As we all know, the historic African diaspora in the United States is the result of the European slave trade, which resulted in millions of people being taken from Africa. Dei and Asgharzadeh correctly point out in this issue that this population and its descendents constitute a portion of the original African brain drain. Often, consideration of the causes of, problems of, and solutions to the African brain drain ignore this population and place most of the emphasis and research on the contemporary African diaspora. This may have to do with conclusions in some of the research contending that this historic diaspora lost all linkages to Africa. However, there is a vast body of literature that supports the claim that the institution of slavery did not totally sever social, cultural, economic, and political linkages.

The national survey of African studies faculty conducted in the fall of 2002 has produced a wide range of findings about how faculty view African studies. We asked faculty members for their views on area studies and African studies at their own institutions, their recruitment and training in African studies, their teaching of African studies and study of African languages, study-abroad programs and training for the next generation of African studies scholars, their own careers, interactions with the U.S. government, and much more. Because we took great care to construct a sample frame that broadly replicates African studies programs in the United States, we feel confident that our findings mirror attitudes held by the entire African studies population. Because our survey was large enough, we are able to tease out different attitudes and orientations toward African studies from many different populations: by type of program, size of program, scholarly discipline, faculty rank, race/ethnicity, gender, and numerous other characteristics.

Migrations from the South to the North are sometimes seen as representing civilizational counterpenetration, revolutionary cosmopolitanism, and cultural transnationalism. The culturalist biases of these perspectives tend to ignore a fundamental feature of international migration, that more often than not people migrate to sell their labor power and that the patterns of migration, labor procurement, and utilization are conditioned by the dynamics of capitalist development, expansion, and accumulation. Not only is international migration tied to the changing dynamics of capitalism as a world system, it constitutes a critical element of the international division of labor.

Almost as long as African studies has been a recognized intellectual enterprise in U.S. higher education, scholars have sought to establish its credentials as an academic pursuit and have debated its characteristics. To take the most obvious example, the home page of the African Studies Association (ASA) Web site (http://www.africanstudies.org/) declares, “The African Studies Association was founded in 1957 as a non-profit organization open to all individuals and institutions interested in African affairs. Its mission is to bring together people with a scholarly and professional interest in Africa.”

That there is a strong historical intellectual tradition of African Americans studying Africa is news to some. That there remains a demand among African Americans in the United States to study Africa is also a surprise. That these ideas are challenging to some is ludicrous to others. For many African Americans in African studies, affirming our engagement with Africa over and over is not only a nuisance but also a waste of precious time and intellectual energy. After countless efforts, many African Americans have simply disengaged, refusing to have these futile conversations. Others bear witness in perpetuity to the defense of Black nationality and global Pan-Africanism for themselves, the race, and the enlightenment of disbelievers. Both groups act with calculated rationality, yet denials of African Americans’ interest in, engagement with, and effect on African studies abound. The denial within the community of scholars comes mostly from White Americans but also from continental Africans and other African Americans.

Africa’s brain drain to the North is part of a much larger story of the capacity-building challenges facing the continent. During the past 20 years African economies struggled through what are often referred to as the “lost decades.” The region’s economies have been characterized by dependence on economic aid and technical assistance. It is surmised that there are more expatriate “experts” in Africa now than at any time since independence. Technical assistance rose from US$1 billion in 1971 to US$4 billion in 1995. Africans themselves have, as the epigram suggests, taken the back seat, and the skilled ones among them have increasingly migrated abroad.

Establishing an African studies program at a historically Black college or university (HBCU) may seem to make as much sense as carrying coals to Newcastle. In fact, though, very few of these institutions have African studies programs. Howard University is an important exception and was the first HBCU to establish an African studies program. That program, which was led initially by Rayford Logan, was created in 1953 following a $50,000 Ford Foundation grant in 1952. Anthropologist Melville Herskovits established the first African studies program in the United States in 1948. Howard University remains one of the few, if not the only, institution in the United States with an African Studies department that has its own faculty and that offers a doctorate in African studies.

The migration of highly skilled or qualified personnel in large numbers has a long history. It can be traced back to the era of the Greek philosophers and has continued up to the 21st century, with the technocrats who have transferred their skills across geographic boundaries. Economic opportunities, political change, cultural interests, and global capitalism have narrowed boundaries, bridging hitherto separate worlds. Intellectual migration around the globe has indeed become common. Trends indicate continued migration, calling for more inquiries into the phenomenon. Those interested must ask not only why migration occurs, but also how it occurs and who participates in it.

