For close to ten years now, Equity Bank has had a pre-university mentorship program
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for the brightest and most talented KCSE stars across the country. According to the bank’s April 2012 newsletter, sixty
five of their scholars have gained admission to top notch universities across
the world ever since the bank introduced the pre-university mentorship program.
This year, some of the bank’s scholars
that have been admitted to various universities in the US include Lydia Katini Mwangasha, the best
female student in the 2010 KCSE exams who has been admitted to Harvard University
and Allan Machuka Marube, the second best male student in the 2010 KCSE exams, who
has been admitted to Princeton
University.
However, apart from the bank just sponsoring these brains to
go abroad, has the bank also ensured that some of the brains come back to the
country, to utilize their skills? It is obvious that any student that receives
admission to these universities would turn down an admission slot at one of the
Kenyan public universities. With the lecturers’ strikes, and sometimes even
strikes by students, bright students are an easy prey for overseas universities
that are hungry for top talent. When it comes to talent alone, there is
absolutely no way Kenyan universities can compete with these overseas
universities. The amount of resources these universities command is mind
boggling. Yale University for instance, pays for full
tuition, full accommodation, a monthly living stipend, plus a ticket to and
from home every year. Their stated mission is to get the best talent in the
world, regardless of its location. Other top Ivy League and private
universities like Harvard, MIT and Stanford would also likely offer a similar
package. Few Kenyans admitted to such
universities ever return. I would hope that Equity Bank, apart from just
encouraging such brains to study abroad, has mechanisms to ensure that they
also put some of the skills to good use back home.
Proponents of brain drain argue that it is a good thing if
our best can compete with the rest of the world. That only shows that we are
capable of matching up with the best. They also point out the increased
remittances from the African diaspora, and how it has helped boost economies
back home. In deed, remittances for some countries such as Ethiopia, Eritrea
and Somalia
constitutes a huge chunk of their foreign exchange.
A radical idea proposed to combat brain drain is a
FIFA-risation of the talent exchange. In such an arrangement, rich and
developed countries would compensate poor countries for the talent they got
from such countries. It is the same way in FIFA, when a club buys a player; the
originating club is given some transfer money every time the player is bought
by another club, so as to compensate the club for all the time, effort and
money it took to develop the talent. Likewise, rich countries would compensate
poor countries for the money the poor countries end up spending on future
doctors, lecturers, engineers, only for them to end up serving in rich Western
countries. Ethiopia
has increased the number of doctors and nurses it trains by four times in
recent years, perhaps out of a realization that it simply can’t hold all its
doctors and nurses within its borders. It may very well reap big if a
FIFA-risation arrangement is to be adopted.
Philip Emeagwali, the famed Nigerian-American computer
scientist who has been credited as among the pioneers of the internet era, and is
often regarded as the ‘Bill Gates’ of Africa,
sums up.
He reiterates that in any country, human capital is much
more valuable than financial capital because it is only a nation’s human
capital that can be converted into real wealth. He says that money alone
cannot eliminate poverty in Africa, because
even a trillion dollars is a number with no intrinsic value. Real wealth
cannot be measured by money, yet people often confuse money with wealth.
When you give your money to your doctor, that physician helps you to 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. When the
medical doctors immigrate to the United States,
the poor are forced to seek medical treatment from traditional healers while
the elite fly to London
for their routine medical checkups.
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