Education, Organisation of Work and Indigenous Technological Capacity

This short paper will try to address itself to the question of what are the implications for education and training of a policy aiming at developing indigenous technological capacity. We understand indigenous technological capacity (ITC) as being the local capacity to create, adapt, diffuse and use technology. We will not enter into the discussion of whether the transfer of technology equals increased dependence or whether appropriate technology equals ‘cheap technology’ or a technology for underdeveloped countries. We will assume that each country would like to reach an equilibrium between the import of certain techniques necessary to accelerate growth and productivity in some sectors, and the creation of a local technology which is more adapted to the country’s specific needs in other sectors. The creation of any new technology or the adaptation of an imported one to local economic or social conditions requires a certain indigenous technological creativity and has some important implications for education and training. In the following paragraphs we shall purposely restrict ourselves to the problem of middle-level manpower training, leaving aside the problem of research policy and higher education. We shall try to summarise some of what we know, but in this new complex area much remains to be investigated.