Co-founder of Microsoft and philanthropist, Bill Gates, commented on the recent rise in the number of young Nigerian professionals leaving the country in search of better opportunities and said that the japa syndrome is good and healthy for Nigeria.
According to The Times, on Wednesday, June 21, 2023, Bill Gates revealed this in response to a question at an interactive session with innovators on “Advancing Africa: Unleashing the Power of Youth in Science and Innovation held in Lagos State.
According to Bill Gates, it is highly beneficial to have a sizable diaspora that includes people returning to the worlds of business and government.
Bill Gates noted, “If you increase the amount of training you’re doing, folks leaving is kind of a good thing. So you respond, “Okay, some of our doctors can go work for very high pay in the UK or the US, some of them will pay a lot of money to their families, and some of them will come back.”
“In some instances, such as when the government pays for medical school, you almost wish that a small portion of the resources you receive from outside could be used to help the government fund more training. Because without them, there would be a serious scarcity of certain of those skills.”
He emphasized that “many” inventive immigrant doctors had spent some time in the UK and the US as part of their training, drawing comparisons between Nigeria, India and China in the transfer of skill.
According to the philanthropist, “But without a doubt, India and China and I’ll say Nigeria is third on this list, this idea that people go away and do great work but then they come back, if you get that balance and figure out the education funding piece of that, that is a super healthy thing in computer science, in health, in business, and in other areas.”
