African Studies
Penn State University
University Park, Pennsylvania
Title
Conflict, Refugee Resettlement, and the Flight of Human Capital from Africa: The Case of the Lost Boys of Sudan
Synopsis
This paper discusses the flight of human capital from Africa through forced migration and resettlement of African refugees outside Africa due to wars and conflicts which have plagued the continent since independence in the 1960s. It references the case of the Lost Boys of Sudan, resettled in the US in 2001 – specifically, those resettled in Philadelphia from the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya – and who later studied at The Pennsylvania State University, where the author taught and interviewed 16 of them in 2006 and 2016, respectively, about their refugee experiences, and academic and career accomplishments, as an example of the loss of human capital both to South Sudan and the African continent.