Inappropriate transfer of technology

The historical development of capitalism has gone far beyond the initial separation of workers from the means of production. Technological development has in fact so altered the production process that it is now enough to have control of the vital points of a technology system to control production. The transfer of any technology from one system to another raises the question of social appropriateness of the technology transferred. Direct copying of industrialization patterns is not always the best approach. In many cases it ignores the knowledge which has accumulated during the long development process in industrialized countries. Extensive studies have shown that large-scale capital-intensive technologies are often unsuitable to the employment needs and resource requirements of developing economies. Meanwhile, as the driving force behind technology transfer is increasingly the large, multinational corporations, the technology so transferred is more likely to make a receiving economy a market of the multinational who controls the key technological factors than to become a competitor in the technology transferred.

The political, economic and educational systems of many developing countries are strongly influenced by the legacy of the colonial powers. Such systems, or transplanted models, are therefore geared to the conditions of countries already highly industrialized, whereas the transition from a traditional type of society (pastoral or agricultural) towards an industrial type is still in its infancy in a good many of the newly independent countries. The systems are therefore ineffective in responding to the real needs of the countries.