One in five African doctors work outside Africa

In the first empirical study of the numbers of medical professionals working outside Africa, Michael Clemens and Gunilla Pettersson used destination country census data to estimate the number of African born doctors and nurses working abroad in a developed country. They then compared this with the numbers of workers in each category in each country of origin.

They found that approximately 65 000 African-born doctors and 70 000 African-born professional nurses were working overseas in a developed country in the year 2000. This represents about one fifth of African-born doctors in the world, and about one tenth of African-born professional nurses. The fraction of health professionals abroad varies enormously across African countries, from 1% to over 70% according to the occupation and country.