This article examines the fl ows of physicians and nurses from African countries to Europe and North America using available data sets. It offers a geographic perspective of the magnitude and fl ow of these skilled health care professionals and highlights positive and negative impacts of the fl ows on Africa's development. The article further discusses the coercive and 'carrot and stick' strategies that African governments have employed during the past two decades in attempts to stem the tide of the fl ows of its health care professionals. It concludes by noting that while Africa can do nothing about the pull factors, it can mitigate the push factors by creating conducive working environments to help retain its health care professionals.

This paper uses narratives of Malawian-born registered nurses working in the United States to capture pathways through which African women are entering the nursing profession. The paper highlights how race, immigrant status and language acts as potential sources of discrimination within the nursing profession. The paper utilizes intersectionality as a feminist framework that places black women’s experiences at the center of analysis to capture the multidimensionality of their experiences. The qualitative study highlights the multiple pathways through which African immigrant women enter the nursing profession and how being African, immigrant female nurses predisposes them to discrimination in their interactions with employment institutions and patients. Focusing on African women’s experiences as recent immigrants enriches the global migration narrative and helps contextualize the intersectionality of race, gender and discrimination within particular contexts.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract