African Engineers: No Sweat?

Shortly after founding the Technology Consulting Center (TCC) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana, in January 1972, the director was demonstrating the process of appropriate technology to a visiting American professor and his wife. First, he said, it was necessary to study the technologies that were already in use in popular enterprises and then introduce a more advanced technology that could be realized within the current constraints on raw material supplies, infrastructure, market size, preferences and entrepreneurial skills. Often, this can be achieved by adopting or adapting a more labor-intensive historical technology, used in Western countries at a time when production units and markets were much smaller. “Oh no!” “I don’t think these people should undergo a Victorian era of sweaty labour,” said the professor’s wife. At the time, it seemed impossible to propose a race-free path for a modern, technological society, but as the years go by the dream of a righteous nanny seems more and more achievable.

It would certainly be very difficult to introduce a Victorian era of exhausting work into Ghana. It was clear, even in 1972, that Ghana would never advance as fast as Malaysia, which was formed from another British colony that was granted independence in the same year of 1957. No doubt, economists have identified many factors that have contributed to the variance in the rate of economic progress, but one difference is evident: the cost of labor. Multinational corporations set up production units in Southeast Asian countries to take advantage of lower labor costs, and Malaysia was one of the first countries enriched by this phenomenon. It was always unlikely that Ghana would benefit in this way. Foreign companies operating in Ghana in the 1970s complained that low labor productivity made their operations unviable, and many closed down. Studies conducted by TCC at the time indicated that labor productivity was approximately three times lower in Ghana than in India. It seems that the professor’s wife need not worry. Ghanaians had an innate resistance to sweaty delivery.

Few people in the 1970s could have predicted the electronic revolution that would sweep the world over the next three decades. Anyone visiting Ghana today, who knew the country in the 1970s, is immediately struck by the global earache epidemic. Everyone is holding a mobile phone. Outside on the streets of cities and villages, nothing else has changed, but inside every office a personal computer has replaced the outdated typewriters. One likes not so much the technology per se but the fact that it seems universally available in a low-income country. How it is granted one may leave to economists to explain, but the fact that it is tolerable cannot be doubted. Has the exploitation of the electron opened a window of opportunity for a race-free era of wealth?

Computers and mobile phones open up great prospects for fast communication and access to information that are prerequisites for economic progress, but in the manufacturing industries, the means of production must be developed similarly. In the 1970s, advanced industries in western countries used technology of very large scale, which the father of appropriate technology, Dr. E. F. Schumacher, rightly referred to in his ‘pretty little beautiful’, was not suitable for most developing countries, not only because of its high cost but also because it was designed to serve much larger markets. However, with the introduction of electronically controlled production facilities, many have evolved as small units that can be combined in large numbers in large factories but also used singly or in small numbers in small and medium enterprises. The trend continues and the cost of NC machining centers and robotic processors is still too expensive for most grassroots industrialists. At the same time, progress is rapid and further cost declines are likely.

Computer controlled machines will be very popular in Suame Magazine, Kumasi and all popular engineering institutions in Ghana. Machines that produce 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, require no wages, attend no funerals, and steal no tools or materials seem to offer a panacea for all their ills. One must hope that, if this lady’s dream were to be realized, adequate economic and social provision would be made to ensure sweat-free work for all the laid-off technicians and craftsmen.