The Evaluation of Technical Assistance

Abstract

In the short space of twenty years attitudes towards the contribution of technical co-operation to economic development have come full circle. When President Truman announced his Point Four programme in 1949, much was expected from simple transfer of know-how from technologically advanced to technologically retarded countries. The attitude was well expressed at the time by an American under-secretary of state: It is important to us and to the rest of the world that people in these areas realize that, through perseverance, hard work, and a little assistance, they can develop the means of taking care of their material needs and at the same time can preserve and strengthen their individual freedoms.1 Technical assistance in agriculture was expected to be particularly productive, bringing back one hundred fold the modest outlays required.2 As time went by and the bilateral and multilateral technical assistance programmes failed to produce spectacular results in developing countries, while understanding of the development process accumulated and the large-scale capital assistance under the Marshall Plan brought impressive increases in productivity in Europe, emphasis shifted for a while to industrialization and to massive transfers of capital. But with new disappointments and still deeper understanding of the complexities of economic development, it was recognized that the capacity of developing countries to absorb capital effectively was sharply limited by short-

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