The African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) wishes to enhance the continents knowledge of the state and competitiveness of Africas labor market and to guide in the design of strategies and instruments for strengthening skills retention and effective utilization of highly skilled African development management professionals in the diaspora. In preparation for the study to review the characteristics of the market for skilled African professionals, ACBF developed terms of reference (TORs) setting out the studys objectives, scope and expected output. The TORs are quite broad and ambitious and could not be accomplished in a single study. Therefore, this report provides a summary of the results of the first preliminary study, and makes a set of recommendations designed to enable ACBF to make strategic choices about the way forward. Over the years, African transnational migration has evolved into a more complex and dynamic phenomenon fuelled by both push factors at home, and forces of globalization in the transit and receiving countries. While a new consensus is emerging as to the seriousness of the brain drain, especially for Africa with its limited capacity for economic, social and political development, there is less agreement as to the most effective ways to respond by way of policy or programmes. Most of the studies by international organizations (e.g. ILO, IOM, IDR) take the position that migration is not only inevitable, but it can also be beneficial both to the source and receiving countries. These studies tend to emphasize the important contributions of capital transfers. Studies by or for Africans, on the other hand, tend to emphasize the brain drain and other losses to the emigrants community, country of origin, or Africa as a whole.