Emigration of the Intelligentsia and Its Effects on the Socio-Economic Development of Zimbabwe

Abstract

This paper discusses skills emigration of the intelligentsia and its effects on the socio-economic development of Zimbabwe. Skills flight has been a huge challenge to the developing countries and this has contributed much to their under development. Since the turn of the millennium, Zimbabwe has lost key skilled and talented people who left the country due to economic hardships. Several studies have shown that there are very high levels of emigration among the young and the very highly skilled people of Zimbabwe. Skills flight or brain drain is a very old phenomenon in human history and usually takes place for various reasons. Some of these reasons are social, economic and sometimes of a political nature. The aforementioned reasons either push people to leave or pull people if these are seen to be better in other countries. Globalization has also resulted in an increase of movement of people from one country to another. The world has become a global village with very little to separate countries. Skills flight has merits and demerits, and this paper will try to unpack these issues so that there is some clarity. While some schools of thought argue that the sending countries lose because of skills flight, it is not always the case because these people help in the development of their native countries by sending money back home (diaspora remittances) that is used for developmental projects and assist in improvement of foreign currency earnings for their countries. It also denies the remaining population the opportunity to benefit from their highly skilled compatriots (skills and knowledge transfer) who in most cases would have benefitted from state funding. However, for the host countries, they benefit by having the best brains who are usually very intelligent and have good leadership skills. These emigrants help to develop the economies of host counties. In some cases, there are tensions and conflict that arisen the host countries as a result of the skilled people who would have migrated to these countries, for example, there have been cases of xenophobic attacks on foreigners in South Africa, racism (in Europe), among other problems caused as a result of immigrant labour. It is argued in this paper that skills emigration in Zimbabwe has affected the performance of the Zimbabwe economy and development agenda.