Received: from ATHENA-AS-WELL.MIT.EDU by po7.MIT.EDU (5.61/4.7) id AA16527; Fri, 31 Dec 93 20:12:55 EST Received: from auvm.american.edu by MIT.EDU with SMTP id AA28537; Fri, 31 Dec 93 20:12:38 EST Message-Id: <9401010112.AA28537@MIT.EDU> Received: from AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU by AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 4247; Fri, 31 Dec 93 20:11:11 EST Received: from AMERICAN.EDU (NJE origin LISTSERV@AUVM) by AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU (LMail V1.1d/1.7f) with BSMTP id 9383; Fri, 31 Dec 1993 20:11:05 -0500 Date: Fri, 31 Dec 1993 20:09:00 EST Reply-To: Volunteers in Technical Assistance Sender: Technology Transfer in International Development From: Volunteers in Technical Assistance Subject: Happy New Year from VITA (Newsletter) To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% @@@@@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@@@@@ @@ @@@@@ @@@@@@ @@ @@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@@@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@@@ @@ @@@ @@ @@@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@@ @@@@@@ @@ @@@@@@ @@@@@@ @@@@@ @@ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% @@ @@ @@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@ On-Line News and Views on @@@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@@@@ @@@@@@@ @@ Technology Transfer in @@ @@@ @@ @@ @@ @@ @@@@@@@ @@ International Development %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% @@@@@ @@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@ @@ @@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@ @@@@ @@@@ @@@@ @@@@ @@@@ @@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@ @@@@@@ @@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@ @@@@ @@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@ @@@@@ @@@@@ @@@@@@@@@@@ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% January 1994 Volume 4, No. 1 IN THIS ISSUE INFORMATION WATCH Food Production: The Case for Better Information Dissemination LITERATURE REVIEWS How Technology Is Made and Used Thoughts on Sustainable Development ORGANIZATIONS Culture Catalogs on Line VITA PROJECTS Rural Enterprise Development in Guinea ANNOUNCEMENTS Natural Disaster Reduction Information Technology in Community Health * * * DevelopNet News is published monthly by Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA) in Arlington, Virginia, USA. For additional information, please see the end of this newsletter. I n f o r m a t i o n W a t c h FOOD PRODUCTION: THE CASE FOR BETTER INFORMATION DISSEMINATION Why, in the nineties, does the world have so little to celebrate on the food front? Between 1950 and 1984 the world's farmers raised world grain output 2.6-fold, but since then little progress has been made and the proportions of hungry and malnourished people in Africa, Latin America, and parts of Asia have increased. The International Food Policy Research Institute recently predicted that by the year 2000 the world will have a food deficit of 5 million metric tons. Many causes have contributed to this state of events, among them global environmental degradation, scarcity of cropland and irrigation water, and diminishing crop responses to the use of additional chemical fertil izers. None of these causes can be addressed and corrected in a quick and easy way and the world's food supply shortage is only threatening to get worse in the next couple of decades. IFPRI says that by the year 2000 developing countries will face a 190 million ton food deficit, while developed countries will experience a 185 million ton surplus. This comparison gives some pause for thought. Just how can developed countries generate food surpluses that can nearly fill the projected deficits in the Third World? It is largely a result of well-employed agricultural and resource management practices and solid agricultural research systems. The management practices, while they are much to blame for disasters from monoculture crops, destruction of ecosystems, and degradation of water and air supplies, more or less guarantee a longer-lived payoff in crop yields. Research yields critical information on adaptive on-farm trials of new crops and new cultivation practices that promise farmers higher and more stable yields. By compar ison, developing countries' practices generally are inadequate and outdated. Increases in agricultural productivity can be achieved with improvements in the efficiency of developing countries' agricultural sectors. These, in turn, can be accelerated through the dissemination of improved agri cultural technologies already employed in developing countries -- tech nologies that can help play a role in overcoming at least the land con straint affecting food production. Improving these countries' access to relevant information can have a dramatic impact in helping them to increase their food supply. The IFPRI report states that nations, just like families, obtain food by either producing it or purchasing it. Necessary intelligence includes informa tion on how to identify and promote the use of efficient, low-cost tech nologies for the production of food and other crops on a