Illinois USA. The entire transcript, letters and photos are posted at http://emeagwali.com/speeches/brain-drain/to-brain-gain/reverse-brain-drain-from-africa.html. Permission to reproduce is granted. Thank you for the pleasant introduction as well as for inviting me to share my thoughts on turning “brain drain” into “brain gain.” For 10 million African-born emigrants, the word “home” is synonymous with the United States, Britain or other country outside of Africa. Personally, I have lived continuously in the United States for the past 30 years. My last visit to Africa was 17 years ago. On the day I left Nigeria, I felt sad because I was leaving my family behind. I believed I would return eight years later, probably marry an Igbo girl, and then spend the rest of my life in Nigeria. But 25 years ago, I fell in love with an American girl, married her three years later, and became eligible to sponsor a Green Card visa for my 35 closest relatives, including my parents and all my siblings, nieces and nephews. The story of how I brought 35 people to the United States exemplifies how 10 million skilled people have emigrated out of Africa during the past 30 years. We came to the United States on student visas and then changed our status to become permanent residents and then naturalized citizens. Our new citizenship status helped us sponsor relatives, and also inspired our friends to immigrate here. Ten million Africans now constitute an invisible nation that resides outside Africa. Although invisible, it is a nation as populous as Angola, Malawi, Zambia or Zimbabwe. If it were to be a nation with distinct borders, it would have an income roughly equivalent to Africa’s gross domestic product. Although the African Union does not recognize the African Diaspora as a nation, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) acknowledges its economic importance. The IMF estimates the African Diaspora now constitutes the biggest group of foreign investors in Africa. Take for example Western Union. It estimates that it is not atypical for an immigrant to wire 00 per month to relatives in Africa. If you assume that most Africans living outside Africa send money each month and you do the math, you will agree with the IMF that the African Diaspora is indeed the largest foreign investor in Africa. What few realize is that Africans who immigrate to the United States contribute 40 times more wealth to the American than to the African economy. According to the United Nations, an African professional working in the United States contributes about 50,000 per year to the U.S. economy. Again, if you do the math, you will realize that the African professional remitting 00 per month to Africa is contributing 40 times more to the United States economy than to the African one. On a relative scale, that means for every 00 per month a professional African sends home, that person contributes 2,000 per month to the U.S. economy. Of course, the issue more important than facts and figures is eliminating poverty in Africa, not merely reducing it by sending money to relatives. Money alone cannot eliminate poverty in Africa, because even one million dollars is a number with no intrinsic value. Real wealth cannot be measured by money, yet we often confuse money with wealth. Under the status quo, Africa would still remain poor even if we were to send all the money in the world there. Ask someone who is ill what “wealth” means, and you will get a very different answer than from most other people. If you were HIV-positive, you would gladly exchange one million dollars to become HIV-negative. When you give your money to your doctor, that physician helps you convert your money into health - or rather, wealth. Money cannot teach your children. Teachers can. Money cannot bring electricity to your home. Engineers can. Money cannot cure sick people. Doctors can. Because it is only a nation’s human capital that can be converted into real wealth, that human capital is much more valuable than its financial capital. A few years ago, Zambia had 1,600 medical doctors. Today, Zambia has only 400 medical doctors. Kenya retains only 10% of the nurses and doctors trained there. A similar story is told from South Africa to Ghana. I also speak from my family experiences. After contributing 25 years to Nigerian society as a nurse, my father retired on a 5-per-month pension. By comparison, my four sisters each earn 5 per hour as nurses in the United States. If my father had had the opportunity my sisters did, he certainly would have immigrated to the United States as a young nurse. The “brain drain” explains, in part, why affluent Africans fly to London for their medical treatments. Furthermore, because a significant percentage of African doctors and