PHILIP[contd 2] An American answers her call and she says, Good morning, this is Zakiya. Using a standard, rehearsed script, she tries to sell an American product. Now that USA-to-Africa telephone calls are as low as 6 cents per minute, it is economically feasible for a telephone sales person to reside in Anglophone Africa while virtually employed in the United States, and - this is important - paying income taxes only to her country in Africa. I will give one more example of how thousands of call center jobs can be created in Africa. It is well known that U.S. companies often give up on collecting outstanding account balances of less than $50 each. The reason is that it often costs $60 in American labor to recover that $50. By comparison, I believe it would cost only $10 in African labor (including the 6 cents per minute phone call) to collect an outstanding balance of $50. ShareThis Earlier, the organizers of this Pan African Conference gave me a note containing eleven questions. The first was: Do skilled Africans have the moral obligation to remain and work in Africa? I believe those with skills should be encouraged and rewarded to stay, work, and raise their families in Africa. When that happens, a large middle class will be created, thereby reducing the conditions that give rise to civil war and corruption. Then, a true revitalization and renaissance will occur. The second question was: Should skilled African emigrants be compelled to return to Africa? I believe controlling emigration will be very difficult. Instead, I recommend the United Nations impose a brain gain tax upon those nations benefiting from the brain drain. Each year, the United States creates a brain drain by issuing 135,000 H1-B visas to outstanding researchers and persons with extraordinary ability. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS), working in tangent with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), could be required to credit one months salary, each year, to the country of birth of each immigrant. Already, the IRS allows U.S. taxpayers to make voluntary contributions to election funds. Similarly, it could allow immigrants to voluntarily pay taxes to their country of birth, instead of to the United States. The third question was: Why dont we encourage unemployed Africans to seek employment abroad? Put differently, if all the nurses and doctors in Africa were to win the U.S. visa lottery, who will operate our hospitals? If we encourage 8 million talented Africans to emigrate, what will we encourage their remaining 800 million brothers and sisters to do? The fourth question was: Should we blame the African Diaspora for Africas problems? Yes, the Diaspora should be blamed in part, because the absence its created has diminished the continents intellectual capital and thus created the vacuum enabling dictators and corruption to flourish. The likes of Idi Amin, Jean-Bedel Bokassa and Mobutu Sese Seko would not be able to declare themselves president-for-life of nations who have a large, educated middle class. The fifth question was: Should we not blame Africas leaders for siphoning money from Africas treasuries? It becomes a vicious circle: the flight of intellectual capital increases the flight of financial capital which in turn increases again the flight of intellectual capital. Leadership is a collective process, and brain drain reduces the collective brainpower needed to fight corruption and mismanagement. For example, the leadership of the Central Bank of Nigeria did not call a news conference after Sani Abacha stole $3 billion dollars from it. The banks Governor-General did not go on a hunger strike. He did not report the robbery to the police. He did not file a lawsuit. Had they the intellectual manpower to counter corruption, the results would have been very different. The sixth question was: Is it possible to achieve an African renaissance? Because by definition, a renaissance is the revival and flowering of the arts, literature and sciences, it must be preceded by a growth in the continents intellectual capital, or the collective knowledge of the people. The best African musicians live in France. The top African writers live in the United States or Britain. The soccer superstars live in Europe. It will be impossible to achieve a renaissance without the contributions of the talented. The seventh question was: For how long has the brain drain problem existed? A common misconception is that the African brain drain started 40 years ago. In reality, it actually began ten times that long. Four hundred years ago, most people of African descent lived in Africa. Today, one in five of African descent live in the Americas. Therefore, measured in numbers, the largest brain drain resulted from the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Contrary to what people believed, Africa experienced a brain gain during the first half of the .....
Posted on: Sat, 22 Mar 2014 17:41:52 +0000
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