MMD government scored the lowest grades ever … way below an “F” when it comes to spending on education as a percentage of GDP. This is according to the recent World Bank Report on Zambian migration – causes and effects. Under the UNIP government, education was a real priority and it averaged between 15-20% as a percentage of GDP.
“The current skill shortage in Zambia is primarily due to inadequate educational infrastructure and cannot be solved merely by restricting skilled emigration. Government expenditure on education is currently only 2% of GDP, the lowest in Africa and well below the 3.4% average level for least developed countries.“ - reveals the Report.
Just how do we expect the country to move forward … with the current scenarios in place, once all the UNIP educated nationals retire, Zambia will have less skilled manpower of any country on the continent. This is because at least 50% of all graduates leave the nation for greener pastures and there seems to be no aggressive action plan to retain them and or repatriate those abroad back home.
The MMD have neglected education since they come to power and it is no wonder the economy has been lagging behind in terms of real GDP growth despite huge FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) inflows ever available. For instance, the World Bank alone has well over $324 million (10 of them worth that much in total) projects in the country but most of these are being run by foreign project managers because no qualified locals are available …
John F Kennedy once said, “…let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation”. For us at the Zambian Chronicle, education is the fuel that powers innovation and poverty thrives on lack of it.
By the time the Mwanawasa administration is over, the MMD would have been in power for 20 years with no new universities, no new colleges; and yet UNIP built all the technical colleges in every province and 2 universities in 2 major hubs within 27 years of leadership.
How can you develop a country despite all the goodwill if the locals have no clue how? It is no wonder 68% of our people are still living below the poverty datum line 16 years after the MMD took office according to the same report … thanks a trillion.
Brainwave R Mumba, Sr.
CEO & President – Zambian Chronicle
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July 14, 2007 at 7:08 pm
WPS4145
Migration from Zambia: Ensuring Temporariness through Cooperation
By: Mohammad Amin* and Aaditya Mattoo**
(World Bank, Washington, DC)
The paper analyzes migration from Zambia in order to understand how migration policy can
support development in the least developed countries. Overall emigration from Zambia is not
high by regional standards but the pattern of migration is skewed towards the skilled and away
from the unskilled. A development-friendly approach to migration for Zambia would strive to
ensure the temporariness of both types of movement. First, industrial countries may be willing to
accept a higher level of unskilled immigration if they could be certain that it was temporary.
Second, any adverse effects of brain drain would be greatly alleviated if skilled emigration was
temporary. The problem is that host countries cannot unilaterally ensure temporariness of
unskilled migration because repatriation cannot be accomplished without the help of source
countries like Zambia, and source countries today have little incentive to facilitate the return of
the unskilled. At the same time, source countries like Zambia cannot unilaterally ensure
temporariness of the skilled because repatriation cannot be accomplished without the help of the
host countries, and host countries currently have little incentive to send back the skilled. Hence,
there is a strong case and considerable scope for cooperation between source countries like
Zambia and destination countries in the design and implementation of migration policy so that
unskilled migration becomes feasible and skilled migration takes a more desirable form.
Keywords: Migration, Brain drain, International Cooperation, Zambia
JEL: F22, F24, O15, O19, O24, O55
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 4145, March 2007
The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the
exchange of ideas about development issues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly,
even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry the names of the authors and should
be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely
those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the view of the World Bank, its Executive Directors,
or the countries they represent. Policy Research Working Papers are available online at
http://econ.worldbank.org.
*Corresponding author, Development Research Group. 1818 H Street NW, MC3-301, World
Bank, Washington DC 20433. Email: mamin@worldbank.org, Phone: 202-473-7147.
**Development Research Group, World Bank, Washington DC 20433. Email:
amattoo@worldbank.org. The paper has benefited from the comments of Jos Veerbek
and an anonymous referee. The research is supported in part by the U.K. Department for
International Development.
1
Migration from Zambia: Ensuring Temporariness through Cooperation
Overview
Overall emigration from Zambia is not high by regional standards but the pattern
of migration in Zambia is skewed towards the skilled. Even though international
migration offers potentially large benefits to sending and receiving countries, industrial
receiving countries have shown little interest in liberalizing the inward flow of the
unskilled while being relatively open to the entry of the skilled. The total stock of
Zambians living in the OECD countries is estimated at 27 per 10,000 of Zambia’s
population, an emigration rate far below that of many other African countries, such as
Kenya (56) and Zimbabwe (47). Currently, about 10% of all tertiary educated Zambians
live outside Zambia as compared to over 18% for Eastern Africa. The emigration rate
amongst the tertiary educated is about 35 times that for the secondary educated in
Zambia, while for most other African countries the ratio is below 10. The main reason for
this is the low level of unskilled migration from Zambia.
A development friendly migration policy for Zambia would strive to ensure
temporariness. On the one hand, industrial countries may be willing to accept a higher
level of unskilled immigration if they could be certain that it was temporary. On the
other hand, concerns about brain drain in a source country like Zambia would be greatly
alleviated if emigration was temporary. The problem is that host countries cannot
unilaterally ensure temporariness of unskilled migration because repatriation cannot be
accomplished without the cooperation of the source. And source countries cannot
unilaterally ensure temporariness of the skilled because repatriation cannot be
accomplished without the cooperation of the host. Hence, there is a strong case for
Zambia to cooperate with destination countries in the design and implementation of
migration policy so that unskilled migration becomes feasible and skilled migration more
desirable.
Zambia may be able to promote more migration of the unskilled if it takes
measures, in cooperation with the receiving countries, to ensure that such migration
is temporary. Bilateral agreements on these lines have been successfully implemented
between the Caribbean and Canada, Ecuador and Spain and Poland and Germany.