sustainable basis. Also included should be information that can encourage the incor poration of sound nutritional and food consumption principles into the design and implementation of agricultural activities. But a country's access to needed information may be useless if the country lacks the infrastructure to deliver it promptly to the persons who need it. Developed countries have a host of information resources. In the United States, for example, there are 72 land-grant colleges and universities that can provide a vast array of agricultural information relevant to developing countries' needs through their agricultural experiment sta tions and extension service programs. These institutions, together with 53 other state universities and 24 system administration offices, con stitute the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges which collectively represents the largest body of researchers and resources for agricultural research and development. Another source of agricultural information is the U.S. Government which generates and makes information available through its Department of Agriculture, the National Technical Information Service, and other specialized agencies. Information is also generated from regional, international and profes sional organizations as well as private nonprofit institutions. The Agricultural Research Centers directory and encyclopedias of associa tions list over 15,000 such information centers. A good example of a national organization concerned with agriculture across several dis ciplines is the American Society of Agronomy. At the regional and international levels are several important organizations such as the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, CGIAR, and the thirteen specialized international agricultural research and development organ izations that CGIAR supports; for example, the International Rice Research Institute in The Philippines. Regional organizations include CAB International in Wallingford, United Kingdom, with many specialized bureaus and research centers that not only conduct research worldwide but also provide training, publications and conferences, and seminars on topics of worldwide interest. Nonpro fit, private institutions that provide agricultural information include the Ford Foundation, Winrock International, International Development Research Center (Canada), and the Saudi Fund for Development (Saudi Arabia). Unfortunately, despite this abundance of information, developing coun tries rarely have access to it. Their information resources are gener ally limited to research reports not designed for immediate application to local problems. For one thing, the significant growth in the number of organizations and institutions producing agricultural information means that agricultural information specialists in developing countries deal with a commodity that is complex and difficult to handle because of its broad disciplin ary and geographical base as well as its diverse formats. This growth is inevitable since it is directly related to the increasing number of new or specialized agricultural subject areas. Such growth makes it harder to identify and obtain the needed information. The recent growth in electronic documentation poses at least four prob lems for requesters from developing countries: (1) they are unlikely to have access to an electronic retrieval system; (2) if they do, the cost associated with this kind of search and retrieval is usually prohibi tive; (3) machine-readable data files are not generally considered gov ernment generated documentation and thus they are not governed by an obligation to make them easily accessible by the public; (4) too few individuals are trained to use electronic retrieval systems and dissem inate the information rapidly and effectively. In the 1990s a new set of better low-cost technologies has emerged that finally seem to offer developing countries alternative methods that even small information centers can use to obtain and manage massive amounts of information. One of these technologies is optical storage media; for example, CD-ROM, which can contain huge amounts of information in a tiny space. Moreover, improved telecommunications technologies are making it increasingly more affordable and easy to access data electronically. Finally, improvements in data conversion technologies are finally making management of highly specialized literature more cost effective. These technologies, along with advances in artificial intelligence and expert systems, might well be the means that allow the developing world to enjoy the benefits of the information age and allow dissemination of agricultural information to reduce the food deficit and solve other problems. L i t e r a t u r e R e v i e w s HOW TECHNOLOGY IS MADE AND USED Meinolf Dierkes and Ute Hoffmann (eds.), 1992. New Technology at the Outset; Social Forces in the Shaping of Technological Innovation. Boulder, Colorado: Westview; Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Campus. The book's title invites our attention to the distinctions between tech nological innovation and technology transfer. However, even though they are distinct, the