My news staple includes newspapers from all over Africa. This means I am fairly au fait with trends on the continent. And one of the latest trends is the emergence of a new type of export, which, besides earning our countries much-needed hard currency, helps dent the challenge of stubbornly high unemployment. No prizes for guessing what this export category is – it is the scores of young men and women who graduate from institutions of higher learning each year but whose chances of being absorbed into formal employment are slim.

Ghana, faced with a surfeit of nurses, is among the latest African countries to hop on the skilled-worker export bandwagon, announcing last month that it had sealed a deal with Barbados under which 375 Ghanaian nurses will be placed in hospitals in the Caribbean island nation.

The agreement was concluded during a working visit to Barbados by Ghanaian President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, who enthused: “So, I am going back. I will be back in Accra on Monday, and the week after the Prime Minister will hear from me on this matter of nurses.”

Why Akufo-Addo spoke with such gusto soon became apparent: “We have a surplus of nurses in Ghana, and placing them all in our public health system is one of my headaches. There have been a lot of nurses produced that, for several years, we have not been able to do anything with.”

And only last week, Zimbabwe’s Primary and Secondary Education Minister told a local newspaper that three African countries were keen on hiring graduates from the country’s teacher training colleges and universities. Zimbabwe has a few colleges and a university dedicated to the training of high school science and mathematics educators, and many in South Africa can vouch for the quality of the graduates, some of whom are on the payroll of South African schools.

The three countries that are courting Zimbabwean educators are Rwanda and Southern African neighbours Botswana and Namibia. The countries have since approached Zimbabwe government officials and negotiations are under way. “We are exploring the possibility of bilateral arrangements, and those teachers who are willing can then be employed outside the country,” Primary and Secondary Education Minister Paul Mavima told the State-controlled Chronicle newspaper.

According to the Minister, the three countries are particularly keen on Zimbabwean educators who can teach English.

Many Zimbabweans with teaching qualifications must be keeping their fingers crossed that the ongoing negotiations come to fruition. An estimated 20 000 are roaming the streets, hoping against hope that they will find a job one day, as the cash-strapped Zimbabwe government has placed a freeze on public- sector recruitment.

Rwanda, Namibia and Botswana are not the only African countries that are interested in Zimbabwean educators. In 2016, South Sudan announced plans to hire 20 000 educators from the Southern African country to help plug a deficit estimated at 79 000 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. But Mavima said last week that negotiations between the two countries had since broken off, owing to security concerns in South Sudan, which has not enjoyed peace since its secession from Sudan in 2011.

What does all this tell us about former Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe’s legacy? He may be the devil incarnate as far as many people are concerned, but no one can deny that he did a world of good to his country’s education system.

When he assumed the reins in 1980, he expanded school enrolment literally overnight. He did so by introducing hot-sitting, whereby two classes would use the same classroom – one from, say, 07:00 to 12:00 and the other from 12:00 to 17:00. But he was careful not to sacrifice quality. Thus, for more than two decades, high school learners wrote international exams, set and marked at Cambridge, in the UK. Simultaneously, an aggressive manpower development programme was launched, and the beneficiaries are to be found in many parts of the world, where they work as technicians, engineers, medics and other professionals.

This is the direction in which we should be heading, instead of pushing for the introduction of Swahili in our schools as an optional subject.