Zambia would agree to help with the selection and screening of migrants, provide
necessary pre-departure training and cooperate to ensure timely return. Aversion to
unskilled immigration in the receiving countries may be reduced through agreements that
ensure temporariness.
Although the rate of skilled migration is not high in Zambia, the impact is
significant given the country’s limited capacity to generate human capital. The
adverse effects of brain drain are typically larger when the country has limited human
capital and limited capacity to train professionals. Both these concerns are valid for
Zambia especially in the healthcare sector. For example, there are only 12 physicians per
2
100,000 of population in the country, which is lower than the least developed country
average of 18 per 100,000. New health graduates in Zambia number only 7 per 100,000
population which is 8th lowest in Africa and the World. In terms of the stock of tertiary
educated in all disciplines, Zambia’s performance is average by regional standards. It
ranks 17th among 29 African countries and 5th among 10 SADC countries.
The current skill shortage in Zambia is primarily due to inadequate educational
infrastructure and cannot be solved merely by restricting skilled emigration.
Government expenditure on education is currently only 2% of GDP, the lowest in Africa
and well below the 3.4% average level for least developed countries. The problem of low
expenditure is compounded by the way it is allocated. Students in health and welfare
constitute about 3% of all students at the tertiary level in Zambia - only 7 countries in the
world have a lower percentage. Restricting the outflow of the skilled will help address the
existing shortages in Zambia only to a limited extent. For example, it is estimated that
about 300 Zambian doctors practice abroad while the estimated shortage to meet the
basic WHO recommended standards stands at 1654 doctors.
Zambia has taken steps towards retention and voluntary return of those settled
abroad but these schemes have had only limited success. The recent National
Employment and Labor Market Policy (NELMP) specifically addresses emigration and
seeks to attract skilled Zambians home by facilitating their return and reintegration and
providing better working conditions. The country also launched a “bonding” system
which requires all Zambians who are awarded a publicly funded scholarship to sign an
agreement to return after the completion of their studies. Complementary schemes
include the IOM’s Return of Qualified Africans (RQAN) and efforts by Migration for
Development in Africa (MIDA). These schemes have had limited success because they
require those already settled abroad to return and those who could go abroad to stay in
return for certain economic and moral incentives. However, the strong economic motives
which propel much of skilled emigration from Zambia tend to dominate the material and
moral incentives to return. These problems apply also to exchange programs of the kind
negotiated between the U.K. and South Africa. One alternative is to make receiving
countries pay Zambia for the Zambian professionals they recruit.
Similarly, compensation by host countries like the UK for Zambian skilled
immigrants has proved difficult to negotiate and assistance to build training
capacity may be a more feasible solution. Private firms in the receiving countries are
often the main beneficiaries of skilled immigration, especially when public healthcare
systems (like the NHS in the United Kingdom) exercise restraint in recruitment. A
compensation scheme is then a de facto transfer from taxpayers in the receiving country
to these firms, which may not be politically feasible. There are also problems with
identifying the right level of compensation especially due to the large positive
externalities arising from the presence of skilled professionals. A better strategy would be
for host countries to provide aid to enhance training capacity in Zambia which need not
be linked to the numbers emigrating. However, aid for training will need to be
complemented by a for a more development friendly migration regime.
3
The adverse effects on Zambia of brain drain could be alleviated if skilled migration
were temporary rather than permanent. Migration offers an opportunity to earn higher
income and learn new skills in the host countries. Savings from higher income are a
potential source of investment in Zambia while the skills acquired abroad are a substitute
for costly training at home. But permanent migrants have less incentive to remit earnings
while temporary migrants bring their savings home on return. Similarly, compared to
permanent migration, temporary migration offers a larger number of individuals the
opportunity to learn while abroad and transfer knowledge and skills to others in Zambia
on their return. This circulation enhances the global stock of human capital and the
benefits can be appropriately shared by the sending and receiving countries. These
benefits of temporary over permanent migration are lost under other schemes which are
based on permanent migration or no-migration.
But temporary migration of the skilled cannot be achieved unilaterally by Zambia
and requires cooperation with destination countries in the framework of a bilateral
agreement. Today most temporary migration schemes in the OECD countries are in fact
stepping stones to permanent migration. The exceptions are certain managed migration
schemes, such as the agreement between Poland and the Netherlands on the temporary
movement of nurses and the Seasonal Agricultural Worker’s Scheme implemented by the
U.K. for temporary visits by university students in agriculture. A commitment to
repatriate by the host, e.g. through granting non-extendable visas, can be based either on
self-interest or generosity. In some cases, receiving countries find it difficult to
implement temporariness of the skilled even when it is the socially preferred outcome.
Firms and natives of the receiving countries often invest in the migrants through, for
example, costly training or relationships. Once such investments are made they are in the
nature of sunk costs and the continued presence of the migrant is required to reap the
benefits of the investments. The government of the receiving country is then forced to
grant such migrants permanent residence although ideally it prefers no-investment and
temporary migration only. In these cases sending countries such as Zambia can help
ensure temporariness through a bilateral treaty clearly ruling out permanent residence. In
other cases, the receiving countries prefer permanent over temporary migration
irrespective of the nature of relationship-specific investments. These cases relate to the
highly skilled professions involving long and extensive training periods. Ensuring
temporariness here is more difficult and Zambia must rely on the goodwill of the
receiving countries to repatriate its brains.
Facilitating the temporary movement of both the skilled and unskilled is
accomplished more easily in a bilateral than regional or multilateral context.