processes by which new technologies are put to use have a powerful influence on innovation. The book provides 17 papers (all in English) presented at a conference on "Understanding Technolog ical Development as a Social Process," held in Berlin, Germany, in May 1991. Editors Dierkes (Technical University Berlin) and Hoffmann (Social Science Research Center Berlin) say: "Establishing that technologies are *socially shaped* prompts further questions about the nature of the key shaping forces. . . . [A] wider set of social relations and social institutions has to be taken into account." Does society really influence, or does it simply accept and adapt to new technology? The main value of this collection of papers lies in its variety of approaches to understanding how social processes influence the generation and marketing of technology. Papers are grouped into sec tions on research topics and trends across countries, social construc tion of technology, the dyanamics of technological change, technology markets, and the processes of industrial standardization. The authors present examples and case studies from high and other technologies, as well as historical perspectives. The 25 contributors include 22 European and three North American social scientists, historians, business administration specialists, and com puter scientists. The collection should be especially useful to persons in North America, because it analyzes topics that have rarely been trea ted in literature published in English. The consolidated list of some 600 references cites publications and reports in Dutch, French, German, Norwegian, and Swedish, as well as English. There is no subject index. THOUGHTS ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT (1) Norman Uphoff, Local Institutions and Participation for Sustainable Development. (2) Mamman Aminu Ibrahim, The Information Drain: Obstacles to Research in Africa. (3) Alan Fowler, Prioritizing Institutional Development. A New Role for NGO Centres for Study and Development. (All 3 belong to publisher's Gatekeeper Series.) London: International Institute for Environment and Development (1992). In the first of these short, separately published essays, Norman Uphoff (Cornell University, Ithaca, New York) defines "local" institutions as those operating at locality, community, and group levels, all of which lie below the district and subdistrict levels and above the household level. He then highlights the "participating sector," neither clearly public nor clearly private, that takes decisions based on common inter ests but operates with the flexibility of the private sector. He notes that the participating sector is neither backed up by authority nor does it seek profit to demonstrate its successes. Uphoff's main point is that the local participating sector must be organized as a resource for sustainable development, and technical spe cialists ordinarily lack the training to mobilize the resources. He then suggests a protocol for planning, executing, and evaluating projects that are assisted by the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that make up the participating sector. Local unschooled residents are often essential resources. "They may have ideas, management skills, technical insights and organizational capabil ities that are needed for development. They are to be regarded as part ners more than 'beneficiaries' or (worse) 'target groups.'" The study is based on experience in Bangladesh but Uphoff's findings are applicable elsewhere. The point made by Mamman Aminu Ibrahim (Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria) is that Nigerian scientists generate knowledge that would be useful in Africa; however, it fails to be distributed because of mas sive, infrastructural shortcomings. Instead, it is used mainly in developed countries. For example, "the U.S. Ministry of Defense alone, during the period of study, asked for more Nigeria-generated veterinary information than all the scientists, agriculturalists, veterinarians, students, industrialists, libraries, and policy makers of 48 African developing countries, including Nigeria itself." Ibrahim's case study is based on the flow of reprints of published research articles in the field of veterinary medicine, generated in Nigeria. He urges support from the North and South to strengthen the sharing of knowledge of research findings within Africa. Alan Fowler (University of Sussex, Brighton, U.K.) observes that devel opment rhetoric sometimes features "a new world order." While the mean ing of that phrase is often unclear, its use has dramatically focussed attention on the future, and especially on how developing countries can help themselves. What does a "new world order" imply for NGOs? Fowler describes several examples of a new kind of organization, specialized think-tanks designed to tackle the problems and issues of the growing NGO sector in development. How may these centers become effective gen erators of useful information? He suggests that as the new order devel ops, the NGO sector will be on a par with governments and business. O r g a n i z a t i o n s CULTURE CATALOGS ON LINE For decades, the huge, nonprofit American