In 1996, the Ford Foundation and the African Studies Association published African Studies in the United States: A Perspective by Jane Guyer, a noted economic anthropologist and then-program director at Northwestern University. In that commissioned volume, Guyer outlined, as she saw them, three distinct eras of African studies in the United States. She also collected and analyzed data about the production of knowledge concerning Africa, specifically numbers of doctorates in key disciplines, linkages to African institutions, and intellectual trends in scholarship. The data and perspectives she presented reflected the situation in African studies in the first half of the 1990s and sought to endorse the Ford Foundation funding initiative “Strengthening African Studies.” The purpose of this article is to revisit the question almost a decade later and in particular to reflect upon the specific role of federally funded area studies programs (i.e., Title VI) in the study of Africa.

The flight of human capital is a phenomenon that has been of concern to academics and development practitioners for decades. Termed the brain drain, it represents the loss of highly skilled professionals from a source country to a recipient country. Migrants leave one country for another as a result of strong attractions associated with differentials in living conditions, opportunities for professional advancement, and the existence of an environment that is conducive to peace and security. The term brain drain gained currency in the 1950s. Then it referred to emigration of scientists to the United States from countries such as Britain, Canada, and the former Soviet Union. Today, the concept is used to denote the flight of highly skilled professionals and academics from developing to developed countries.

Defined primarily in terms of the exodus of the highly talented from the Southern countries to the North, the phenomenon known as “brain drain” has gained in importance during recent decades and years. Changing global conditions, unprecedented developments in information and electronic technology, globalization, and widening of the gap between the South and the North have focused attention on the brain drain. We begin this article by discussing the nature of the brain drain, briefly noting that it occurs in three settings: internal, regional, and global. Our argument here is that brain drain occurs in almost all societies, initially from poorer and impoverished rural areas to relatively rich and developing urban centers within national boundaries and later (or sometimes concurrently) to more developed and wealthy regions and neighboring countries.

The future of African studies in the United States will be determined, to a large degree, by the viability of small African studies programs. More of these small programs exist than the large and better-funded Title VI programs. Spread throughout the country, the small programs involve more faculty and students than do the Tide VI programs. In recent years, however, these small programs have been beset by several seemingly intractable problems, including lack of adequate funding from both internal and external sources, isolation, lack of sustained institutional support, competition from other area studies programs on campus, and shifting intellectual and research interests on the part of the local Africanist faculty. This article will both explore these complex interrelated problems and offer some recommendations.

The formal study of African languages in U.S. universities began with the passage of the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) in 1958. Title VI of that act supported the establishment of “centers for the teaching of any modern foreign language [that is] needed by the federal government or by business, industry or education” and for which “adequate instruction is not readily available in the United States.” The act also authorized fellowships for those undergoing advanced training in these languages. Over the next two decades, a small number of universities successfully competed for the federal funding from NDEA and subsequent acts that established Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowships and later Title VI National Resource Centers (NRCs) for African studies.

The processes of globalization have accelerated the exodus of the highly skilled from the collapsing modernization project. This article suggests that the flight of the educated elite is linked to the relative strength of the nation-state and both the length and intensity of internal conflicts. It is also suggested that the “skills exodus” may represent a major disruption in the political and social development of Africa, leading to further marginalization and affecting Africa’s capacity to revive development or envision an alternative development path. The emphasis is on Sudan’s unprecedented massive skills exodus during the past three decades, suggesting that this one case is extremely relevant to the rest of the continent, given the country’s favorable situation at the time of its independence in 1956.

According to endogenous growth theories, human capital is a major determinant of economic growth and development. Human capital refers to the educational qualifications, skills, and experience that individuals possess. Educational institutions, in general, and universities, in particular, are most instrumental in developing and enhancing the quality of human capital through capacity building involving training, research, information dissemination, and knowledge management. These institutions should be not only firmly established and maintained but also continuously empowered to meet the current and evolving needs of their countries.

Despite economic uncertainty and political instability in many regions of the world, U.S. students continue to study abroad in increasing numbers. Recently released data indicate that in academic year 2000-2001, the number of undergraduates who participated in study-abroad programs increased by 7 percent over the previous year. Yet, only 1 percent of U.S. undergraduates study abroad during their college tenures. Of this 1 percent, just under 3 percent participate in Africa-based programs.

At meetings of African studies specialists, informal conversation often turns to the future of area studies and of African studies in particular. In her 1996 monograph African Studies in the United States: A Perspective, Jane I. Guyer goes as far as saying, “No one’s view of the future of African Studies is rosy.” Attacks on area studies during the 1990s, especially attacks coming from scholars with African specialist credentials, such as Robert Bates, stung researchers who work on Africa, most of whom are based in traditional departments. The crux of these arguments seems to be that area studies are becoming irrelevant as the disciplines become more “scientific” in their approach and more sophisticated methodologically.

This article argues that the roots of the Malawian medical brain drain lie in colonial and postcolonial historical, economic, medical, political, social, racial, and class factors. Also involved are the image and expectations of doctors themselves and the culture of medicine in Malawi. Reversing this brain drain, therefore, requires tackling factors in all these domains.