CAIRO: Developing countries have for years suffered from a common ailment known as the brain drain. Symptoms include high unemployment, low rates of job creation, underdeveloped sectors, nepotism, unsatisfactory salaries, little room for career growth, and so on.
In this context, the country’s brightest and highly skilled caliber resorts to a tried and tested cure: emigrating in search of better job opportunities.
In Egypt, many argue that there is an impasse in the flow of high level expertise from the education system to the job market. Recent studies, however, point to a change in the structure of labor migration, and call for a fresh look at today’s brain drain.
According to the seventh annual “Egyptian Competitiveness Report (ECR)” launched earlier in May, Egypt ranks 123rd out of 133 countries in the brain drain indicator — making it the lowest ranked country among benchmark emerging economies and those of the Middle East and North Africa, with the exception of Algeria.
The indicator measures the extent to which highly skilled Egyptians continue to pursue their careers in MENA countries.
One of the biggest challenges facing developing countries like Egypt is the departure of their brightest scholars and scientists away from the nation’s academic institutions, the most skilled entrepreneurs, experts and workers away from its business sector.
Scholars agree that this is due to a lack of internal mobility within these countries.
Permanent or temporary?
According to an International Labor Organization (ILO) report by economist Ahmed Ghoneim published earlier this year, “Egypt is one of the top emigrating countries, ranking number 12 in the world in terms of the number of emigrants in 2005.”
Titled “Labor Migration for Decent Work, Economic Growth and Development in Egypt,” the report concludes that emigration flows out of Egypt is classified as “temporary” when directed towards Arab and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, and “permanent” towards EU and North America.
The report finds that flows of temporary migrants to neighboring countries have, in recent years, exceeded those of their permanent counterparts in Europe and North America, with an increasing number of Egyptians returning home after working abroad.
“Egyptian migration to Arab countries is temporary and, as such, would not lead to permanent loss of educated people. The brain drain, in the case of temporary migration to Arab countries, does not have a solid base to argue that it exists,” writes Ghoneim.
According to the Ghoneim, “The question is whether the highly skilled labor, if retained in the country, would contribute positively to the economy, or whether there are channels through which returning migrants can contribute to the economy.”
In the report, Ghoneim concludes that these channels and incentives are not present in Egypt and that this is not a brain drain but a “brain waste.”
“High unemployment rates among educated people in Egypt and the low rate of return on education make it less clear whether migration will actually lead to a brain drain or not,” he says.
Luca Azzoni, senior skills and employability specialist at the ILO, said that we should be “cautious when discussing the issue as temporary labor migration might not have a clear negative developmental impact on Egypt.”
He emphasized that this was his own opinion and not that of the ILO.
Azzoni agreed with Ghoneim’s conclusions and explained the reasons why highly skilled workers choose to leave Egypt.
Current conditions
“In my opinion, there are many factors causing migration, but the main factor is the working conditions and living conditions in Egypt,” said Azzoni.
“There is a skills mismatch and that is a problem. The labor market environment in Egypt does not fulfill people’s expectations and is not conducive to their aspirations for a better life, so highly skilled workers leave to find this in other countries,” said Azzoni.
“In academia or universities where people have acquired skills of a world quality level, the standard and job market for research and development in Egypt also does not match graduates’ expectations. This may lead to permanent migration,” added Azzoni.
Amirah El-Haddad, an assistant professor at Cairo University, said that labor migration, and the subsequent brain drain, is currently decreasing.
“There will be short term and long term effects of the financial crisis on the current labor market. In short term labor migration will continue to decrease as job markets in the MENA region and beyond react to the financial crisis with layoffs and reduced hiring and people continue to return from MENA countries,” said Haddad.
“Outflows of fresh migrant workers [after the crisis] are quite likely to decline. Some recruitment agencies in Egypt and Jordan have pointed out a drop in demand for skilled labor in the Gulf region,” writes Ibrahim Awad, director of the International Migration Program, in an ILO report.
Haddad thinks that “five to 10 years from now, labor migration will start to increase again unless there is a change in the labor incentive structure and reverse brain drain is achieved through a comprehensive institutional and wage reform.”
“This requires a better rate of return on education through better wages and better living conditions,” added Haddad.
Azzoni warned that without reform Egypt would fall into a viscous cycle of allowing foreign labor to replace Egyptian labor in low skilled jobs and highly skilled Egyptian workers to leave the country.
“There is also migration of lower skilled…workers,” said Azzoni.
“This poses a big question mark on the education system and job market conditions in Egypt,” remarked Azzoni.
Reverse effect
The government has recently attempted to address labor migration through international labor agreements. It was announced recently that a new project will start training Egyptian labor in 20 different professions in the field of construction using international criteria.
It is expected that, after completing the training, workers will have international accreditations enabling them to work in EU countries, especially Italy. The government believes that this will prevent workers from leaving illegally and staying abroad permanently.
However, Mona Said, labor economist and professor at the American University in Cairo, has reservations about this initiative.
“The government is trying to shift permanent migration to circular and temporary migration by signing agreements with many labor importing partners in an attempt to ensure that workers who are well trained and have increased their skills eventually return from abroad,” stated Said.
Said believes that in order to affectively combat labor migration and stem the brain drain phenomenon the government must first reform its own labor market.
“The government needs to first develop a system to measure labor statistics correctly and then address structural unemployment and frictional unemployment in Egypt.”
“This can be done by creating a mechanism to match education level and skills to the jobs available and reforming the vocational training and educational systems,” explained Said.
With regards to the overall performance of the labor market, the competitiveness report shows that Egypt ranks among the worst performing countries in efficient use of talent.
“The overall bleak performance is particularly severe in terms of female participation in the workforce, brain drain and reliance on professional management,” says the report.
