Appropriate Technology, Employment and Basic Needs in Arab Countries with Special Reference to the Food Industries

Publisher Summary The term appropriate technology has become especially fashionable in recent years, and at the same time, its meaning is increasingly a matter of confusion. This chapter presents a discussion of the origins and definition of the concept, subsequently relating it to the context of the economic conditions of the Arab world. In the industrialized countries of Europe and North America, the continuing rise in the levels of income since the Industrial Revolution has gradually led to the almost complete elimination of poverty in the sense of distressing material deprivation and poor conditions of health. The same period has also witnessed a very rapid rate of technological change in industrial production and in the characteristics of the products consumed by the populations of these countries. Given this apparent association between modern technology and high standards of living, when an awareness began to dawn of the problem of economic development for the poorer two-thirds of the world at the end of World War II, the solution seemed obvious: the rapid establishment of the modern industrial sector by the transfer of up-to-date technology from the industrialized countries.