The fall of Tripoli, Libya’s capital, in 2011 paved the way for the end of Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year rule. Fifteen years after that event, a large share of the country’s young, skilled professionals are still moving abroad in search of a better future. Observers say this is costing Libya not just skilled manpower, but also its people’s hope for the future.
That picture emerged from a report published Saturday, August 22, by the Qatar-based news outlet Al Jazeera.
Architect Sarah Mizran, 32, was a teenager when Tripoli fell. Eight years ago, she left the city for the United Kingdom. Alongside earning a master’s degree in architecture in southern England, she now works on sustainable architecture. She also researches various structures in Tripoli.
Mizran said that when young professionals leave the country, Libya loses not just skills but the foundation of its potential. If a generation comes to believe they must leave the country to build a future, she said, their hope for their own country diminishes as well.
Mizran went to study at the University of Kent in the U.K. on a scholarship at age 24. There, she had to learn a different professional culture and way of working from scratch.
But Mizran is not alone. Many other young Libyan professionals have been living abroad for a long time.
Nader Elgadi, 36, was running his own media company in Tripoli in late 2014. When Libya’s second civil war broke out around that time, intense fighting spread through the area around the capital’s airport. He too later went to the U.K. for postgraduate studies.
Although he had planned to return home after finishing his studies, growing threats against rights activists led him to stay in the U.K. Elgadi said that after running his own business and living comfortably in Libya, he had to start his life over from scratch in the U.K. The first two years were very difficult for him.
In 2018, Elgadi founded a cultural charity called “Libya in the UK.” Through various events bringing together the Libyan diaspora, they are trying to build a shared vision of the Libya they aspire to.
Fifteen years after Tripoli’s fall, both Mizran and Elgadi now consider the U.K. their home. Yet they still feel a pull toward Libya.
Mizran said home isn’t something you find once and keep forever. Rather, it has to be built anew again and again.
Elgadi now sees himself as a kind of “nomad.” He no longer expects to permanently return to Libya. However, his consulting firm still works with various organizations in Libya.
There is disagreement over how much damage the departure of skilled workers is doing to Libya’s governance and economy.
Tarek Megerisi, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said several thousand skilled and technically qualified people are still working across Libya’s various ministries. But he said many of them are unable to carry out their duties effectively because of senior officials above them.
In his view, the situation began deteriorating after the 2011 revolution. Following the revolution, large numbers of Libyans returned home from countries around the world, including many skilled young professionals. But he claims many of those who took political positions built up influence disproportionate to their qualifications and experience, promising to establish democracy. In the end, he says, many of them behaved much like the Gaddafi government had.
According to Megerisi, corruption has also become a major problem across the country’s ministries. As a result, a large share of the ambitious younger generation that came of age after 2011 now wants to leave the country.
He said that if genuine, credible and effective opportunities were created in Libya, this skilled workforce living abroad would return home very quickly.
However, Toby Chitayat, an associate at UK-based risk consultancy CRI Menas, believes the impact of Libya’s brain drain is being overstated.
In his view, compared with the country’s east-west division, volatile oil revenue and widespread corruption, the departure of skilled workers has a comparatively smaller effect on the country’s governance or investor confidence.
Even so, he too believes it is not yet time to reach a final judgment on the prospects for major re-engagement with Libya.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report