Technology: Small is beautiful

OVER the last few decades many industrialised nations have invested a great deal of money intending to help countries like Namibia.

The issues are substantial, but considering the scale of the financial aid, even though it is only 0,5 per cent of the GDP of the giving nations, one might expect bigger steps forward. Unfortunately the realities are less than encouraging. Statistical evidence provided by the World Bank paints a picture of stagnation and ineffectiveness. According to the ‘Guide to the Namibian Economy 2010’, Namibia still features a broad unemployment rate of 51%, 28% of the households are considered to live in poverty, the literacy rate is at 80%, and 17% of the people suffer from HIV-AIDS.Reasons put forward for this are numerous, but the most compelling is this: No matter how much money is being invested, most technological solutions intended to help the developing countries have been invented and designed for a cultural and socio-economic context much different from the targeted country.This makes them poorly adapted to where they are installed to help and as a consequence they are often ineffective in alleviating the miseries of the communities they are meant to help.Instead of spending huge amounts of money on concepts and technologies that were designed to work in the context of industrialised nations, ideas better adapted to the target communities should be explored. This is the key concept of Appropriate Technology (AT).It proposes intermediate technologies specially adapted to the targeted socio-economic context to ensure a sustainable way of living and self-reliance. E.F. Schuhmacher is widely considered to be the founding father of AT and elaborated this concept extensively in his book ‘Small is Beautiful’ (1973).He proposed intermediate technologies of smaller scale suited for smaller communities that would lead to higher employment rates, self-reliance and sustainability amongst rural communities.Following this, the Gobabeb Training & Research Centre is trying to contribute to the AT movement. One of the main ideas of AT, that Gobabeb is trying to promote in its role as a demonstration, is self-reliance. AT promotes the use of local resources, instead of importing them from elsewhere at great financial and environmental cost. For example, where there are plenty of trees, build houses made of wood. However, using wood in arid areas like the Namib, where there is little available, is neither a sound nor sustainable approach. Here alternative concepts such as clay bricks and sand bag buildings could be more appropriate. Buildings made of sand bags offer numerous advantages over simple sheds made of wood and scrap metal. They use locally available and abundant materials, are inherently resistant to storms and earthquakes, and offer great thermal insulation. Additionally the process of constructing them is easy to learn and the whole community can help, strengthening the sense of community and social bonds. This directly leads to the next problem tackled by AT: employment.Because work is generally expensive and scarce in the industrialised nations while capital is plentiful, the technologies tend to be capital intensive while relying decreasingly on manpower. For larger communities in Namibia this can mean relying on solar power, instead of fossil resources. While solar power needs a lot of initial investment, it is a renewable energy source and can be tapped without depletion. It also has little impact on the environment, making it a prime example of sustainable use of resources. The impact is mainly due to energy invested and waste being produced in the production process. But spread over the entire lifetime of a solar panel they are significantly lower than traditional energy sources. On a smaller scale, sustainable lifestyle could include the use of fog-harvesting or solar cooking, as both methods rely on renewable sources. The Gobabeb Training & Research Centre is currently conducting research about the effectiveness of fog harvesting.*Alexander Heinlein is an intern at the Gobabeb Training & Research Centre.