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APPROPRRIATE TECHNOLOGY
FOR AFRICA

I sat on the old Musasa tree trunk, took a deep sip of home brewed beer, chilled by ground spring water flowing over a buried clay pot - a piece of appropriate technology, developed through ages.
I wiped my mouth, passed the drink on to Mr. Chitengu, then leaned back against the mud wall of his grass thatched hut, appropriately designed through generations for hot and humid climate and I enjoyed the colours of the sun setting into the rushing waters of the Zambezi river.
It had been a long, dusty 300 kilometres from Zimbabwe's capital Harare to the Dande valley about 200 kilometres east of the Victoria Falls. Chitengu has etched a living out of the fertile evergreen valley all his sixty odd years. He narrated how his family fought back invading Portuguese colonialists in the 16th century. He paused, produced from a greasy pouch, a vile stuffed with cotton and held it between his thumb and forefinger simultaneously clamping a piece of rock. He struck the rock with a chunk of iron sending sparks which lit the cotton and he used it to light a stubbed hand-rolled cigarette.
Mrs.Chitengu was washing wooden plates and laying them out to dry on a rusting refrigerator. "It belonged to my son, a former civil servant retrenched by the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme, ESAP", he told me. Of course, there is no electrical power in the Dande valley.

Back in an air-conditioned hotel, in Harare, I listened to more than thirty workshop participants from Africa, invited by the German Appropriate Technology Exchange, GATE, trying to map out regional exchange of information on Appropriate Technology. I asked Dr. Peter Baz, the Head of GATE, what appropriate technology means to him.

"Appropriate technology in our meaning is that we have to solve all the problems of the People in the developing countries as well as in our countries in an environmentally and socially sound way, that means: In 1974, Schumacher, a well known man made an analysis of the transfer of technology from industrialised countries to developing countries and the output was that these technologies, these modern technologies are most appropriate to the different countries and they proclaimed the slogan ‘Small is Beautiful’ ".

Dr. Baz, argues that sophisticated technology, as it was developed in the Northern is not appropriate. He mentions the Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster and contamination of German rivers through overuse of pesticides in agriculture.
‘Small is Beautiful’ seems not to be high on the agenda in the Industrialised countries, which nevertheless provide funding for encouragement of this slogan in the developing countries.
When I checked the list of participants of this German sponsored workshop, it occurred to me that all delegates are on the payroll of Northern Non Governmental Organisations and I wondered whether any African Government would pay a cent for such a gathering.
Zimbabwe’s Vice President, Dr. Joshua Nkomo recently urged indigenous businessmen to "think Big".

Where the Appropriate technology campaigners are urging rural folk to use mud stoves the African peasants are yearning for electrical power and want to have electrical cookers and refrigerators. In any case, they are still using the mud stoves and cooking on open fires as their ancestors did. Even solar power is still out of reach.

Dr. Baz confirmed to me that his wife used the latest microwave oven in their kitchen in the modern German town of Eschborn.

No wonder one of the participants at the workshop, Elijah Agevi who works with a British non-governmental organisation in Kenya seems to be facing resistance.

"The acceptance of Appropriate Technology is also another bottleneck, it is not easy. Developing a Technology does not mean that it will be accepted by those whom you would like to use it, the marginalised groups. They think you are doing this for them because they are poor; it is that image that we would like to change, that Appropriate technologies are not for the Poor.
There are Technologies that people should be using, because they are Appropriate. They are Appropriate because of their pockets, their financial power, appropriate because they use local resources, appropriate because they are sustainable, you know, you will not need in the future to have foreign currency to run the Technologies."

Conspicuous at the workshop, smartly dressed in pink silk was energetic campaigner for the application of appropriate technology in Zambia, Executive Director of Young Women's Christian Association , Juliet Chilangwa. "It is not easy" She said. "Our governments also sometimes have been extravagant, I am sorry to say that, but they have been extravagant in that we receive this aid, true, and they go and buy Mercedes Benzes for themselves, for the Ministers, things like that - instead of thinking that this aid we have received, let us utilise it in a way that we make more and pay it back".

A photograph exhibition at the workshop showed participants in the rural areas appropriately dressed in casuals instead of the silks and wools they now adorned. It seems to most African rural dwellers that the campaigners, all employed by Northern Non governmental organisations, do not practise what they preach and are regarded agents holding Africa back from achieving European high standards of technology. African governments themselves are not thinking small or in terms of appropriate technology but are striving to reach the level of industrialised countries.

But, you know, I'm still practising to light my cigarettes with the present given to me by Mr. Chitengu back in Dande valley: That vile of cotton, piece of iron and chunks of rock. It sparks after 4 or 5 strikes.
I thought of Chitengu. He would never dream of walking beyond the Dande valley into this five stars hotel in his life.
I thought of him speaking softly in Kore-kore, the local language, saying to me hopefully, "I may try to grow cotton this year. We never grew cotton in this area because it needs a lot of harmful chemicals and our spiritual ancestors forbid the use of any European chemicals; it will drive us crazy once it reaches the rivers. First we have to consult the spiritual ancestors whether its appropriate and to seek their protection".

Indeed one of the unprotected victims of the agricultural chemicals in the Zambezi valley is the Fish Eagle. It just does not produce anymore after eating fish contaminated with DDT.

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