Increased investment in Africa and qualified numbers of Africans being drawn to other parts of the world contributed to the challenge of a skills scarcity in Africa, said Burmeister.
She told delegates at a recent tax conference hosted by PwC in Nairobi that there were an estimated 214million migrants worldwide, making substantial contributions to the GDP of the countries they work in.
In Canada, highly skilled migrants account for 22% of the skilled workforce and, in Australia, they account for 26%.
But as the economies of African countries continued to grow, the demand for skills in the continent was also increasing, Burmeister told Business Times.
"Africa's GDP grew at an average of 5% over the past 10 years. That is equal to the growth of the Middle East and second only to growth in emerging Asia."
She said the effect of the brain drain in Africa was becoming enormous, with more African engineers working in the US than those working in the whole of Africa.
According to Ernst & Young's "It's time for Africa" report, new foreign direct investment (FDI) projects in Africa are forecast to reach $150-billion by 2015, creating 350000 jobs a year.
The countries which will offer most FDI opportunities include Angola, Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya and Egypt, the report says.
And increased spending on infrastructure in these countries will increase the demand for scarce skills, especially in sectors like electricity, ICT, mining, and oil and gas, said Burmeister.
She said although South Africans were often reluctant to work in other African countries owing to negative perceptions, South Africa was suffering from the effect of scarce skills moving across the borders into other African countries.
"In the past, multinational countries used to parachute in big expat teams, do the work, take the money and take off again.
"But the changing regulatory environment is making that increasingly difficult.
"It is also cheaper for these companies to employ South Africans than, for instance, European engineers."
Burmeister said more and more international companies were building their African headquarters in other African countries rather than in South Africa, especially in the central region.
This was partly because these countries were geographically closer to visit and also because the infrastructure in these countries had improved significantly over recent years, like the effect the Seacom cable had on broadband internet access in countries like Tanzania and Kenya.
Increased demand for skills in Africa has still not increased the supply of scarce skills.
Burmeister said that, in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, only 0.38% of the adult population had a form of tertiary education.
The global average is 3.9%.
Botswana, Kenya and Tunisia are rated top educators, with tertiary education rates of 2.7%, 2% and 6.2%, respectively, while South Africa lags at 0.6%.
According to the World Bank, the top destinations for African graduates who migrate are France, the Ivory Coast and South Africa.
Burmeister said the estimated average university dropout rate was 60%, although data was scarce.
For South African engineering students, the pass rate was 12.5%, compared with the international average of 25%.
"If we can increase the graduation rate, we can increase the supply of skills."
But the employability of graduates was often problematic because of the uneven quality of education systems across Africa.
"We have more than 150 universities across the continent, but only two or three of them are in the top 100 worldwide, and they are all in South Africa. So people from across Africa come here or go abroad for tertiary education.
"The challenge is to draw them back to their country of origin."
The motivation for African migrants to return to their countries of birth included a desire to go home, family circumstances like ageing parents and excitement about growth opportunities in the continent. For some, the right amount of money was sufficient motivation, said Burmeister.
Author: René Vollgraaff
Source: Times Live
