access to technology and increased industrialization a 

 means of reducing dependency and thus improving their 

 economic and political status. While the validity of 

 this sentiment is frequently debated, it is a premise 

 upon which many developing countries are acting. 



In such a debate it is worth remembering that, 

 despite the commonality of certain positions, the Group 

 of 77 is made up of heterogeneous nations, each having 

 its own unique problems and opportunities. Even the 

 rapidly industrializing nations in the group are not 

 particularly homogeneous, ranging from small Asian 

 nations such as South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore to 

 large, resource-rich nations such as Mexico, Brazil, 

 India, Algeria, Iran, and Venezuela. The policies and 

 positions of these nations on industrialization have 

 been and will be different, reflecting different 

 national problems and priorities. Those who formulate 

 U.S. policies need to be cognizant of these 

 differences. 



The Question of "Appropriate Technology" 



The 1979 Conference is certain to address the 

 question of whether sound industrialization in the 

 developing countries requires the availability of 

 special technology. This question arises because 

 economic conditions in developing nations differ in a 

 number of respects from those of the industrialized 

 nations. Typically, developing nations have rather 

 large ratios of unskilled to skilled labor relative to 

 those of developed nations. Likewise, the mix of 

 skills within the skilled labor force of developing 

 nations often differs, some developing nations 

 typically having larger proportions of general skill 

 craftsmen and relatively fewer persons with highly 

 specialized technical skills. Most developing nations 

 also have a low rate of capital formation, so that they 

 are characteristically capital-poor when compared with 

 industrialized nations. Thus unit labor costs in these 

 nations are generally lower than those in the 

 industrialized nations, both in absolute terms and 

 relative to capital costs. 



These conditions have led many to espouse the need 

 to develop and use labor-intensive and/or capital- 

 saving technologies in developing countries. Such 

 technologies are sometimes referred to as "appropriate" 

 technologies, 2 but this usage can be misleading. 



"Appropriate technology," as used in this chapter, 

 means technology that is optimal for a particular 

 situation in a particular developing nation, given that 

 nation's economic and social conditions and goals. For 

 example, if a nation's overriding goal is to maximize 



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