Fellow Kenyans it must be noted that the brain drain experiences from the late 80’s through the 90’s has seen the unprecedented growth in diaspora remittances with the real effects beginning to be felt in February 2012 when inflows amounting to USD 103.97 million were recorded and the trend has remained slightly over USD 100 million with variations, full data as obtained from the central bank clearly depicts the trends as below.
Further, it must be noted that in as much we applaud diaspora remittances as source of income to the country, as country we must deeply address the following issues; Is our education policy operating fully in tandem with our industrial growth policy, on this front i would say that the recent initiative by the ministry of Labour transforming the Directorate of Industrial Training (DIT) into National Industrial Training Authority (NITA) is step in the right direction where as an employer one of the membership benefits is that she can claim for training sponsored to employees within the reimbursement guidelines of NITA. This mainly covers professional and short courses related for performance improvement in the area of operation, are our employers practicing one of the basic tenets of Triple Bottom Line Approach in management of their human capital, do the various employers have a minimum starting salary for fresh graduates to enable them fulfill basic but decent Maslow needs in lieu of the various incentives that the government is setting up to cushion for their training costs. 1n 1914 , Henry Ford saw the need to increase his factory staff salaries by 5 dollars each per day in order to boast his car revenues and the rest was history for one of the U.S largest car manufacturer.
Though this does not exhaustively tackle what needs to be done and how it needs to be done it’s imperative to discern that brain drain denies the country the best human capital, it only benefits developed countries who take advantage of the inability by the poor countries that can’t afford to remunerate their best brains commensurately, this explains why a major part of our sons and daughters are holed in the U.S, U.K and the North America etc due to the income polarization strategy adopted by the rich countries.
However, the paradigm shift brought by huge sums of money being sent back to their ancestral is a grey area that key policy makers and investors need to tap into , the question that lingers on mind is can our financial markets think of floating a diaspora bond for specific activities such as investing in a housing Bond ,an Energy bond and or REITS ( Real Estate Investment Trusts) some of the key pillars in our Vision 2030 industrialization dream - it must be noted an average income of between kshs 6-8 billion per month from Diaspora remittances dazzles an investors mind, this explains why the USA congress is pushing for the legislation of the Dream Act to capitalize on the immigrant skills and labor by offering them citizenship this decision is basically informed from the point of view of funds being sent by these folks back to their ancestral lands across the shores of the Atlantic ocean , On January 11, 2011 the state of California reintroduced the granting of undocumented students access to an estimated $88 million in private financial aid in the form of scholarships and grants which allows undocumented students who meet criteria for in-state tuition to apply for financial aid under the California Dream Act, we have also seen billionaire Bill Gates successfully mobilize a consortium of tech giants such as Microsoft and Google to have visa work restrictions relaxed for international students with STEM degrees (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) instituting a 29 month extensions on work visas after graduation and a path to permanent residence and eventual citizenship. The same organizations are also knocking our doors here locally where they are setting up their research labs and or shifting their global offices right here in Kenya a case in mind is tech giants such as IBM which has signed contracts with several banks in Kenya: Credit Bank, Co-operative Bank, Family Bank, National Bank of Kenya and National Industrial Credit (NIC) Bank. The agreements are amongst more than 20 similar deals that IBM has signed with banks across Africa in 2011 in line with the rapid growth of the financial services sector and as technology enables a wave of innovation in African banking premised on Kenya being a leader in mobile money payment solutions and innovations on the continent.
This explains the concept of the best way to attack is to defend, in essence we have seen many learning institutions being granted charters to run as universities and public universities running parallel programs popularly referred to as module II students this has reduced the need to fly out for further studies inter alia and forced the foreign institutions to set up their offices locally and enter into affiliations with our learning institutions in order to leverage on their incomes.
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