Alireza Asgharzadeh

What is to be done? a look at some causes and consequences of the African brain drain

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.

Africanizing Knowledge: African Studies across the Disciplines

Nearly four decades ago, Terence Ranger questioned to what extent African history was actually African, and whether methods and concerns derived from Western historiography were really sufficient tools for researching and narrating African history. Despite a blossoming and branching out of Africanist scholarship in the last twenty years, that question is still haunting. The most prestigious locations for production for African studies are outside Africa itself. Scholars still seek a solution to this paradox. They agree that the ideal solution would be a flowering of institutions of higher learning within Africa, which would draw not only Africanist scholars but also financial resources to the continent.

Narratives from Ghana: Exploring Issues of Difference and Diversity in Education

This chapter is based on focus group discussions of African and Ghanaian university students as they reflect on their university experiences on the subject of how questions of difference and diversity are broached in the teaching, learning, and administration of education in their schools and universities. The students use their personal knowledge and lived experiences to reflect on the question of how inclusivity and diversity implicate schooling in Africa. The learning objective is to examine and discuss the ways in which the school experiences of the study participants inform their shared, competing, and contested understandings of the challenges of inclusive schooling in pluralistic contexts. The advantage of using a focus group interview methodology is that this kind of research method enables us to obtain several interactive perspectives about the same topic. Notions of difference and diversity are heavily characterized by relations of power and influence. As such, a focus group interview is particularly suited to produce the most transparent information and insight emerging from interactions, discussions, and debates among the group members.