Mastering the Machine: Poverty, Aid and Technology

Ross Willmot is Executive Director of the Ontario Association for
Continuing Education.

This readable book addresses the development of appropriate technology
as a means of solving the problem of increasing poverty in the Third
World. The author, a former executive director of CUSO and a founder of
the Inter Pares aid organization, provides a detailed review of the
various changes in thought and approach that have occurred over the last
three decades. Specific examples and case studies of projects that have
both succeeded and failed are also given.

Development, according to Smillie, “is the most crucial test facing
this generation and probably will be the most crucial issue for the next
two or three.” Much of what happens in the Third World, he writes,
actually lies beyond the control of its governments. His study suggests
that aid as currently conceived and practiced is largely irrelevant to
the needs of poor people, and that the growth principle, on which much
aid spending is predicated and justified, has severe limitations.

If industrialized countries reduced their military expenditure by only
3 percent, Smillie points out, this would yield a saving of $25 billion
a year; developing countries would save $10 billion by freezing their
military expenditure. The combined savings would be more than enough to
eradicate malnutrition and cover the cost of providing universal primary
education, universal primary health care, and safe drinking water by the
year 2000.

Smillie is particularly critical of the proliferation of
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) involved in helping the Third
World. He notes that there are only 100 such British NGOs. Canada, with
less than half the British population, has more than twice the British
number. Most of these NGOs operate in isolation from each other. “The
proliferation, regardless of its positive attributes, is costly, selfish
and sometimes destructive,” Smillie concludes. “For all the attempts
at co-ordination of NGOs, for all the umbrella organizations and
clearing houses and for all the talk of NGO solidarity, mergers of NGOs
are few and far between.”