Existing international agreements on labor mobility, such as the WTO’s General
Agreement on Trade in Services, have failed to do better because they seek primarily to
induce host countries to make commitments to allow entry. Such an approach is
currently ill-suited to unskilled migration because there is no provision for source
countries like Zambia undertaking binding commitments on screening, selection and
facilitating repatriation. The approach is also ill-suited for skilled migration because it
does not enable host countries to undertake binding commitments to ensure
temporariness of skilled personnel from countries like Zambia. In the absence of a
4
dramatic change in the multilateral framework, a development-friendly approach to
manage migration is more easily developed in a bilateral context.
5
Migration in Zambia
Migration pressure in Zambia
International migration is fuelled by economic and socio-political factors typically
classified as push and pull factors. The push factors include: poor socio-economic living
conditions, unemployment, drops in real income, currency devaluation and rising cost of
living, professional isolation, tribal/ethnic discrimination against the qualifications held
and competition with expatriates. The pull factors include higher salaries, greater job
mobility and professional career; fewer bureaucratic controls, higher standards of living;
acquisition of higher skills, foreign scholarships and educational support, active presence
of recruitment agents and network effects. These factors work in tandem with each other
in generating migratory flows. In a formal empirical study, Hatton and Williamson
(2001) analyze the push-pull factors for the sub-Saharan African countries and find that
the real wage gaps between sending and receiving countries and the demographic booms
in the low-wage sending regions are the two most important factors in driving migration.
The study also notes that the situation in the region is similar to the one in Europe in the
late 19th century which fuelled mass migration.
Emigration from Zambia is mostly driven by the economic motives mentioned
above with little role of civil unrest, security concerns, etc., as the country has enjoyed
peace and stability since its independence. Fears of mass emigration from Zambia (and
continental Africa) to the rich developed countries seem unfounded at least for the
present. In fact, African countries show lower levels of labor mobility than others. Table
1 illustrates the point.
Table 1: Migrants per 10,000 of source country population in 2000
OECD USA Canada UK France Switzerland Netherlands
Angola 87.3 1.7 1.1 2.5 4.6 2.7 2.0
Botswana 15.8 5.9 0.2 6.0 0.7 0.1 0.4
Congo, DR 18.0 0.9 1.1 1.1 3.3 0.6 0.7
Lesotho 3.3 0.5 0.3 1.3 0.1 0.4 0.2
Malawi 11.0 1.1 0.3 8.9 0.0 0.0 0.1
Mozambique 33.7 0.8 0.5 1.5 0.4 0.4 0.2
Namibia 10.6 0.5 0.9 3.9 0.4 0.7 0.4
South Africa 61.1 11.1 6.2 20.5 0.3 0.9 1.2
Swaziland 18.0 9.4 0.7 4.9 0.0 0.4 0.3
Tanzania 18.1 2.7 5.2 8.5 0.1 0.2 0.2
Zambia 26.5 4.3 1.4 16.1 0.1 0.2 0.3
Zimbabwe 47.1 6.5 2.2 27.1 0.2 0.4 0.4
All SADC 35.2 4.1 2.9 9.7 1.3 0.7 0.7
Africa 55.9 8.0 2.8 7.7 17.8 0.8 2.9
World 94.0 40.0 7.7 5.8 6.2 2.3 2.1
Source: Docquier & Marfouk (2004).
6
The table shows that the emigration rate from Zambia is lower than the African
average but comparable to the average in Southern Africa. A case study of Zambia may,
therefore, help understand migration issues in Southern Africa and our findings may also
be relevant to other parts of the world.1
It is well known that overall migration rates do not convey the full picture of the
possible impact of migration and the structure of migration is critical. The first element
of the structure is the composition of migrants by their skill or the level of education.
Table 2 provides a snapshot of this.
Table2: Emigration rates by education in 2000 for SADC countries:
Migrants as % of all educated (natives plus migrants) in each category
Secondary Tertiary
Primary educated educated educated
Angola 2.10 3.40 25.60
Botswana 0.10 0.80 2.10
Congo, Dem. Rep. 0.10 0.50 7.90
Lesotho 0.00 0.10 2.4
Malawi 0.00 0.80 9.40
Mozambique 0.50 5.80 42.00
Namibia 0.10 0.20 3.40
South Africa 0.40 0.50 5.40
Swaziland 0.20 0.20 5.80
Tanzania 0.10 1.00 15.80
Zambia 0.10 0.30 10.00
Zimbabwe 0.20 0.70 7.60
Source: Docquier & Marfouk (2004).
The table shows that tertiary educated Zambians living abroad equal 10% of all
tertiary educated Zambians in the country and abroad. This rate is not too high when
compared to other African countries although it is higher than many countries outside the
African continent. For comparison, the corresponding rate stood at 6.2% (Northern
Africa), 13.3% (Central Africa), 26.7% (Western Africa), 18.4% (Eastern Africa) and
5.3% (Southern Africa). For the South-Central Asia region, it equaled 5.1% and 4.3% for
the Eastern Asia region.
1The argument holds when we look at the unskilled and skilled emigration rates separately. For skilled
workers, Zambia’s emigration rate is comparable to those of Malawi, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, South Africa,
Cote d’Ivoire, Congo (D.R). For unskilled workers, Namibia, Tanzania, Congo (D.R), Ethiopia, Kenya,
Madagascar show roughly similar rates of emigration as Zambia.
7
Overall emigration rates to the For Zambia the percentage of its
developed rich countries are tertiary educated citizens living
lower in Africa relative to rest of abroad is moderate by African
the world. For Zambia these rates standards but much higher than
are low even by African many countries outside Africa.
standards.
With most of the attention focused on skilled migration, migration of the
unskilled (and the semi-skilled) has been largely neglected. However, as Winters et.al
(2002) point out, welfare gains at the global level are likely to be larger from liberalizing
this form of migration relative to the high-skilled. However, migration of the unskilled is
one area where Zambia has lacked behind most of the other countries. Table 2 shows that
the migration rate of the primary educated (unskilled) is only 0.1%. The corresponding
figures for other regions are: 2.3% (Northern Africa), 0.3% (Western Africa, Southern
Africa), 0.2% (Eastern Africa), 2.8% (Western Asia) and 0.5% (South-Central Asia).
