Dr. Alidad Mafinezam

Biography:
Dr. Alidad Mafinezam is Co-founder of the Mosaic Institute in Toronto, an organization focused on harnessing Canada's ethnic and cultural diversity for international peace and development. He has worked as a consultant to the International Development Research Centre, the UN-mandated University for Peace, the Geneva-based Centre for Applied Studies in International Negotiations, among other organizations. He has worked as a program director at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, the Atlantic Council of the United States, and the Center for Urban Policy Research. He has taught upper-year public policy courses at the University of Toronto at Scarborough. He received his BA from the University of Western Ontario, and Masters and Ph.D. degrees from the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, where he wrote a dissertation on the history and current condition of American think tanks.

Abstract:
This paper provides an overview of the potential of scientists in the diaspora who hail from the developing world to transfer some of their skills back to their countries of origin, and thus act as agents of development in such countries. I examine the successful record of India, China, and the Philippines in harnessing the potential of their expatriate communities, and contrast their success with the relatively unsuccessful record of African countries in this area. The main argument of the paper is that in the absence of an institutional infrastructure that can benefit from the skills of their diaspora, the talents of such diaspora communities will not be effective in significantly improving the development prospects of the poorest countries of Africa, Latin America and Asia. This creates new challenges for the development agencies of industrial countries such as Canada, the US, and European countries, and it should compel them to add “brain circulation” to their broader development activities aimed at building a knowledge and research infrastructures in the developing world.