The Egyptian Brain Drain and The Economic Vision 2030

Abstract

The Egyptian Economic Vision 2030 aims to make the economy by 2030 a creative and innovative society for science, technology and knowledge. It is characterized by an integrated system that ensures the developmental value of innovation, knowledge and innovation outcomes with national goals and challenges. There is no doubt that the achievement of this is the responsibility of research and knowledge institutions and at its center scientists and highly skilled. Hence, the emigration of Egyptian brains must exert negative effects on achieving these goals. Therefore, preventing or limiting the migration of Egyptian brains contributes greatly to achieving the objectives of Vision 2030. The present paper objectives are to show the effects of the Egyptian brain drain on the national economy, investigate, empirically, the main factors of the Egyptian brain drain and to draw some recommendations and policy implication to help policy-makers. The paper applies the gravity model of migration to empirically investigate the determinants of Egyptian brain drain during the period 1980-2013. The fixed effect estimation method is used to estimate the gravity model of migration. The results reveal that the two variables of the gravity model have positive and negative impacts on the Egyptian brain drain respectively. These are compatible with the gravity model theory, but they are insignificant which means that their effects on the Egyptian brain drain are not considered as main factors of migration. However, economic and social factors, low wages and standard of living, spread of corruption and high unemployment rate in Egypt are the main factors of the Egyptian brain drain, as the results signify.