Similarly, migration rate of the secondary educated (semi-skilled) is also low for Zambia
at 0.3% relative to other African countries as shown in the table. Low emigration rates for
the unskilled and semi-skilled coupled with moderate level for the skilled has skewed
Zambia’s migration structure in favor of the highly educated. The following graphs
illustrate the point.
Tertiary to Secondary migration rate: 2000
35.0
30.0
25.0
20.0
15.0
10.0
5.0
0.0
ccoor ba i i
de il aib
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Congo, uineaG
Mo yp andawR und aila
Ni m ibout iusit soro
urB abonG udanS m andli
m
So Dj aur Za
M Co azwS
Eg Cape
8
Tertiary to Primary emigration rate: 2000
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
aireg ba
Ar arieg l e il a da a s aib
ega
Al t,py Ni enS rdeV erio Ma nob ayn liaa ituo euqi aibi
ep Iv’d arre Ch ani aerti alog racs roo m
Si ehT,aib anitir adn alirot anikr m
Bu Ga Ke moS Er jibD An m
Na Za
Eg Ca teoC m au Rwa
M uaqE anzT mbaz aga Co
ad
Ga Mo M
Migration of the unskilled: an opportunity for Zambia
It is important to recognize that the main cause of Zambia’s skewed composition is not
that too many of the skilled but that too few of the unskilled migrating. Clearly,
facilitating the emigration of the unskilled to areas where they have better economic
opportunities is desirable. What can Zambia do to achieve this given the highly restrictive
immigration policies in richer countries?
One reason for the aversion on the part of the receiving countries is their inability
to keep this form of migration truly temporary. Guest worker schemes implemented in
the past were intended to fill temporary shortages in host country’s labor markets. The
attractiveness of these schemes to host countries lay primarily in their temporariness
because unlike permanent migration, temporary migration is more flexible, imposes less
burden on the pubic exchequer (like schooling for migrants’ children, old-age pension,
etc.) and does not threaten the socio-cultural-political structure of the host country.
However, the system based on guest worker schemes failed to develop into an efficient
and dynamic migration regime precisely because it had no in built mechanism to ensure
timely return of the migrants and temporariness remained a distant dream. That the issue
of timely return is important to host countries is reflected in the new generation of
bilateral agreements. For example, the agreement between Spain and Ecuador signed in
2001 specifically requires that before seasonal workers are hired, they shall sign a
commitment to return to Ecuador when their permit expires (Article 12).
There are also examples of some success stories such as the Canadian Seasonal
Agricultural Worker Programme (SAWP). The program started in 1966 and has since
evolved in size and geographic reach. For instance, over the last 20 years the intake
increased from just under 6000 in 1980 to 18,700 in 2003. Another successful case is the
“German contract worker scheme”. The German scheme is implemented through a series
of bilateral agreements with Eastern and Central European countries and is perhaps one
of the biggest in the world. A key element in both these success stories is the involvement
9
of sending countries with specific obligations and rights over matters related to the
selection and screening of migrants, migrant’s rights in the host country, and above all,
ensuring their return. For example, the German scheme delegates the responsibility of
recruitment and timely return to the sending country. Anecdotal evidence suggests that
the cost of ensuring temporariness is considerably reduced with the effective cooperation
of source countries. In fact, the experience so far suggests that it is almost impossible to
maintain temporariness without the involvement of the source countries. An important
reason for this is that source countries have a natural advantage in the recruitment process
and in facilitating timely return. Source countries have better information than host
countries about migrants’ backgrounds for security purposes, their qualifications and
training for better job matching, and local labor market conditions, all of which can help
with recruitment. Repatriation of those caught living abroad illegally would be extremely
costly without the source country’s cooperation as such migrants often destroy their
passports and other legal documents making it difficult even to ascertain their nationality.
Lastly, the source country’s involvement will also help to ensure that due consideration is
given to the rights of (illegal) migrants and that the system is not subject to abuse.
Unskilled migration offers large Zambia should take initiatives
social benefits to the sending unilaterally and bilaterally with
countries which may dwarf those destination countries to keep
from migration of the skilled. migration of the unskilled truly
But Zambia lags far behind other temporary. Such brand-Zambia
countries in this form of unskilled migration may create its
migration. own demand.
Sending countries such as Zambia can play an important role in liberalizing the
migration of the unskilled. However, it is important to realize that in order to do so they
must shed their focus on somehow getting host countries to open their borders and
instead provide a credible case of ensuring temporariness either on their own or in
cooperation with the host countries. With low-cost temporary migration arrangements in
place, demand may grow from labor-scarce richer countries.
10
Box 1. A model agreement for the migration of the unskilled
A: Host country obligations
1) Inform Zambia about the number of guest workers needed.
2) Prepare the work contract before the migrant departs which specifies the duration of stay,
wage rate, working hours and working conditions, other benefits and basic rights to which the
migrant may be entitled.
3) Facilitate the processing of contracts and obtaining visa.
4) Give preference to those workers who returned on time in the past.
5) Prohibit employers who violated contracts in the past from participating in the program.
B: Source country obligations
1) Set up an agency to which prospective migrants can submit their applications.
2) Provide necessary help with the screening, selection, recruitment and pre-departure
orientation of the migrants.
3) Position a liaison officer in the receiving country to monitor the migrants and the fulfillment
of the terms in the contract.
