Economic development and the transfer of technology: some historical perspectives

Abstract

Back in an earlier, more naive day, we managed to allow ourselves to believe that there was a purely technological solution – a cheap “technological fix” – to the problems of poverty and economic backwardness which beset most of the human race. In the Point Four of his 1949 inaugural address President Truman spoke optimistically of the incalculable benefits which technical assistance could bring to improving the desperate plight of the poor throughout the world. “We must embark,” he said, “on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas.” Unfortunately we exaggerated from the outset what could be accomplished solely by making Western techniques available. In some measure the present mood of disillusion with foreign aid in general is due to the unrealistically high expectations which we once attached to such programs (including their effectiveness as weapons of politics and diplomacy). We now realize that there are a host of difficulties – institutional and otherwise – which hamper the successful adoption of foreign technology. I would like to contribute some observations of my own on the obstacles in the way of a successful transfer of technology. I will also, before I am done, go one pessimistic step further, and suggest that there are serious problems, not just in facilitating the transfer but in the very nature of technology which we presently have to offer and its possibly limited relevance (especially in agriculture) to the problems of poor countries.

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