Technology and the Technical Management of Human Resources: Prospects for Sub-Saharan African Development into the New Millennium

Abstract

If we look for grounds for optimism about the prospects of African development at the end of the twentieth century, they seem at first sight to be very hard to find. The problems of war, crime and corruption, the accumulated debt burden, ethnic divisions and social conflicts have added to a damaging legacy of colonialism. The lack of the kind of solid basis for development which seems to have worked in other, more successfully developing regions, such as South East Asia or even Latin America, seems to justify a continuing pessimism. The African state is in crisis, in terms of both its practical and its legitimating functions, both necessary for development to take place.¹ The development of the AIDS/HIV epidemic, now said to be affecting up to 25 per cent of the population of Zimbabwe,² almost as devastating in other parts of central Africa, and widespread in regions where virtually no treatment is available because of civil conflict, adds to the pressures of underdevelopment. External aid and technical assistance, significant in themselves, are substantially outweighed by debt repayment demands. Outside ‘help’ in the form of knowledge and advice is often wasted because it cannot be followed through systematically, or because it is seen as being inappropriate to the society in which it is to be implanted.³