Why should we worry about brain drain from Africa?

Due mainly to the poor quality of international migration data, little research has been done to date to establish the impact of the African brain drain on source countries. In short, until recently the scope of skilled migration from Africa was unknown. The objective of this paper is to go a step further in filling this lacuna. Using two original datasets this paper gives a comprehensive picture of the high-skilled migration from Africa to developed countries and explores for the first time the magnitude of the intra-African brain drain.