What donors should do

For several reasons, poverty reduction depends on higher education and research. Both play a crucial role in development by generating human skills, knowledge in general and appropriate technology.
Higher education and research are indispensable inputs for achieving the MDGs. If donors are serious about the MDG challenge, they will have to invest more in this field. The universities and research centres in their home countries are a valuable resources for building capacities. Donor governments should acknowledge this fact and design a common policy on making best use of all such capacities. No doubt, donor countries’ education ministries have a role to play.

Finally, more efforts are needed to curb the one-directional process of brain drain. Instead, a mutually beneficial process of brain circulation should be promoted. Incentives and fiscal measures may be necessary for doing so.

No doubt, higher investment in tertiary education and research is necessary. For sub-Saharan Africa, an additional 1.5 million health workers are needed to improve the health situation in line with the UN Millennium Development Goals (UN Millennium Project, 2005). Similarly, one million engineers must be trained to design, build and maintain the necessary infrastructure (Mohamoud, 2005).

The vital role of higher education and research has been increasingly recognised in recent years (World Bank, 2002, UN Millennium Project 2005). Trail blazing work was done by the Task Force on Higher Education, which was convened in 2000 by the World Bank and UNESCO.

Donors, however, have not risen to the challenge. Nor has there been significant progress in most poor countries. A recent review of 31 national poverty-reduction strategies (Bloom et al., 2005) showed that only three governments considered higher education a way to reduce poverty, and only two planned to increase funding for this purpose. On the other hand, six explicitly planned to cut funds. On the positive side, 23 governments saw boosting vocational and educational training as an area for improvement, and 14 viewed tertiary education as a means to bolster teacher training.

Brain drain is one reason many donors have so far shied from more support for higher education in poor countries. Especially institutes in Africa have a hard time retaining their staff. There is an alarming flight of intellectual capital from the continent. Although income levels matter, brain drain is primarily driven by the lack of an open intellectual climate and appreciation for academics (Mohamoud,2005).

To prevent brain drain, it is also important to focus on institutional development. Human capacity development is more effective and sustainable, and brain drain is smaller,
– if a university is well organised and managed,
– if there is a good balance between teaching and research,
– if excellence is rewarded, and
– if staff are heard in a democratic environment.

Brain drain has a bright side as well, however. The annual sum of remittances sent home to Africa is $ 8 billion, equal to one-third of official development aid. This money stimulates local economies as well as the demand for more and better education. Most comprehensive studies, nonetheless, conclude that brain drain primarily represents a loss of capacities (Nunn, 2004, Özden and Schiff, 2005). Therefore, the home countries of the skilled Africans working in rich countries should be compensated for the financial loss incurred, and these funds should be re-invested in higher education (Kapur and McHale, 2005). A special levy on the salaries of skilled migrants could serve that purpose, as could penalties paid by employers or the recruiting country.

One must not under-estimate the benefits of “brain circulation”, however. Skilled migrants working abroad are likely to link knowledge communities at home to foreign expertise. Those that return after gaining experience and competence in advanced nations are particularly relevant for improving matters in their countries of origin. The pros and contras of migration of skilled staff should therefore be considered carefully.

In any case, the risk of brain drain is no excuse for neglecting higher education. This is all the more true as some industrialised countries are indeed encouraging brain drain, actively seeking to attract well-qualified staff. With increasing global demand for knowledge workers, this problem will increase.

In order for donors to give tertiary education and research the support that is warranted, several things must change. In the past, many donor programmes had dual purposes. They were not only about strengthening human and institutional capacities in poor countries, but also about involving higher-education and research institutes at home. Such arrangements, however, are under attack for a number of reasons.