Middle Eastern and Asian companies lure away pilots, engineers and cabin crew trained in Africa, the head of the African Airlines Association has said.
Christian Folly-Kossi told a two-day aviation conference that more needs to be done to stop Africa's aviation experts from being poached.
He also called for increased security after a recent air crash in Cameroon.
It remains unclear why a Kenya Airways Boeing 737 crashed into swampland, killing all 114 people on board.
The plane went down shortly after take-off from Douala International Airport last week.
Anger
Speaking in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Mr Folly-Kossi said the "brain drain" was a serious problem for Africa's aviation industry.
"African officials responsible for aviation must use their political and diplomatic power to stop the poaching, which threatens African airlines," the Reuters news agency reported him as saying.
Meanwhile, the BBC's Randy Joe Sa'ah, in Cameroon, says there is growing anger about the slow recovery process among the families of the 114 crash victims.
They say they are not being allowed access either to the crash site near Douala or to the morgue where the bodies are being stored.
The chief executive of Kenya Airways, Titus Naikuni, has denied reports that the cockpit voice recorder had been found.
He told a press conference broadcast on KBC TV that rescue efforts were still continuing, but heavy rains were hampering recovery efforts.
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