Who benefits first? Decolonising postdoctoral mobility and public return in African public systems

African public institutions require doctoral capability, yet the first destination of that capability after the PhD is often weakly governed. Public employers may support doctoral training through salary continuation, employment protection, benefits, fees, study leave and redistribution of the absent employee’s duties. We argue that externally hosted postdoctoral appointments may constitute a form of public service brain drain when they appropriate the earliest research labour and productivity of scholars whose development was substantially financed by resource-constrained African institutions, while those institutions remain critically short of expertise. Because postdoctoral appointments ordinarily involve remunerated research labour and generate publications, grants and institutional prestige, they should be treated as employment or employment-like fellowships rather than presumed to be a continuation of study or inherently beneficial capacity building. Under ordinary conditions, substantially supported scholars should therefore complete a defined period of meaningful return-of-service before accepting such appointments. Waiver, deferral or alternative public service should remain available where political persecution, armed conflict, serious safety threats, institutional abuse or material breach by the employer makes return unreasonable. We propose a decolonised framework grounded in location, sequencing, reciprocity and accountability, supported by local postdoctoral fellowships, inward mobility, international mentorship, fair bonding arrangements and shared responsibility among scholars, home institutions, hosts, governments and funders.