While the guy's story is very heart-warming, the most important part, which they quickly glossed over, was his getting married to an American lady who helped him migrate. Without that marriage, he would most probably still be in Ghana.
Also: he was performing an important role in Ghana delivering medicines, and by migrating, now that sector has lost an important person. I wish he would go back with his newfound knowledge and help make things better in Ghana, where he is needed much more than in the US.
The part about marriage is very true. I take issue with your other part, though.
I don't think his domain knowledge delivering medicine in Ghana is of very high value. It is probably easily attained. That means that all the value of his going back to Ghana is provided on the basis of his education. This means that anyone with his education is a good candidate for the job.
So why ask immigrants specifically to compensate for brain drain? Why shouldn't any of the people graduating from Johns Hopkins go to Ghana and solve their healthcare? Any of them would be needed much more there than in the US.
Tying people to the country of their birth is nonsense. If it's utilitarianism we seek, let's send our infectious diseases experts over there. That's where they're needed. Not at the CDC.
> So why ask immigrants specifically to compensate for brain drain?
They are already fluent in the local language(s), so they can be more effective right from the start. Of course that doesn't mean that others can't support them, even if they have no personal connection to the country.
This argument treats local knowledge as worthless. Wouldn't most US graduates be more or less helpless there, without knowing the language or customs? At least in the short term, you'd need a guide and translator, which makes you a tourist (someone being taken care of for the money it brings) rather someone contributing through your work. A recent emigrant seems likely to have a more valuable combination of skills.
> I don't think his domain knowledge delivering medicine in Ghana is of very high value. It is probably easily attained. That means that all the value of his going back to Ghana is provided on the basis of his education. This means that anyone with his education is a good candidate for the job.
I disagree. It's much easier to give a person a 4-year education in something like Public Health Policy, than to give someone a 25-year education in language, culture, politics, etc. etc.
And in the end, regardless of how hard you try, if you're a foreigner trying to do that job, you will never be trusted as "one of us" by the locals.
> If it's utilitarianism we seek, let's send our infectious diseases experts over there. That's where they're needed. Not at the CDC.
Not really, it's a much better idea to have most of the experts at the CDC and simply send samples from Ghana. Then when the experts decide what to do, pay non-experts to implement it.
Authority stealing depends hugely on opaqueness, the ability of elected individuals to have privacy in their supposedly PUBLIC dealings.
Thieves in position of authority benefit from EXPERT status i.e. citizens do not feel qualified to monitor the activities the activities of the elected. Officials openly flout their ill gotten wealth and the citizens are in awe, praying to God for a chance to eat the 'National cake.'
Just last month, I talked to at least 10 ordinary persons. And these 'educated' individuals couldn't suspend disbelieve and imagine how much better their world would be if they could keep their representatives in check.
They all believed that their votes didn't matter. And it's quite true. In the last Nigerian election for instance, individuals from the Igbo tribe weren't given voters card because they wouldn't vote for the incumbent party.
I've spent a ton of time thinking about the state of Africa. And I don't see a way out short of a bloody revolution.
Even then, history says a revolution would only replace one set of tyrants with another.
It would help to think on a country-by-country basis. Generalizing over the entire continent of 54 countries is not useful, I have noticed people go with their feelings rather than facts when the topic is Africa - even on HN.
By way of example, I have been impressed by South Africa's checks and balances over the last few years. A dedicated public protector, independent judiciary, a free press and a robust opposition.
> I've spent a ton of time thinking about the state of Africa. And I don't see a way out short of a bloody revolution
I have done the same, and the conclusion I came to is that African countries need a strong middle class. Poverty encourages patronage-politics and keeps the populace worrying about bread-and-butter issues rather than the more abstract issues of policies.
If you (the reader, not parent) have the time to evaluate your biases, I would appreciate it if you would take a minute to make a Self Assessment: answer the following question in your head and do a google search to find the real answer.
1. How many active conflicts are in Africa? How many countries are affected (out of 54)
While I believe in generalization as a useful tool, your final questions were useful exercises. For the sake of others, my research suggests the following:
1. Countries involved in active conflicts with over 100 deaths/year include Somalia, Kenya, Nigeria (x2), Cameroon, Niger (x2), Chad, Sudan (x3), Libya, Egypt (x2), South Sudan, Ethiopia (x3), Democratic Republic of the Congo (x2), Burundi (x4), Algeria, Burkina Faso, Tunisia, Central African Republic, Mali, and Mozambique. This is 21 or so separate conflicts in 19 of the 54 countries. (There are at least 8 smaller conflicts involving 4 more countries.)
