Wole Soyinka: “Reversing Brain Drain is Key to Africa’s Development”
The first African to win the Nobel Prize in literature, Wole Soyinka, has said that the reversal of Africa’s brain drain is key to the continent’s development. The Nigerian literary icon and civic activist made the statement at the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group’s Sixteenth Eminent Speakers Programme on Monday, October 25, 2010, in Tunis while addressing AfDB staff, members of the diplomatic corps, media practitioners and development experts on the theme: “The Role of African Intellectuals in Africa’s Development”.
Speaking to the media shortly after his lecture, Prof. Soyinka underscored the role good governance plays in development. He pointed out that aid was a donation to the people and not to the leaders. He regretted the failure of some intellectuals who have had the opportunity to implement their vision, adding that though intellectuals were incubators of ideas, some of them had been the brains behind certain ideas that had brought untold hardship to their people.He decried dictatorship, stressing that the subjugation of man by man was a crime against humanity.
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