Jairos N Hiliza — Perspectives on Brain Drain from a Tanzanian MD Student

I am a Tanzanian born to a poor family in a western part of Tanzania, Kigoma region, where everything signifying poor development is vividly seen; such as muddy seasonal roads, poor health facilities and absence of electricity.

Upon completion of my advanced secondary education I was enrolled at Weill Bugando University as a medical student. I have reached this point despite many difficulties. I recently sat down to figure out the education system in Tanzania, especially with regard to health worker training and realized that “brain drain” cannot be stopped unless the system is changed. I write this to let the know how the Tanzanian society is stratified (classified) and, hence, favors brain drain.

As I see it, there are three strata when it comes to the possession of wealth in Tanzania.

The first stratum covers those with high ranks in government leadership such as the ministers, members of parliaments and various managers and general secretaries of public and private offices. International businessmen are included in this class. Regarding health care, when they become sick the take a flight to developed countries such as the USA and UK for treatment. Also their sons and daughters do not study in Tanzanian schools or universities, so when they graduate, they are not willing to work in poor working conditions as I described above, because they do not know the problems facing Tanzania and are not used to this environment. They opt to work in wealthier countries that agree with their class and standard of living.

The second stratum comprises those who are private and government employees and live in the cities and towns. Since they earn a monthly salary, they are able to take their sons and daughters to mostly privately-owned secondary schools with all the teaching facilities and plenty of well-qualified teachers and expensive school fees. These pupils are the ones to score best. The Tanzanian government enrolls students in universities and gives them loans to meet university costs based on the grades they receive. So this group, who is raised in towns and cities like their parents had been, are the ones to get university level education. When graduated they want to work in towns but there are no vacancies and telling to go work in remote villages and poor towns where real problems exist is like telling them to go to hell, so they opt to move to well developed countries to find work.

The third class comprises the laborers, nomadic persons and local farmers (hand and hoe farmers) who are living under less than one US dollar and send their sons and daughters to local secondary schools, nick-named “Saint Kayumba”. These secondary schools are built by politicians in order to win votes from this class of uneducated people, so these schools are called “political secondary schools” and are, in actuality, only buildings that do not fulfill the purpose of a school. You find two teachers with thousands of pupils, no teaching materials and poor working conditions so that education is very poor. These pupils end up doing poorly in school so the idea of becoming a university student will remain an unfulfilled dream. And these people are the ones who know the situations of ordinary Tanzanians especially when it comes to the health sector because they and their relatives are facing these problems. Sadly, they do not have a say with the government or any other vehicles to enable them to get the know how to save themselves and their people.

Weill Bugando University realized that too many students in the third class I described were not given any opportunities because they have low grades due to the poor education system in their home secondary schools. This university, along with the Catholic Church and Governing Board, sat down and decided to target these students especially.  Funnily enough, amongst Tanzanians and according to the Tanzanian Commission of Universities (TCU), Weill Bugando University has first rank academic performance compared to other public and private medical universities. I am sure graduates including myself are going to help and heal Tanzanians because we know the inner core of Tanzania’s health problems, and the sufferers in poor towns and villages to which we belong.

Whomever helps this third class of Tanzanian people not only will be healing the whole Tanzanian population but, also, will be helping Tanzania to minimize if not to eliminate the brain drain problem. Thanks to Touch Foundation for linking us to heart-felt people around the world to make sure that their support reaches us quickly and unchanged.

I belong to the villages so after my graduation I MUST return to save and heal my people. I am ready to cooperate with anybody who is assisting Tanzania in the health sector to save the majority of Tanzania’s population.

Jairos N Hiliza is a third-year MD student at Weill Bugando University in Mwanza, Tanzania.