4) Ensure the timely return of migrants through monitoring and variety of mechanisms such as
withholding of a part of the migrant’s income till he returns, “bonding system” with punitive
measures, reintegration programs such tax exemptions on return, provision of information on
job vacancies, skill training, micro-credit schemes for housing and small business loans. Since
some of these measures such as withholding income may be subject to abuse by the
employers, the agreement should clearly specify which government agencies or third parties
such as the IOM would implement them.
C: Potential benefits from the agreement
1) As the source country, Zambia has a natural advantage in the process of selection,
recruitment and pre-departure orientation. Cost savings to employers and host countries
through this channel have been an important factor in the success of previous efforts such as
the German contract worker scheme.
2) Ensuring timely return is costly to the host but this cost can be considerably reduced
through the involvement of source by way of monitoring, provision of information and a
streamlined system of repatriating the overstayers.
3) Host offers safe, secure and stable employment opportunities which the source cannot
achieve on its own. The host gets truly temporary migration which is safe, orderly and can be
adjusted to the condition of its labor market.
11
Box 2. Past experience with managing temporary migration of the unskilled
A number of initiatives have been taken at the unilateral and bilateral levels which incorporate
elements of the model agreement listed above. The main strength of these initiatives is the degree
of organization and control they offer: they provide effective instruments for monitoring the
movement of workers, ensuring their safety and protection, and facilitating return. Some examples
are as follows.
The Philippines Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) and the Overseas Workers
Welfare Administration (OWWA) provide a number of services which facilitate orderly migration
and enhance the gains from migration to all concerned. The agencies conduct intensified skills
training and development training programs to improve the competitiveness of Filipino citizens.
Foreign employers are able to recruit Filipino workers once their accreditation documents are
verified by labor officers stationed abroad and authenticated by embassy officials. Employment
contracts are scrutinized to ensure decent pay and working conditions. Return migration is
facilitated through a number of reintegration schemes in place. These schemes cover both social
and economic aspects, provide counseling to migrants and their families, skills training,
educational assistance for children, micro-credit assistance and investment advice.
The Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) is a highly successful
scheme and is often cited as model for similar agreements. The main reason behind this success is
the fact that all parties concerned are assigned specific obligations and have a mutual interest in
fulfilling these obligations. These parties include Human Resources and Skills Development
Canada (the federal employment and labor ministry), Citizenship and Immigration Canada,
Provincial governments, signatory foreign governments, employers and industry organizations
(such as FARMS), the liaison officer stationed in Canada by the sending countries, IOM, etc. The
local employment office is responsible for approving the offer of employment to foreign workers
and transmitting the orders to other participating groups, obtaining the employer’s signature on the
employment contracts and sending them to the liaison office. The liaison officer facilitates the
recruitment of workers, audits pay, attends to problems on site, coordinates movement of workers
with travel agencies, etc. Cooperation by employers, liaison officer and embassy officials greatly
helps in the timely return of the migrants.
12
Migration of the skilled and brain drain
The issue of brain drain has received extensive attention especially in the African context.
From the source country’s point of view, brain drain is a problem because it deprives the
poor sending countries of valuable skills, there is increased burden on the public
exchequer since in many poor countries higher education is publicly funded, and critical
shortages are beginning to emerge in key sectors such as healthcare and education.
The seriousness of these concerns cannot be dismissed even for a country with a
moderate level of brain drain such as Zambia. The reason for this is that even a moderate
rate of brain drain can have a significant impact on the economy if the country is initially
scarce in human resources, has limited capacity (educational infrastructure) to produce
highly skilled professionals or if emigration is concentrated in key sectors such as
healthcare and education. In fact, the rate of brain drain tends to be higher in African
countries with a lower initial stock of professionals. The picture is similar when we
include other countries (Appendix B).
Skilled migration and Human Capital in Africa: 2000
70
ed)likslal 60
of 50
%(
edliks 40
ofetar 30
20
oni
atrgimE 10 Zambia
0
0.00 0.05 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.25 0.30
Tetiary educated (migrants and non-migrants) per 100 population of source country
Zambia has limited capacity to produce professionals and has a low initial stock of
professionals even by African standards. We provide some evidence on this after briefly
describing the nature of health skills drain from the country.
Hard data on migrants by their profession is not easily available for many
receiving countries. Existing work on Zambia is largely based on guestimates and
anecdotal evidence which relate mainly to the health professionals. These data estimate
the total number of Zambian doctors abroad at 300 or about 46% of those currently
working in the country’s public sector (MoH, 2005). According to the Nursing and
Midwifery Council of the United Kingdom, a total of 461 Zambian nurses were recruited
between 1998-2003 which constitutes about 7.6% of those currently employed in
13
Zambia’s public sector and about 14% of Zambia’s annual flow of nursing graduates. The
following graph shows Zambia’s position relative to other countries in the supply of
nurses to the UK..
Nurses recruited in the UK in 2001 :
per million population of source country
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Philipines Botswana Mauritius SouthAfrica Zimbabwe Zambia Singapore Ghana Jordan Malawi Kenya Nigeria Pakistan Malaysia India
Zambia is clearly amongst the main suppliers of nurses to the U.K. and there is a
clear upward trend since the late 1990s. The total number of nurses in the UK from
Zambia increased from 15 in 1998/99 to 135 by 2002/03 implying that Zambia’s share in
total foreign nurses in the U.K. increased from 0.3% to 1.13%. Clearly, some corrective
steps should be taken to ensure that the trend does not translate into a health crisis in
Zambia. Anecdotal evidence on shortages of health professionals is also worrying. For
example, a recent study by IOM (2005) noted that international migration of the health
workers, mainly to Britain and the United States, has exacerbated staff shortages at major
hospitals such as the Ndola Central Hospital. The hospital requires 567 nurses but there
are only 133 staff left to provide nursing services. The Ndola School of Nursing, which
should be staffed with 27 tutors, is left with only three causing a decline in nursing
graduation rates. (Later in the section we take a closer look at the graduation rates of
healthcare professionals in Zambia relative to other countries.)
