Technology Transfer for Development

In some respects developing countries today have fantastic opportunities that were not open to the now-developed countries: there is a vast and growing array of technological knowledge, to which developing countries have potential access, that, with proper use, may transform them from a preindustrial state to a high-income, fast-growing sophisticated economy, in just a few decades. Yet this opportunity is also a threat. The highly advanced state of knowledge possessed by a few economies can lead to domination over less developed countries, with a high price levied for the technology they acquire, their main industries owned and controlled elsewhere, the characteristics of the technology transferred leading to imbalanced forms of development and environmental degradation, and attempts to avoid this situation by developing their own technology thwarted by competition from the highly efficient technology of the more advanced countries.