2. In the last 20 years, there have been notable famines threatening Sudan, Ethiopia (x2), Democratic Republic of the Congo, Niger (x2), Chad, Somalia, Djibouti, Kenya, Uganda, Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania, Mali, and Burkina Faso. At present, there appears to only be one famine, affecting half of South Sudan.
All in all, it appears that the expected number of active conflicts per country per year is 40--50%, and the expected number of countries involved in famines (again per country per year) is 1--1.5%.
I think your definition of armed conflict is more expansive than mine, because my research[1][2] says 16 African countries have ongoing countries. This works out to just under 30%. Perhaps you were counting belligerent nations rather than countries where conflicts occur as I was. If I were to calculate by actual geographic area,my guess is I would be well under 7% of inhabited regions, and < 1% of African population directly affected.
I too was guilty of generalization as we when I asked about countries involved because the conflicts are highly localized, it's never the entire country that's a warzone (excepting Somalia).
Bonus 2-part question:A) What is the current total number of African warlords? [Thanks Hollywood] B) what is the probability that a random African resides in an area controlled by a warlord?
> my guess is ... < 1% of African population directly affected
I have done some research into the proportion of the population affected. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), over 1% of the population of Africa is a "person of concern" originating from just five of the ongoing conflicts in Africa: Sudan, South Sudan, Nigeria, DRC, and Somalia. All in all, it appears that about 1.6% of the population of Africa is a "person of concern" of the UNHCR. The majority of this population is in the class "internally displaced persons (IDPs) protected/assisted by UNHCR, including people in IDP-like situations".
I both gave my definition of conflict (100 deaths/year) and a list of the countries involved, so it should be trivial to compare details. The difference is likely due to Kenya (which had more than 100 deaths in 2016 related to Somalia), Burkina Faso and Tunisia (which had a combined ~100 related to the insurgency in Algeria/the Maghreb), and/or Mozambique (which had over 100 related to RENAMO).
I do think it'd be interesting to estimate the percent of the population affected.
- Help someone get control over the country, through elections or by force. Or just buy whoever wins.
- Approve loans at high interest rates and allow that person to keep the majority of the money so it never gets spent in the country itself.
- When the country defaults on the debt, start a re-structuring process involving the neocolonization: privatize everything, pass unequal trade treaties, pass unfair labor regulations... effectively enslave the country.
Low wages and no social mobility and no influence in government is almost undistinguishable from slavery. And that's the situation in many poor countries.
Place this as another bullet point in the "luck plays a huge role" hypothesis with regards to success. Imagine how many other poor children in Ghana or elsewhere are just as capable of earning a degree from an elite institution but don't have the opportunity because of their lot in regards to where they were born.
Even if you did give all those the opportunities, what about the rest?
We always seem to be so worried about people with certain "capabilities", whatever those are, not being pulled from certain areas or not getting opportunities, but... what about everyone else? There's far more of them. Isn't this just luck also?
Very inspiring and heartwarming. I wish the best to the lad and his new family.
Stories like these really make you put things into perspective. Here I am complaining about how hard my professors are in a crap university while this guy comes from the depths of poverty and works his way up through one of the best public health programs in the world. My daily problems are nothing compared to the obstacles this guy had to overcome.
Having lived in Ghana in mid 2000's this story does not surprise me. The team that I worked with went on to work for Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. Another colleague built up the Internet in Africa, building 15 Internet Exchanges in different countries for under 200,000 dollars.
In 1974 the literacy rate in Ghana was the same as in Portugal. Things diverged. Portugal became a democracy, Ghana went through many years of dictatorship and misguided help from the west.
I remember once interviewing one person sent from the States to help the software company I was working with. His expertises was 'Network Streamlining', that turned out to be sorting out cables. If you take the expense of sending somebody from the states, versus sending from Ghana to the West for training versus the payback. We should be sending more people to the west for training rather than the other way round.
Good skills mate. Your mum laid the groundwork (as most mums are wont to do - mine did as well but in a different way) and you delivered, through sheer hard work.
"My uncles from my father's side took all his properties, per the custom in my village in Ghana" - that looks like a serious problem and needs some analysis but I think it is a real problem.
