Can the best and brightest Kenyans ever return home?

Every year as the KCSE results are announced, a little action goes unnoticed.Many brilliant KCSE stars are routinely awarded scholarships, and do enroll in prestigious universities in the west (mainly US). Some of the best and brightest Kenyans have been offered full scholarships in Universities such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT and others. A glimpse into the trends of past KCSE students shows that nearly all the students that have topped KCSE since it was started in 1989 secured full scholarships abroad.

What saddens the most is that such brains rarely return home, they are offered lucrative jobs abroad, and go on to develop other countries. When the students graduate from universities five years later, there is still some more brain drain, as the best and brightest graduates fly out. Still in the work force some more brain drain is manifested as the best of the best again depart to start new careers abroad. Even though some educationists argue that a small brain drain is necessary, the case of Kenya and other developing countries is acute. Some argue that the brains abroad help bring in foreign exchange through remittances, but the opportunity cost is simply incalculable, like the patient that dies as a result of lack of enough nurses, how can one calculate such a loss.

Thanks to the economic recession and the bad job prospects at the moment, a few graduates are returning to Kenya, and other countries previously badly hit by drain. This should probably drive up the intellectual capital base of Kenya and other developing countries.