Over the past few years, higher education institutions, principally state universities, have lost their competitiveness as evidenced by perennial student unrest, inadequate operational budgets from the fiscus, and staff exodus due to poor conditions of service. The net effect has been disruption to teaching, research and community involvement activities thereby compromising the integrity of the outputs of higher education institutions. This has in turn impinged negatively on higher education’s stated mission of producing high quality, patriotic and competent workforce for Zimbabwe.
Fortunately, the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education has come up with a timely and ambitious programme to tackle these challenges. This emerged during a media briefing held by the Minister, the Hon. Dr Stan Mudenge in Harare last Friday. In the past, government has been the main supporter of higher education. In most instances, the state provided 95 percent budgetary support for those higher education institutions that it is responsible for. Thus, state higher education institutions have largely been a free good that is openly accessible, and essentially a public service. Under the new programme, government seeks to involve other key stakeholders such as the private sector, multi-lateral donor agencies and parents/guardians in addressing these challenges.
To that extent, the Ministry has set up three multi-stakeholder committees to deal with the challenges. The first committee focuses on promoting private-public partnerships (PPPs) in higher and tertiary education while the second committee focuses on brain drain and human capital mobilisation. The third committee has been set up to spearhead the annual research and intellectual exposition. These committees are expected to identify and proffer effective responses to the various challenges facing the Ministry, and indeed, the country in terms of harnessing adequate resources critical in repositioning higher and tertiary education into a key partner in nation-building and development.
This article focuses on the work that is being done by the Brain Drain and Human Capital Mobilisation Committee (or Intellectual Homelink) in addressing the twin challenges of brain drain and human capital mobilisation.
Brain drain is a global phenomenon which is associated with the loss of professionals (doctors, university lecturers, engineers etc), usually from developing countries to developed countries. The statistics on brain drain for Africa and Zimbabwe are staggering. According to World Bank and United Nations sources, Africa lost 60,000 professionals between 1985 and 1990 and the continent loses 20,000 professionals annually. For Zimbabwe, it is estimated that 500,000 skilled professionals are in the Diaspora. Significantly, USD4 billion is spent annually on the salaries of approximately 100,000 Western expatriates in Sub-Saharan Africa. While acknowledging that reversing brain drain may not always be possible or even desirable, there is emerging consensus that innovative ways have to be found to help those countries buffeted by brain drain to transform it into a ‘brain gain’ for all.
The Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education’s Brain Drain and Human Capital Mobilisation Committee is mandated to deal with the issue of skills shortages wrought about by the ‘brain drain’. As part of this brief, the committee is tasked with exploring various innovative ways in which this ‘brain drain’ can be turned into a ‘brain gain’ for the country. Essentially, the goal of the committee is to keep more professionals here in Zimbabwe while reaping the benefits of expatriate Zimbabweans. To that extent, the committee has identified a number of stakeholders that it is working with in this important mandate. These include UNESCO, UNDP, IOM, ILO, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Academic and Research Network (ZARNET) and various local organizations spanning business, media and government.
The work of the Brain Drain and Human Capital Mobilisation Committee draws largely from the technical input from UNESCO which has conducted a number of studies globally aimed at addressing the effects of brain drain. Of particular significance is UNESCO’s ongoing private-public partnership with Hewlett Packard (HP) in the area of alleviating ‘brain drain’ through what is now known as the UNESCO-HP Brain Gain Initiative. Since 2003, this initiative has launched a number of projects in Europe, Latin America and Africa aimed at ‘reversing the brain drain through mobilisation and internationalisation of human capital in the global economy to enable both the sending and receiving countries benefit from skills and experience of migrating professionals’. The first joint UNESCO-HP project to counter brain drain in Africa was launched in November 2006. Under this “Piloting Solutions for Reversing Brain Drain into Brain Gain for Africa”, the UNESCO-HP partnership aims to help reduce brain drain in Africa by providing grid computing technology to universities in Algeria, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Zimbabwe. The project aims to re-establish links between researchers who have stayed in their native countries and those that have left, connecting scientists to international colleagues, research networks and funding opportunities. Faculties and students at beneficiary universities will also be able to work on major collaborative research projects with other institutions around the world. To that extent, the Brain Drain and Human Capital Mobilisation Committee is at the centre of implementing this ambitious project in Zimbabwe. Already, the UNESCO-HP partnership has since availed to the committee the ICT equipment critical in launching the brain gain project. The ICT equipment includes high quality HP printers, a server and several desktop computers. According to Dr Washington Mbizvo, the ministry’s Permanent Secretary and Chairman of the Brain Drain and Human Capital Mobilisation Committee, the project will create digital Diasporas thereby linking university researchers who have stayed at home to scientific resources beyond Zimbabwe and to colleagues in the Diaspora. This will be facilitated through grid computing which is based on the same concept as the World Wide Web in that it allows the sharing, processing and storage of huge amounts of data.
