When Leaving Becomes the Dream

Aug 3 , 2025
By Ahmed T. Abdulkadir

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The rideshare driver asked as he threaded through Addis Abeba’s evening traffic. The question, tossed off lightly, carried a heavy implication.

“So, when are you leaving?” he quipped.

Leaving, not staying, has become the country’s benchmark for ambition. A generation ago, migration was a wistful dream. Today, it is a national condition, pulsing beneath everyday talk in cafés and lecture halls. Each year, tens of thousands of Ethiopians depart through formal channels, such as visa lotteries, scholarships, and work permits. Others stake everything on perilous routes across Yemen’s deserts, Libyan detention camps and overland passages to South Africa.

They do not go out of ignorance but because remaining often feels like an act of resignation.

Host countries on the receiving end are not taking in the tired, poor, and huddled masses of myth. They welcome trained nurses, seasoned teachers, enterprising artisans and eager students, precisely the skills they struggle to produce fast enough at home. The irony would be comical if the bill were not paid by countries already stretched thin.

The one-way traffic of human capital, especially acute after years of conflict and economic disarray, bleeds through every sector. Hospitals groan under skeletal rosters. Schools lose not only instructors but also the continuity of mentorship. Public offices watch veterans depart, taking institutional memory with them. Construction, tech, and engineering projects stall due to a lack of skilled hands.

Consider healthcare. A 2023 Ministry of Health survey found that nearly 3,500 doctors, nurses, and anaesthetists had left in the three years preceding the survey. With a physician-to-patient ratio of one to 10,000, far below the World Health Organisation (WHO) minimum, the system tears a little more with each goodbye. Every departure is a tiny rip in an already fragile fabric.

Higher education mirrors the loss. Universities once alive with debate and rigour now watch senior staff head for Canada, Australia and the Gulf. In 2022 alone, more than 400 lecturers accepted foreign contracts, according to figures from the Education Ministry. Students who earn scholarships rarely plan to return.

The trend extends beyond the highly educated. The Gulf continues to draw low- and mid-skilled workers, including domestic staff, security guards, and construction labourers. Between 2018 and 2023, over 300,000 Ethiopians held such jobs. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) estimates a further 70,000 citizens leave each year, legally or otherwise. Migration has become the default strategy. To succeed is to leave.

Those who stay muster stoic endurance. Even farewells carry absolution.

“Don't come back,” friends say, half in jest, wholly in hope.

The refrain chips away at belief in reform and in the notion of progress itself.

Economists shorthand the phenomenon as “brain drain,” but the machinery operates on quiet extraction. Developed countries save billions by hiring professionals trained at someone else’s expense. The World Bank reckoned that each emigrating doctor costs a poor country up to half a million dollars in education investment and lost service. Despite vows of ethical recruitment, the UK and others continue to scour the Global South for health workers.

Remittances are held up as compensation, yet they cannot replace talent. Ethiopians abroad wired home more than five billion dollars last year, exceeding foreign direct investment and aid combined. But, money does not perform surgeries, teach students or administer policy. Economies are built by people who build, fix and imagine, not by cash alone.

The push factors run deep. Political instability and recurrent conflict have frayed trust in institutions. The national youth unemployment rate exceeded 20pc, but in Addis Abeba, it is much higher. Opportunity feels rationed, while merit goes unrewarded. A 2023 Gallup poll found 47pc of Ethiopians aged 18 to 29 hoped to leave permanently, a wanderlust that masks a deeper despair.

Policy initiatives nibble at the edge of the problem. Bilateral pacts seek to regularise labour migration, and small incentives try to lure professionals back. Yet, the central challenge of making staying feel like a future rather than a compromise remains unaddressed.

Globally, the debate over migration is marred by contradictions. Free movement of goods and capital is hailed as globalisation’s lifeblood, yet the movement of people is treated as a contagion. Denmark’s Prime Minister said Europe must “regain control” of its borders. Italy stages naval blockades; Britain pursues a deportation plan to Rwanda. Fortress-building is now a currency of political legitimacy even as those economies quietly depend on imported labour.

The cost is visible in empty classrooms, overburdened clinics, and aspirations shelved for lack of mentors. What Ethiopia loses is more than people. It is, possibly, itself. Staying should not require heroism, and leaving should not be the only route to hope. However, the question, "When are you leaving?" still echoes from rideshares to university corridors. For many young professionals, the answer is, sadly, very soon.

 

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PUBLISHED ON Aug 03,2025 [ VOL 26 , NO 1318]

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