I've always wondered why the large tech companies/universities who claim they care so much about diversity don't send their recruiters around the world to track bright, persevering teenagers such as the young man of the article, and bring them into their organization (providing proper mentorship/training in the case of companies). It seems like it would be a fairly cheap way to have a very diverse organization with brilliant people from all over the world.
My anecodatal experience is they don't because I had friends in South Africa, DRC, and Nigeria who came from more privileged middle class backgrounds and still struggled due to a lack of education. They were never recruited by tech firms due to the issues the author faced. One asked me to refer them into some of the firms here but I was unable to get them in.
I don't know if it would have been cheaper to recruit them but I do know they had no chance here in America. They have hustled their way to a living but have worked 10x harder than me because I have an American citizenship and degree.
Sometimes I wonder if it would be possible to graft a form of certification by huge companies on a MOOC curriculum for countries like CAR/CDR/etc. After all big companies do something close in IT (CISCO/Microsoft certifications).
Indeed there are some eDx professional certificates but they that are really costly as they are aimed at a western audience.
What about a similar certificate at $100 (one month revenue in Kivu) but in Kinyarwanda (for targeting the right students)?
Why track them? I used to work in a Computation Population biology lab. Three of them have gone to work at Google and or Facebook and they had very diverse backgrounds. The ones that didn't choose the private sector went to Postdoc positions at MIT Lincoln Lab. If you are the place where the money is you can attract talent. This was at a public university and I'm sure you can find similar stories at private ones.
I've always got mixed feelings on stories like this.
On one hand, it's a heartwarming story of a man breaking through barriers to achieve success from desperate beginnings. Kind of an American dream story, really.
But if everyone with those qualities leaves the community, the rest of the people are helpless and will be mired in poverty forever.
It's difficult, morally, to balance the benefit gained by the guy who took the action, compared to the loss his community suffered by his departure.
In any case, I think this sort of thing is a significant reason why countries don't develop. Change always starts from a small group of changemakers - if those people all just emigrate, nothing will ever change.
Migration since the 60's has become a giant IQ-sorting system and that's having huge consequences on all sides. And this never seems to get discussed, oddly.
I understand what you're trying to get at, but consider that most under-developed countries fail not because of talent shortage, but because of systemic problems that prevent them from harnessing the talent that they do have.
The author is an excellent example of this. If he had stayed in Ghana, he would have never received the education that he needs to fulfill his potential. He would have gone through his entire life, a shadow of the person that he's capable of being. Thankfully, because he was lucky enough to fall in love with an American citizen, he was able to come here and turn his life around. If he now uses even a fraction of talents and future income to help his home country, he would already make more of a difference than if he had stayed in Ghana his whole life.
> if everyone with those qualities leaves the community, the rest of the people are helpless and will be mired in poverty forever... In any case, I think this sort of thing is a significant reason why countries don't develop. Change always starts from a small group of changemakers - if those people all just emigrate, nothing will ever change.
Third world countries don't develop not because of brain drain but because of systemic corruption and protection of domestic uncompetitive/unproductive interests. The political leaders of these countries exploit their citizens as members of governments without proper controls to prevent such exploitation from happening.
The citizens of these third-world governments are victims of governments which do not serve their interests. Shifting blame onto enterprising people whose ambitions lie in their chosen profession and not in politics is guilty of blaming the victim and argues against his right of individual agency.
It is not at all clear in the research that economic migration is an IQ sorting system. It's a question that gets studied specifically, because it speaks to the malleability of and environmental influence on intelligence.
That doesn't make a broader version of your argument false. Migration may very well be --- intuitively seems probable to be --- a system that makes the rich countries richer and the poor countries poorer.
Keep in mind that this young man will most likely support his family in Ghana by giving money to his brothers and sisters and acting as mentor to his nieces and nephews.
Here's a hypothetical question: Suppose there is a charitable foundation that identifies 100 poor, smart, hard-working young people in Ghana. Of these 100, the foundation randomly chooses 50 to receive a scholarship to immigrate to a rich country like the US or Germany and receive a university education. Ten years after they graduate, the foundation asks an independent person to make an assessment of 'contribution to Ghanaian society' for (a) each family member of each graduate; (b) each individual who did not receive the scholarship and each of his/her family members. If the result is that the estimated total contribution by group (a) is bigger than group (b), would that change your mind about emigration being a loss to the community?
