A massive brain drain is depriving Zimbabwe of health professionals, teachers, accountants, scientists and engineers, according to a government report quoted in a newspaper on Tuesday.
Half a million Zimbabweans, mainly professionals in the health and education sector, have migrated, according to the study by the Scientific and Industrial Research Centre (SIRDC) quoted by the state-run The Herald.
”Zimbabwe’s brain drain could be headed for a major crisis point with research indicating that 500 000 of the country’s mainly professional cream has left the country,” the study said.
The centre acknowledged the figure could be ”a gross underestimation of the actual number after only 479 348 questionnaires were returned from a batch of over a million”.
The study said there were about 20 000 scientists and engineers in Zimbabwe but that a larger number had left.
”One reason for there being fewer scientists left in Zimbabwe is that government and private sector spending on research and development is only 0,2% of the gross national product,” the study said.
”The health and teaching professions, already being decimated by the HIV/Aids pandemic at home, were the most affected by emigration while accountants constitute a significant 16,9% proportion of the total number of Zimbabweans in the diaspora.”
The researchers urged President Robert Mugabe’s government to create ”necessary economic reforms that make staying at home more attractive and rewarding for educated Zimbabweans”.
Private economists estimate that more than one million Zimbabweans have migrated mainly to neighbouring South Africa, Britain and the United States, fleeing deterioting economic conditions characterised by triple-digit inflation, joblessness and perennial shortages of basic goods such as fuel.
Scores of opposition supporters left the country at the height of tensions in 2000 to seek political asylum in Britain. – Sapa-AFP