We must ensure expatriates can add real value to our development goals
The international arrivals terminal 1E at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi. PHOTO | SALATON NJAU | NATION MEDIA GROUP
What you need to know:
To be academically trained in the sociology or economy of Western Europe and North America will never make you an expert in the socio-econo-political needs of your own country.
This is why deep and certificated studies in the culture and history of the relevant society should be required for Western “expatriates” seeking to work, say, in Kenya.
Concerning what we call “development projects”, whenever you can find expertise locally, please prefer it to outsiders. For Turkana, for instance, an ethnic Turkana man or woman will be the best and most useful development expert.
Of the many advantages of local expertise two stand out. One is that the local expert will be far more familiar with the problems at hand – techno-economic and psycho-social – than will any of what some Kenyans call “expertriates”. Of course, academic training will always be of paramount significance.
However, in the concept of familiarity, the official planner must include far more than what I once called “technosperience” – namely, the skill gained through direct application of one’s academic or theoretical knowledge to the practical solution of specific social or development problems.
In other words, the native expert will have a very large number of extremely important advantages over the expatriate. Locally was where his or her expertise grew. And, long before he or she became an expert, it was locally that he or she had formed his or her first vital ideas about society, its objective needs, how best to meet them.
CULTURAL FACTORS
For that very reason, the local expert is far more familiar with the cultural factors – such as inter-ethnic hostilities – that can either hinder or catalyse a development theory or practice. The local expert knows not only the language of his or her people but also the syllogisms relevant to the application of certain development blueprints.
Secondly, in terms of salaries and other benefits, the local expert will be far more cost-effective than his or her expatriate counterpart. Yet, in our clamour for “expertise”, most members of the official society automatically equate “expertise” with “expatriate” – which was what tickled a Kenyan humorist into fusing them together as “expertriates”.
For the consequence is ineluctable. It is the reason that the streets of African, Asian and Latin American cities are chock-full of technically and intellectually worthless Western European and North American individuals who cannot find jobs in their own countries, but who – parading their white skins as their certificates of expertise – can walk into plush jobs overnight in an African capital.
No, I do not – indeed, cannot – advocate a ban on expatriates. Certain key areas continue to exist in Kenya and other Third World countries for which expertise can still be found only in Western Europe, North America and Japan. The point, however, is for the government of every Third World country concerned to weigh each situation extremely carefully and hire foreigners only when really required.
‘EXPERTRIATES’ SYNDROME
For the consequence of failing to do so is to perpetuate the “expertriates” syndrome in very many areas of your country, thus condemning the local potential to the tail-end of service where he or she cannot gain any important knowledge and experience. In that way, you surrender even the most sensitive policy matters to individuals with absolutely no emotional commitment to your country.
By thus condemning whole cadres to second-class service in both sectors of the economy – public and private – we confine potentially excellent indigenous personnel to the tail-end of service, frustrating them there till – as the poet once put it – you have converted the Jews to Christianity (which is never).
But one thing looks certain. To be academically trained in the sociology or economy of Western Europe and North America will never make you an expert in the socio-econo-political needs of your own country. That is why deep and certificated studies in the culture and history of the relevant society should be required for Western “expatriates” seeking to work, say, in Kenya. But, in the growing international need to exchange not only personnel but also ideas and techniques, relevance becomes the most important of all the criteria. That is why we must ensure that expatriates can add real value to our development goals.