We next provide evidence on Zambia’s performance in producing skilled
professionals. We believe that this is important not just in itself but also for a better
understanding of the likely impact of skilled migration. Table 3 shows Zambia’s
endowment of human capital.
14
Table 3: Human Capital in 2000: SADC countries
Average
% of Average years of Average Average
population years of primary years of years of
with no schooling schooling secondary tertiary
primary per per schooling schooling
education capita capita per capita per capita
Botswana 24.0 6.279 4.762 1.416 0.100
Congo, DR 47.7 3.03 2.374 0.619 0.038
Lesotho 28.8 4.232 3.628 0.568 0.036
Malawi 40.7 3.204 3.017 0.170 0.017
Mozambique 63.8 1.105 0.983 0.117 0.005
South Africa 22.1 6.138 4.590 1.353 0.195
Swaziland 21.7 6.010 5.016 0.880 0.114
Tanzania 42.8 2.705 2.515 0.161 0.029
Zambia 17.3 5.457 4.296 1.113 0.047
Zimbabwe 12.7 5.354 3.456 1.775 0.123
Source: Barro and Lee
.
Zambia’s performance in generating human capital is mixed. In 1980 Zambia ranked 2nd
in the set of 28 African countries for which data is available and first in the set of
countries included in Table 3 in terms of the average years of schooling per capita with
the absolute value being 3.9. However, in terms of tertiary schooling per capita, in 1980 it
ranked second from bottom within the SADC countries in the table and 4th from bottom
in the set of 28 African countries with the absolute value being .006. From Table 3 we
can see that both these absolute values have increased significantly in 2000 but Zambia’s
performance relative to other countries is mixed. It’s rank in the set of all African
countries for overall schooling has slipped to 6th in 2000 and 4th within SADC countries.
For tertiary education, the country’s rank has improved to 17th within Africa (29
countries) and to 5th within SADC. The improvement in tertiary education
notwithstanding, Zambia continues to be an average performer in the continent and
within SADC.
A similar picture emerges when we look at the number of physicians in the
country (Table 4), another indicator of skill availability. Currently there are .116
physicians per 1000 population in Zambia which is 6th lowest among the SADC countries
in the table. Comparable figures stood at 1.6 (World in 1998), and 0.179 (least developed
countries as per UN classification in 2004).
15
Table 4: Physicians in Africa: 2004
Physicians per 1000
population
Botswana 0.398
Congo, DR 0.107
Lesotho 0.049
Malawi 0.022
Mozambique 0.027
South Africa 0.770
Swaziland 0.158
Tanzania 0.123
Zambia 0.116
Zimbabwe 0.161
Source: WDI, World Bank. Figure for Lesotho is for 2003 and 2002
for Tanzania.
In terms of the educational infrastructure for healthcare, Zambia currently has
only one medical school, three nursing schools, and three technical colleges graduating
doctors, nurses, and laboratory technicians, and pharmacists respectively. In 2004, these
schools produced only 49 doctors, 540 nurses, 20 pharmacists and 38 laboratory
technicians which sum to 693 healthcare professionals. Data provided by the United
Nations on the number of students graduating in healthcare & welfare per capita show
that Zambia ranks 8th from bottom in a sample of 101 countries in the world and same in
the set of 27 African countries (see the next graph). These graduation rates are not only
low by international standards but also inadequate to sustain acceptable standards of
healthcare. For example, to meet the basic WHO recommendations on staff-population
ratios (1:5000 for doctors and 1:700 for nurses) Zambia would require an additional
1,654 doctors and 10,636 nurses which equal about 34 and 20 times the respective annual
graduation rates (MoH, 2005).
Zambia’s performance in
generating skilled professionals has
improved significantly over the last
two decades. However, the country
still remains an average performer
by African standards and is not
equipped to meet its own needs.
16
Annual Healthcare & Welfare graduation rate: per 1000 population over 1998-03
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0.07
0
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What is the solution?
The solution to the skill shortage and brain drain related problems in Zambia must go to
the root of the problem. The main reason for the shortages in Zambia is the country’s low
capacity to produce skilled professionals although migration of the skilled tends to
aggravate the problem. We suggest two broad principles for the design of an optimal
solution to the skill situation in the country.
? Increased investment in human capital
The primary solution to the shortage lies in producing more skilled workers. Even
in healthcare, emigration restrictions are unlikely to solve the problem though they may
have some impact. For example, the estimated shortage of doctors to meet the WHO
recommendations is about 1654 which is approximately 5.5 times the estimated number
of Zambian doctors practicing abroad. As in most developing countries, higher education
in Zambia depends critically on financial support from the government. Low incomes and
credit constraints deter most students from seeking costly private education. For
example, a recent survey conducted by the Government to assess the state of primary
education in the country revealed that the majority of children who did not attend primary
school cited financial difficulty as the main reason.2 Investment in education must not be
undermined by the cap imposed on public expenditure. Current public spending on
education by the Zambian government is low even by African standards.
2Zambia DHS EdData Survey 2002, Education Data for Decision Making.
17
Table 5: Government Expenditure on
Education in 2000 for SADC countries
As % of GDP
Angola 2.61
Botswana 2.15
Lesotho 10.11
Malawi 4.14
Mozambique 2.36
South Africa 5.58
Swaziland 6.2
Tanzania 2.17
Zambia 1.99
Zimbabwe 4.70
Source: WDI, World Bank,. Figure for Botswana is for 2001 and for
Mozambique and Tanzania for 1999.
