Why African graduates abroad struggle to return home

The researchers set out to connect Ghanaian students’ migration intentions with real post-graduation behaviour. They interviewed university graduates who had completed their education in Europe at least a year before the interview. To sidestep the concept of push and pull factors that explain African student migration without exploring the underlying drivers, they interviewed 23 non-returnees and 22 returnees.

Ghana was selected for the study because it is one of the countries in Sub-Saharan Africa with the highest rates of outbound students and other skilled migrants. However, according to Yeboah and Novotny, there had been no research on international students as a distinct category of skilled migrants in the region.

Complex array of reasons

A single factor rarely drives the decision to return or stay abroad among African graduates; rather, attitudes and social pressures interact in complex ways, they found. “For instance, while many graduates expressed pro-return attitudes, social expectations, particularly from family, often favoured staying abroad,” they stated.

Return decisions, according to Yeboah and Novotny, are also frequently shaped by perceived behavioural control. According to psychology’s planned behaviour theory, perceived behavioural control is an individual’s belief about how easy or difficult it is to perform a specific behaviour. This perception is influenced by one’s past experiences, perceived obstacles, and available resources.

In this regard, Yeboah and Novotny stressed that challenges in home countries, such as armed conflicts, bureaucracy, housing shortages, or cultural readjustment, can discourage return.

 Even more critically, employment prospects, especially at key life stages, contribute to perceived behavioural control and are central to long-term decision-making. There were indicators that language barriers or discrimination in the host country may limit the willingness of graduates to stay.

Nevertheless, the researchers found that most of the indicators driving the decision to return or not are embedded in the countries of origin and in the host countries. Significant drivers either way included administrative obligations to return, family-related pressures, political and institutional factors, as well as household decision-making, quality of life factors, economic opportunities, and socio-cultural factors.

Institutional factors were found to be significant for post-study return migration, especially for migrants who had signed contracts to return after graduation.

Attractive labour markets

Conversely, economic drivers were relevant to many migrant graduates from Ghana, and their counterparts from other African countries, who tend to remain in host countries in Europe due to labour market opportunities, with returning viewed as a failed outcome or disaster.

This perception is becoming more common in most countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, when migrant students, whether on scholarship or through private financing, often stay after graduation.

Describing the situation among Nigerian migrant students in the United Kingdom, Dr Samuel Kehinde Okunade, a research associate at the Institute for the Future of Knowledge at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, and Dr Oladotun Awosusi, a researcher on migration at the University of Fort Hare in the same country, a new frenzy of not returning after graduation has gained momentum.

In an earlier study, Okunade and Awosusi highlighted the new trend of migration that has acquired the Yoruba colloquial term japa, which means ‘fleeing’ beyond the shores of Nigeria.

In effect, the japa syndrome, according to Okunade and Awosusi, is primarily a result of the ease of access to jobs in the United Kingdom and other European countries compared to Nigeria, especially for graduates and other professionals. Declining economic conditions at home, lingering security concerns, migration delusions and obsessions, and the quest for a secure future are also non-return significant factors.

Unfavourable circumstances back home

Expressing how some Nigerians feel about not returning to their homeland, one migrant said: “I am not as stressed as I was in Nigeria and, since the situation back home is still the same, I will not go back.

A similar situation is also found in Kenya, where relatives are encouraging outbound university students to stay and try their luck in getting jobs in Europe, Canada, or the United States. As in Nigeria, the trend of acquiring a job outside the country is increasing in popularity and is being described as kazi ya majuu, a colloquial Kiswahili term that translates to ‘work abroad’, or ‘overseas work’.

Amid efforts to popularise its job search programme, Kenya’s Ministry of Labour and Social Protection has borrowed the term and created a website, KaziMajuu, which aims to connect local job seekers with employers in foreign countries.

What is emerging is that, whether in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria or other African countries, outbound graduate migrants’ decision to stay is regularly driven by anxiety about failing.

Subsequently, the fear of being seen as a failure for returning after graduating means many African graduates are picking up care jobs, according to Okunade and Awosusi. These are mostly the only readily available options allowing the graduates to remain in Europe legally, hoping that, one day, they will get good jobs relevant to their academic qualifications and better pay, finally realising their japa dreams.

Yeboah and Novotny found that most returnees in Ghana were those who fulfilled the administrative obligations of their scholarships. “This group included graduates who studied under government-funded programmes and often had contracts that bound them to return to their home countries, shaping both their intentions and actual behaviours.

In this regard, the two researchers noted that the source of educational funding, whether governmental or familial, can affect the likelihood of return, reflecting a sense of financial accountability and broader emotional or social obligations. Accordingly, the decision to return may also be driven by feelings of social responsibility or a strong commitment to contribute to national development.

Emotional and cultural attachments also influence the decision-making process related to return. “Emotional bonds, cultural familiarity, and a sense of national identity often contribute to the desirability of return of African international students,” the article reads.

The researchers noted that prevailing cultural norms and expectations in the home country can also encourage graduates to return. However, the notion of what is ‘home’ is fluid and dynamic, often redefined by graduates through time spent abroad.

Just as decisions to stay in host countries are influenced by personal attributes and socio-economic conditions in both the home and host countries, return decisions are impacted by similar factors.

In their analysis, Yeboah and Novotny observed that graduates usually assess and compare professional, financial, and personal opportunities across both contexts when making long-term migration decisions.

They argue that social and professional networks play a leading role in either staying or returning. However, they indicated that strong ties to peers, mentors, or employers in the home country can ease the transition and improve employment prospects after return. Additionally, involvement in scientific and academic collaboration networks can strengthen institutional linkages and create incentives to return.

Although Yeboah and Novotny provide no solutions for the return of Ghana’s graduates or of other African graduates who decide to stay in foreign countries, they provide insights into the decision-making processes of post-graduation of African international students.

Their findings indicate that movements will remain varied, and such migrations will be repeated in and out of Africa.