It is estimated that some 20,000 skilled African professionals are living in Europe every year, depriving Africa of the doctors, nurses, teachers and engineers it needs to break a cycle of poverty and under-development.

Oil and gas-producer Algeria has lost 45,000 of its academics and researchers over the past decade because of a war with insurgents and a poor scientific environment.

"We must find a way to reduce the brain drain. It is an open wound that infects our nation," President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has said.

In some countries the rate of skilled migration exceeds 50 percent, the World Bank says, citing Cape Verde, Gambia, Seychelles, Mauritius and Sierra Leone.

Brain drain deals a double blow to weak economies that not only lose their best human resources and the money spent training them, but also have to pay an estimated US$5.6 billion a year to employ expatriates.

Development experts say the talent drain not only undermines Africa's economic growth, but also damages prospects for social development.

Health crisis

Nearly all areas of African life is affected by migration from Ivorian soccer players signed up by wealthy European clubs to Kenyan pilots flying for foreign airlines.

But the health sector is the biggest casualty.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says sub-Saharan Africa bears 24 percent of the global burden of disease including HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. To face that challenge it has just 3 percent of the world's health workers.

Many doctors and nurses leave to work in countries like Britain, the United States and Australia, which are growing increasingly dependent on migrants to tackle staff shortages in hospitals and to cope with an ageing population.

In Malawi, only 5 percent of physicians' posts and 65 percent of nursing vacancies are filled. In the country of 10 million, one doctor serves 50,000 people compared with the British ratio of one doctor for every 600 people.

A recent report on Zambia showed that about one-third of its doctors work abroad. British-based charity Oxfam says there is one doctor per 14,000 people in Zambia.

Officials warn that unless the shortages are remedied, Africa will fail to reach goals set by the United Nations to halve poverty by 2015 and improve health services.

"Our approach is that if you (the West) poach one, then you must help us train four so that we can increase our numbers," said senior Zambian health ministry official Simon Miti.

"If they don't help us train more workers, we will not reach the (UN) Millennium Development Goals on health," he told a meeting of African countries and donor aid agencies in Lusaka.

Despite the gloomy forecasts, analysts say the brain drain can be effectively tackled.

"What the international community needs to do is recognize that migration and migrants play an important part in development," said Jean-Philippe Chauzy, spokesman for the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration (IOM).

The IOM says rich countries should embrace skilled migrants, invest in furthering their knowledge to avoid "brain waste," and encourage them to return home temporarily to share their skills.

"Until there's acceptance that it's an advantage for everyone, you're going to be stuck with the brain drain," Chauzy said.

(China Daily April 25, 2006)