> Migration since the 60's has become a giant IQ-sorting system and that's having huge consequences on all sides. And this never seems to get discussed, oddly.
It's discussed a lot. It's where the term "brain drain" comes from. Hundreds of studies have been done on the subject, many of which are linked on the wikipedia page for "human capital flight," which is the academic term for what you're talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_capital_flight
> It's difficult, morally, to balance the benefit gained by the guy who took the action, compared to the loss his community suffered by his departure
I can't make a moral argument why he is more obligated to sacrifice himself for that country, than anyone else in the world. Being born there is a pure lottery and has very little to do with morals. If anything, the moral expectation would be on the people in many other parts of the world, who spend most of their (our) lives in relative comfort, to devote some real time and effort helping there.
> Migration since the 60's has become a giant IQ-sorting system and that's having huge consequences on all sides. And this never seems to get discussed, oddly.
Not in the US, where there is virtually nothing except family-based migration.
Wait, what? Every year at least 65,000 skilled workers (and actually many more) migrate from other parts of the world to settle down in the US. Sure, there's a lot of family-based migration too, but there's also a lot of talent-based migration. Countries like Canada have a 'points' system that specifically recruits talent and qualifications.
Those 65,000 workers you are referring to are on H1B visa which might not necessarily require them to be high-skilled. This visa is also a lottery.
When I think about skill based migration, there should be a merit-based program available, point-based system implemented in Australia, Canada, and some European countries are a good option.
> Those 65,000 workers you are referring to are on H1B visa which might not necessarily require them to be high-skilled.
Looks like you have no experience with the program; I do, as I was on H1-B at one time. It is solely for the purposes of hiring people for jobs for which there are no Americans available. By definition, it's for highly skilled people.
> This visa is also a lottery.
Again, a misconception and too much reliance on the word "lottery". It is a lottery, but among all the applicants, who are (as per the paragraph above) highly skilled.
Well yes anything to do with IQ cannot be discussed in the west. It is self censorship at its best. If you were a betting man you would say this guy is on the very right of the bell curve for intelligence on his population. Can't just extrapolate applying the same environmental factors and get the same result for others in his country. The genetic basis for IQ is much resisted in the west but has strong evidence via twin and adoption studies.
The problem with the genetic basis for IQ argument is that not all genetic markers leading to higher IQ have been discovered. There is not a single way to evolve intelligence, and there's substantial evidence in nature for that (e.g: mammalian neocortex and the avian nidopallium evolved independently with similar goals).
Then, there are many aspects behind IQ. Take one kid, make him drink barely clean water with parasites, feed him poorly with non iodized salt, expose him to lead poisoning, and don't provide significant stimulation from an early age and his IQ will be much lower than a kid that didn't suffer from those issues, maybe even the same kid.
Most of the 20+ points of IQ gap comes in African countries comes from those issues. The problem is that racists have used that data out of its context to substantiate a genetic basis for racism. But of course they're wrong about that. Just like they're wrong about everything involving a minimum amount of education and common sense. I strongly suggest you stop following low IQ hate-speech idiots like the alt-right.
I will not start a discussion around the validity of research because that conversation belongs in academic peer review and at this level it is pointless and it will end nowhere. But feel free to look for studies on these topics and form your own opinion:
1) Kind of self-evident, but variations among individuals is much larger than between populations, i.e. if you meet someone from a population where the IQ is lower, does not mean that person has a lower IQ.
2) A corollary of the impact of upbringing and the environment: if IQ is mostly stable/fixed at the individual level, this is not the case for a population average over time. For example Western IQ was much lower a few generations ago ("Flynn effect"). So it's possible that the populations who score lower today will catch up if their condition improves.
Yeah, and, What I'm asking is, why wouldn't Africans, let's say, from a particular country, have a genetic intelligence advantage hidden by these factors. After all, Western society has been quite dysgenic lately. But somehow I get the sense what your wording has revealed is that you have some expectation that will make you comfortable, like equality or it being relatively close, and then you've gone on to seek out explanations that satisfy you, and then stopped. It sounds like a bunch of feel good story-telling.
Also: he was performing an important role in Ghana delivering medicines, and by migrating, now that sector has lost an important person. I wish he would go back with his newfound knowledge and help make things better in Ghana, where he is needed much more than in the US.