From the foregoing, it is clear that the Brain Drain and Human Capital Mobilisation Committee has its work cut out. Brain drain should no longer continue to evoke negative emotions of loss. A multi-stakeholder approach is critical in turning brain drain into brain gain. Going forward, it is this column’s intention to track the progress of the Brain Drain and Human Capital Mobilisation Committee in its important mandate of reversing brain gain and human capital mobilisation for Zimbabwe.
Fortunately, the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education has come up with a timely and ambitious programme to tackle these challenges. This emerged during a media briefing held by the Minister, the Hon. Dr Stan Mudenge in Harare last Friday. In the past, government has been the main supporter of higher education. In most instances, the state provided 95 percent budgetary support for those higher education institutions that it is responsible for. Thus, state higher education institutions have largely been a free good that is openly accessible, and essentially a public service. Under the new programme, government seeks to involve other key stakeholders such as the private sector, multi-lateral donor agencies and parents/guardians in addressing these challenges.
To that extent, the Ministry has set up three multi-stakeholder committees to deal with the challenges. The first committee focuses on promoting private-public partnerships (PPPs) in higher and tertiary education while the second committee focuses on brain drain and human capital mobilisation. The third committee has been set up to spearhead the annual research and intellectual exposition. These committees are expected to identify and proffer effective responses to the various challenges facing the Ministry, and indeed, the country in terms of harnessing adequate resources critical in repositioning higher and tertiary education into a key partner in nation-building and development.
This article focuses on the work that is being done by the Brain Drain and Human Capital Mobilisation Committee (or Intellectual Homelink) in addressing the twin challenges of brain drain and human capital mobilisation.
Brain drain is a global phenomenon which is associated with the loss of professionals (doctors, university lecturers, engineers etc), usually from developing countries to developed countries. The statistics on brain drain for Africa and Zimbabwe are staggering. According to World Bank and United Nations sources, Africa lost 60,000 professionals between 1985 and 1990 and the continent loses 20,000 professionals annually. For Zimbabwe, it is estimated that 500,000 skilled professionals are in the Diaspora. Significantly, USD4 billion is spent annually on the salaries of approximately 100,000 Western expatriates in Sub-Saharan Africa. While acknowledging that reversing brain drain may not always be possible or even desirable, there is emerging consensus that innovative ways have to be found to help those countries buffeted by brain drain to transform it into a ‘brain gain’ for all.
The Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education’s Brain Drain and Human Capital Mobilisation Committee is mandated to deal with the issue of skills shortages wrought about by the ‘brain drain’. As part of this brief, the committee is tasked with exploring various innovative ways in which this ‘brain drain’ can be turned into a ‘brain gain’ for the country. Essentially, the goal of the committee is to keep more professionals here in Zimbabwe while reaping the benefits of expatriate Zimbabweans. To that extent, the committee has identified a number of stakeholders that it is working with in this important mandate. These include UNESCO, UNDP, IOM, ILO, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Academic and Research Network (ZARNET) and various local organizations spanning business, media and government.
The work of the Brain Drain and Human Capital Mobilisation Committee draws largely from the technical input from UNESCO which has conducted a number of studies globally aimed at addressing the effects of brain drain. Of particular significance is UNESCO’s ongoing private-public partnership with Hewlett Packard (HP) in the area of alleviating ‘brain drain’ through what is now known as the UNESCO-HP Brain Gain Initiative. Since 2003, this initiative has launched a number of projects in Europe, Latin America and Africa aimed at ‘reversing the brain drain through mobilisation and internationalisation of human capital in the global economy to enable both the sending and receiving countries benefit from skills and experience of migrating professionals’. The first joint UNESCO-HP project to counter brain drain in Africa was launched in November 2006. Under this “Piloting Solutions for Reversing Brain Drain into Brain Gain for Africa”, the UNESCO-HP partnership aims to help reduce brain drain in Africa by providing grid computing technology to universities in Algeria, Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Zimbabwe. The project aims to re-establish links between researchers who have stayed in their native countries and those that have left, connecting scientists to international colleagues, research networks and funding opportunities. Faculties and students at beneficiary universities will also be able to work on major collaborative research projects with other institutions around the world. To that extent, the Brain Drain and Human Capital Mobilisation Committee is at the centre of implementing this ambitious project in Zimbabwe. Already, the UNESCO-HP partnership has since availed to the committee the ICT equipment critical in launching the brain gain project. The ICT equipment includes high quality HP printers, a server and several desktop computers. According to Dr Washington Mbizvo, the ministry’s Permanent Secretary and Chairman of the Brain Drain and Human Capital Mobilisation Committee, the project will create digital Diasporas thereby linking university researchers who have stayed at home to scientific resources beyond Zimbabwe and to colleagues in the Diaspora. This will be facilitated through grid computing which is based on the same concept as the World Wide Web in that it allows the sharing, processing and storage of huge amounts of data.
From the foregoing, it is clear that the Brain Drain and Human Capital Mobilisation Committee has its work cut out. Brain drain should no longer continue to evoke negative emotions of loss. A multi-stakeholder approach is critical in turning brain drain into brain gain. Going forward, it is this column’s intention to track the progress of the Brain Drain and Human Capital Mobilisation Committee in its important mandate of reversing brain gain and human capital mobilisation for Zimbabwe.
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