Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi

Rural industrialisation using intermediate or appropriate technologies is probably the most valid to increasing employment and living standards in LDCs. This involves the design of technologies to suit the very low economic and technical resources of the intended recipients as well as their social environment. Design in this field requires an abnormally wide spectrum of skills drawn from technology and the social sciences. Most of the small amount of work currently being done in the field is product and not market oriented. There appears to be rather too much preoccupation with research instead of development work. It is suggested that some new type of multi-disciplinary organisation with development and not research motivations is required to effect progress. An investment by the world in large scale rural industrialisation, in LDCs will probably be cheaper in the long run than the financing of the inevitable famines which will result from the settlement of marginal lands by the unskilled undercapitalised surplus populations of these countries.