The socio economic impact of South Africa's brain drain : an assessment of existing skills amongst African foreign nationals and their contribution towards the alleviation of skills shortages and job creation in the Western Cape

Abstract

The purpose of this research project was to conduct a skills audit amongst the immigrant communities (refugees and asylum seekers), in South Africa and in Cape Town in particular, to assess whether refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants of African origin have the necessary skills to fill the gaps left by South Africa's brain drain. The study explored the impact of the skills shortage on the economic development, unemployment and poverty of the country. The study also explored measures taken by the government and other stakeholders to address the skills shortages. In order to achieve the study's objectives the researcher used a quantitative research method as an instrument of data collection with an interpretational method of data analysis. The research was in 2 parts, a literature review and 200 immigrants completed questionnaires. The finding here is intended to directly address some of the research questions posed and investigated by this study, as well as to provide background information and clarity on the research question. The finding highlight that African immigrants in Cape Town are most likely to be male between the ages of 19 and 45. Most African foreigners in the Western Cape are single males although some public officials believed that they came as families. As supported by Statistics released by the Cape Town Refugee Forum in 1999 estimate that of the 11 900 refugees in Cape Town, 10 000 are male, 1 000 women and 900 children (Cape Argus, 1999). This is supported by Rogerson (1997), writing in the Migration Policy Series about Johannesburg's foreign entrepreneurs, who established that new immigrant businesses are run by single, young, males who work on average a 64-hour week; their employees work similar hours. Most immigrants have some kind of work experience or skill acquired via life experience, practical training or university. The literature found support this. The findings by McDonald et al., (1999) and Peberdy (2000) hold that migrants are motivated to come to South Africa largely, but not entirely, by economic opportunities and that they are motivated, educated, skilled and enterprising and that they find work easily but are poorly paid, are corroborated by this study. It was found in this study that there is no truth regarding the negative perception that immigrants are taking jobs and the study reveals that most of them are self-employed small entrepreneurs who create jobs and by so doing contribute to poverty alleviation. This is in line with a previous study conducted by Tengeh(2015:261), who found that most immigrants own small businesses and that most of them employ South Africans in those small businesses. These findings help to understand and clear up the misconception that immigrants are not job creators. This study only investigated African immigrants without expanding to Europeans and Asians, who are also immigrants. It is interesting to note that Basotho, Tswana and to certain extent, Namibians, do not see themselves as foreigners in South Africa. In line with the research questions about how to address the problem of the skills shortage the study recognised the existence of various and important initiatives locally and internationally that failed due to a lack of supervision during the implementation phase, reduced political will at certain stages, lack of enthusiasm and of policy coordination across the relevant sectors due to fragmentation among government departments, which makes developmental policies difficult at one level, career development policies need to be part of a coherent coordination of relevant policies relating to education and training, skills development, the labour market and social equity and development. Further this various initiatives served as a framework to develop a model that it is hoped will respond to the issue at hand. This research disclosed that numerous governments in Africa and private sector concerns are all interested in finding a solution to the scarce skills shortage, at least in principle and in terms of policies. On paper there are numerous initiatives to deal with the skills shortage and training people with scarce skills. As an example, the AU launched the Western Hemisphere African Diaspora Network in 2002 prior to the 2003 summit of heads of states, to investigate a role for the Diaspora (Easterly and Nyarko, 2005:17). In summary the study have achieved its objective as it was set in the begin of the study.