Reverse brain drain: 'African Lion' economies vs West’s fast track

It was the daily four-hour round-trip commute, in a series of cramped and silent trains from one side of London to the other, that got to Sitati Kituyi in the end.

By all measures, the Kenyan was on what he describes as "a set path" to success. The computer-engineering graduate from the University of Manchester, in northern England, had left his family when he was 18 to seek training and the career he'd always dreamed about in the West. Within 18 months of leaving university, he was on the fast track to a position as a senior analyst in a respected information technology consultancy with a clutch of blue-chip clients.

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But then one day late last year, he realized that wasn't the path he wanted. Sure, he missed his family, and his girlfriend, and the energy of Nairobi, his home city on the plains beneath the endless skies. But more than that, he had the nagging feeling that he was missing out; that back in Kenya, classmates and peers were forging ahead, running their own firms by their mid-20s, making money, breaking new ground with the new tech tools just seeping into Nairobi's nascent information technology industry.

Mr. Kituyi wanted to go home. And this year he became one of tens of thousands of Africans returning home to booming economies. Six of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies between 2001 and 2010 were in Africa, according to the International Monetary Fund. Between 2011 and 2015, average African economic growth is expected to outpace Asia's.

The opportunities in "African Lion" economies are pulling savvy staff back to the continent in a trend that is a neat reverse of the "brain drain" of the last part of the 20th century that saw so many of Africa's brightest and best-schooled leave for developed countries where career chances were better.

Exact numbers in the new "brain gain" are impossible to pin down, say analysts. But the director of a recruitment consultancy with offices in six African countries estimates that "probably more than a quarter" of résumés crossing his desk in Nairobi now are those of returnees who have spent significant time overseas.

Tech game changer

New technology, driven by faster Internet, cheaper mobile phones, and a better-educated population, are breaking down barriers here and accelerating economic growth and development. The environment for business success driven by tech start-ups is causing expatriates like Kituyi to desert careers in the West to come home.

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