Establishment and development of institutional and physical infrastructure, such as public and private hospitals, schools, factories, farms, etc., is important for development. The efficiency of institutions can be judged through their role and capacity to manage the development process, including the resources and execution of projects; the capacity to deliver services, products and income to the people; the capacity to develop and sustain human capital; and the capacity to build and develop knowledge and information. Emigration variably impacts on all these four facets of institutions. Skilled workers are institution builders, and their absence is a major deterrent to institutional capacity building in their home countries. Emigration of skilled workers heightens the local competition for the few ones left behind. In such a situation of scarce internal human capital,
the public sector is likely to lose to private business and informal sector activities since the public sector generally offers less competitive wages and holds limited future prospects for human capital development. Also pensions provided by public service are lower than those offered by the private sector.
Conclusions and policy implications
The foregoing analyses show that emigration impacts development in Africa in complex ways. Hence, African countries need to adopt policies and strategies to mitigate the social and economic impacts of emigration on the sectors of the economy. If African countries are to maximize the gains from international migration, they would have to invest heavily and continuously in human capital, and to adequately value their scarce human resources. Investment in higher education is essential for increasing human capital formation to alleviate the brain drain problem.
In this vein, the report of the GCIM calls for maximization of the positive impacts and outcomes of international migration (GCIM 2005). It is important to view international migration as a win-win process in a global environment of human capital circulation. The sending and receiving countries are expected to benefit from international labour flows. In order to realize the potential opportunities presented by the international migration, the GCIM report calls for the implementation of the following recommendations:
• Migrating out of choice: Migration and the global economy;
• Reinforcing economic and developmental impact;
• Addressing irregular migration;
• Strengthening social cohesion through integration;
• Protecting the rights of migrants; and
• Enhancing governance: Coherence, capacity and cooperation.
Many scholars have argued for the consolidation of migration policies. For
example Kapur and McHale (2005) have called for a four-pronged policy response to the effects of emigration on the welfare of those remaining behind. They argued for balancing the effects through a consolidated policy package of control, compensation, creation and connection to be adopted by all countries. Control policies relate to efforts to directly stem skilled inflows or outflows. Compensation policies relate to efforts to share the often considerable spoils of emigration with those remaining behind in poor countries.
Creation policies focus on the implications for the human capital policies of both rich and poor countries. And connection policies are concerned with strengthening economically valuable diasporic interactions and increasing the possibility of capital-enhanced return.” (Kapur and McHale 2005:177). However, successful implementation of these policies requires collaboration between the developed and developing countries.
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