Zambia’s expenditure on education as a % of GDP is the lowest amongst the countries
shown. For Sub-Saharan Africa, the corresponding figure stood at 3.4 while for the least
developed countries at 2.9. In addition to the low spending on education, there are some
concerns that resources may not be suitably distributed across various disciplines. The
following graph illustrates the point.
Students in Zambia by Discipline (1998/99)
Agriculture
Engineering, 2%
manufacturing and Health and welfare
construction 3% Education
22% 32%
Science
8%
Humanities and arts
1%
Social sciences, business
and law
32%
18
The graph shows that Zambia is not doing enough to generate more health care
workers. As compared to only 3% of the students in health and welfare, the
corresponding figure for most of the other countries is much higher. For example, the
figure stood at 22% (Angola), 8% (Benin), 11% (Ethiopia), 9% (Kenya, Swaziland), 11%
(Mongolia). For all the countries for which data is available, Zambia outperforms only 7
countries: Tanzania, Poland, Uganda, Bangladesh, Samoa, Sierra Leone and Bangladesh
(data available for 73 countries).
Building capacity for greater human capital generation is a long-term and costly
process. Given the current cap on public expenditure in Zambia, donor countries can help
through aid and loans which could be tied to investment in higher education for
healthcare and other critical professional training.
Emigration restrictions are not a Zambia’s public expenditure on
substitute for building capacity for education in amongst the lowest
human capital generation in in Africa. There are some
Zambia. For example, the estimated concerns that even this meager
shortage of doctors to meet the expenditure is not properly
basic WHO recommendation is 5.5 distributed across various
times the number of Zambian disciplines.
doctors practicing abroad.
Migration of the skilled must also be managed properly based on the current
shortages of professionals in Zambia and potential benefits offered by such migration.
The question which arises is precisely what does proper management of migration of the
skilled entail for Zambia?
? Emigration restrictions, retention, voluntary return
A number of countries including Zambia have attempted a range of policies to
stem excessive outward flows of the skilled and bring back those who have moved
abroad. Direct restrictions on emigration have been rare in Zambia and elsewhere. The
government of Zambia recently issued a National Employment and Labor Market Policy
(NELMP) which specifically factors in migration. The stated objective of the policy is to
attract skilled Zambians back home by facilitating their return (integration) and
improving the conditions of employment. Zambia has also implemented a “bonding”
system which requires that all Zambians who are awarded a publicly funded scholarship
have to sign an agreement before leaving the country to return after the completion of
their studies. International organizations such as the IOM have implemented programs to
encourage return migration. Initially IOM launched the Return of Qualified African
Nationals (RQAN) program which was a voluntary scheme that African nationals in
Europe and the USA could benefit from if they wanted to return to the continent. Zambia
was singled out as one of the target countries. The scheme has now been replaced by
Migration for Development in Africa (MIDA), a partnership of the African Union, the
African Development Bank and several sub-regional bodies such as ECOWAS, SADC
19
and EAC. MIDA aims to bring the skills of African migrants in Europe and North
America to bear in development projects in Africa.3
These schemes are commendable and they should be pursued in the future.
However, there is some concern about their effectiveness. While there is no systematic
evaluation of the efficacy of these polices, anecdotal evidence suggests that their success
has been modest. We believe that the limited success could be due to the following two
reasons. Firstly, where punitive measures have been used (eg., bonding scheme), they
have been too modest to make any significant impact on permanent outflows of the
brains. A recent study by the IOM noted that “the bonding system has never worked
effectively in practice. A major problem is the lack of monitoring and the difficulty of
enforcing the bonding agreement” (IOM, 2005, page 65). Secondly, permanent settlement
abroad requires substantial sunk cost by the migrant which once made makes return
migration more costly. Most of the schemes discussed above do little to prevent this from
happening. They target those who are already settled abroad and seek to achieve a
temporary rather than permanent return.
? Compensation
One idea which has gained some ground in the recent past is that the receiving
countries should compensate the sending countries for the cost incurred by the latter in
training those who leave. The compensation could be monetary or take the form of
training schools established by the host in the sending countries for the would-be
migrants.
So far such ideas have not found much application and negotiations between the UK
and Zambia have floundered on the issue of compensation. Host countries are typically
averse to compensations in any form. This is not too different from what we observe in
other areas such as trade negotiations where cooperation typically takes the form of
reciprocal reductions in trade barriers and monetary compensations are rarely observed.
There are other problems too. Firstly, agreement on the right level of compensation can
be complicated. For example, source countries incur costs not only in providing technical
education but also primary and secondary education. Should the host compensate for
these costs also? Secondly, in most developing countries there are strong externalities
from education. The direct cost of training does not adequately reflect the opportunity
cost of skilled emigration to the source. Simply, if there were no externalities then there
would be no need to manage migration as selfish individual motives would be consistent
with social welfare maximization. The problem is that these opportunity costs are hard to
evaluate Thirdly, a notable feature of skilled migration is that it is not only that the
highly skilled leave but it is the best among them who leave. A fair compensation scheme
would require transfer amounts linked to the innate abilities of those who migrate which
is perhaps too complicated. Fourthly, much of the benefit from skilled immigration is
appropriated by the employing firms in the host country. Compensation by the
government (of the host country) implies a transfer of resources from the government
3 There are other ways in which migration can be made more development-friendly. Examples include
facilitating remittance transfers, dealing with double-taxation, and increasing the portability of pension and
health insurance schemes across countries. We do not address these issues here because it is not clear if
there is a direct link between such measures and the composition of migration (skilled vs. unskilled and
temporary vs. permanent) which is the main focus of the paper.
20
(taxpayers) to the firms. This has obvious distributional implications which may not be
politically feasible. One solution could be to tax the employers for hiring immigrant
workers. However, this is equivalent to a discriminatory tax on immigrant income which
has little history of success.
