Educating engineers in appropriate technology for development

Abstract

Appropriate technology (AT) encompasses a diverse set of tools, processes and technologies that are focused on development. AT is, in general, characterised by small capital requirements, the use of local materials and resources, and is usually relatively labour intensive, small scale and affordable to individual families. The core principle of AT is to include local communities in technology selection and development, innovation and implementation, all in an environmentally sustainable manner. In this paper, the authors discuss a course offered for undergraduate engineering students that focuses on AT and is centred around development. The course material is situated in the broad global context in general, and in rural and agricultural settings in particular. After an adequate theoretical and philosophical introduction, the course is developed through specific and illustrative case studies. These include country-specific case studies, including those that have been developed outside the global capitalist mainstream, such as Cuba and Zimbabwe, as well as technological development in countries like India, China and Brazil. The discussion also centres on the various broad categories of technologies, with specific focus on health, water, agriculture and the environment.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 5 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.