Establishing training schools which are funded by the host country government is
another option. In principle, such measures can reduce some of the adverse effects of
brain drain on the source country but they too have limitations. In fact, the problems
mentioned in the previous paragraph with compensation schemes apply as much to
training would-be migrants in the source country. For example, we may ask if the host
should establish primary schools also since those who migrate embody primary education
as well. Additionally, a drawback of relying on compensation and training schemes alone
is that they promote permanent migration at least indirectly since they do not impose any
requirement of temporariness. As we argue below, temporary migration can deliver
additional benefits to source without significant cost to the host when compared to
permanent migration. Thus, compensation cum training schemes are best seen as
complimentary to a temporary migration regime.
Migration as a Supplement
One possibility is that the opportunity to work abroad could be used to induce
professionals to serve a minimum number of years in priority areas such as the public
sector and underserved rural regions. The scheme can be easily implemented in
collaboration with the host countries where emigration clearance would require evidence
of service in certain priority sectors and regions so marked by the source country. The
scheme is not too different from a tax on emigration since working in the priority sectors
entails lower wages and/or poorer working conditions. Of course, this will not solve the
problem of brain drain completely but ensure that the sending country gets at least
something in return for losing the skilled and it also helps to channel resources
(professionals) to priority areas without any additional burden on the government
expenditure.
Emigration restrictions, retention
& voluntary return schemes,
compensation through monetary But these are at best complimentary
transfers or establishment of measures since they do not exploit
training schools can help in the benefits to source from a truly
reducing the adverse effects of temporary migration regime.
brain drain on the source country.
? Exchange programs
Motivated by concerns on the part of source countries about brain drain, some host
countries are actively promoting short term visits by professionals of developing
21
countries to gain valuable expertise and experience. One example of this is the recently
concluded bilateral agreement between South Africa and the U.K. which provides
healthcare professionals a chance to go on time-limited placements to the other country.
The proposed benefits are expected to arise from better information sharing and expertise
in areas such as public health, professional regulation, workforce planning, public-private
partnerships and hospital twinning initiatives. The agreement is a two-way arrangement
with specific obligations undertaken by both the countries. It was motivated in part by
concerns of brain drain raised by South Africa resulting from Britain’s policy of active
recruitment of health professionals in South Africa.
The problem with exchange programs is that they are limited in scope and do not
address the strong push-pull factors driving current migration. For example, the bilateral
agreement between South Africa and the UK has no provision of ensuring return of those
health care professionals who are not part of the exchange program. Further, it is unlikely
that the push-pull factors which fuel migration will to any significant extent be diluted by
the proposed exchange program. In other words, an effective strategy to combat brain
drain must adequately factor in the demand-supply mechanics operating through the
global labor market. This brings us to our proposed solution which seeks to address the
major concerns and problems discussed above.
? Temporary migration
We noted that many of the concerns raised by skilled migration in source
countries could be reduced if the duration of migration were appropriate. In
understanding the difference between temporary and permanent migration it is important
to note that a mere rotation of migrants under a temporary scheme does not in itself create
any extra benefits to either country as compared to permanent migration. If anything, the
turnover costs are likely to be higher with constant rotation of workers. To fix ideas
consider the case of Zambian
July 17, 2007 at 5:40 pm
It is true that expenditure on education has been bad under the MMD. Something serious needs to be done about this
July 17, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Kevin,
… is evident as can be seen by the Times Editorial two days later that our message was heard … thanks a trillion
http://allafrica.com/stories/200707160520.html
Zambia: Improve Financing for Educational Institutions
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The Times of Zambia (Ndola)
EDITORIAL
14 July 2007
Posted to the web 16 July 2007
THE question of funding the two universities and other institutions of learning in Zambia is quite critical.
University of Zambia Chancellor Jacob Mwanza is not the first high-ranking official to admit that something has gone wrong at UNZA. It is not a secret too that standards have been affected despite the fact that the lecturers are of a very high quality.
But there are other factors that contribute to the poor performance. Many lecturers have left for neighbouring countries and beyond in search of greener pastures. The few who remain are not only over-stretched but their morale is low.
Shortage of teaching aids, poor salaries, and even overcrowding continue to be a source of concern. These and other problems have discharged unrest not only at UNZA but the Copperbelt University.
Admittedly, the Government has done a lot in supporting these institutions. Funding though inadequate has increased.
The money is not enough because the number of people going into university now keeps rising against the original planned enrollment levels.
In fact, a lot more others with excellent results are left out because there is simply no longer any room to squeeze them in. The effects of over-enrollment can be damaging too.
The solution therefore lies in making these institutions financially sound so that they could be habitable academically. One of of the ways to do this is to encourage private participation in the provision of University education.
The establishment of the open University is one such good example. More universities are needed to ensure that a lot more pupils are admitted than the situation is now.
Further more, there is need for the two universities to begin operating more commercially than is the case at the moment. For example the institutions need to strengthen the distance learning programme to make it more attractive and responsive to people needs.
Relevant Links
Southern Africa
Education
Zambia
A lot of money could be raised from there. The universities could also go into providing consultancy services, the money raised from such exercises could supplement Government subvention. To wait until money is found, against other pressing State demands may not work out. There is need for innovation on the part of those running the institutions.
Local initiatives to raise cash that could be ploughed into the running of the institution may help and alleviate problems.
It will not do the country good to let UNZA or CBU, sink to levels they cannot even be recognised. The spirit of self -reliance must be promoted. It could do wonders.
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July 26, 2007 at 6:40 pm
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[...] All things being equal, it would therefore be safe to say that the MMD is a party run by the elites that sell well among the illiterate to semi-illiterate. [...]
February 29, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Its achieving