Type Culture Collection of live algae, protozoa, bacteria, viruses, and cell lines has maintained and distributed living cultures to research workers, agricultural exper iment stations, and health laboratories all over the world. Now, ATCC's culture catalogs are available on line to any Internet user who can access the GOPHER information retrieval system. Entry is gained by typ ing "gopher merlot.welch.jhu.edu ." After connecting to the host server, select "culture collections," then "ATCC," then the culture database of interest. For assistance, send Internet e-mail to or contact the ATCC Bioinformatics Department, 12301 Parklawn Drive, Rockville, Maryland 20852; phone +1 (301) 231-5578. V I T A P r o j e c t s RURAL ENTERPRISE DEVELOPMENT IN GUINEA Guinea, in West Africa, is one of the poorer countries in the region. Last October, VITA assumed the management of the Guinea Rural Enterprise Development Project -- a project that was initiated by the Guinean Coun cil for International Development two years ago. The project's goal is to promote sustained economic growth in rural Guinea by encouraging the development of microscale and small-scale enterprises. Its three ele ments -- microcredit, training, and market development -- aim to enhance the social welfare of the population. Project director Paul Rippey says, "VITA's management can be expected to encourage microenterprises and small enterprises, which will help the economy and strengthen the position of rural families." Although head quartered in Conakry, the capital city, the project serves the towns of Boke, Kankan, and Mamou. More than 41% of the project's loans have been GRANTED for agricultural marketing and another 6% WERE for agricultural improvement. A substan tial number of loans has also been made for artisanal activities or transport closely linked to strengthening agricultural markets. The program makes loans, unsecured with collateral, to small producers who organize themselves into groups of five people for collectively guaranteeing each other's loans. All are welcome to apply, but because of the nature of the Guinean rural economy and the type of assistance offered, the program has favored women and the poorer strata of society. Typical clients have no formal education, have less than $200 equivalent in U.S. currency in productive assets, work alone or with their children in a microenterprise, and earn more than $3 a day. In general, individual loan ceilings are determined after consideration of the productive assets of the individual and the amount of the loan is kept below this asset value. The average loan has been $200. Information: Richard Slacum, VITA A n n o u n c e m e n t s NATURAL DISASTER REDUCTION From 23 to 27 May 1994, the Government of Japan will be hosting in Yokohama a World Conference on Natural Disaster Reduction, organized for the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction. The conference aims to review IDNDR accomplishments at national, regional and interna tional levels, chart an action program for the future, exchange inform ation on the implementation of IDNDR programs and policies, and increase awareness of the importance of the progress of disaster reduction possibilities. Participation is anticipated to include government ministers and high- level officials, representatives of the over 100 National Committees and Focal Points for the Decade, representatives of regional and interna tional organizations concerned with natural disasters, both governmental and nongovernmental and other interested persons. The conference program will feature global and regional midterm review of IDNDR activities based on national reports. There will also be topical sessions, including both oral and poster presentations, focusing on strategies for disaster mitigation. The themes will address actions to achieve the targets within the framework of the overall program for the Decade, as specified by the IDNDR Scientific and Technical Committee and adopted by the UN General Assembly. The IDNDR targets for all countries are to have in place by the year 2000 comprehensive national assessments of risks from natural hazards; mitigation plans at national and/or local levels, involving long-term prevention and preparedness and community awareness; and ready access to global, regional, national and local warning systems and broad dissem ination of warnings. Study tours of from one to four days' duration will be arranged both before and after the Conference. Guided technical tours will include visits to research, operational and study centers dealing with earth quakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, riverine flooding, and other hazards. Information: Secretariat, International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, United Nations, Palais des Nations 1211, Geneva 10, Switzerland; tel. +41 (22) 798-6894; fax +41 (22) 733-8695. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN COMMUNITY HEALTH This is a call for papers to be presented at the 1994 international conference on Information Technology in Community Health. It will be held in Victoria, Canada, from 30 October to 2 November 1994. The con ference will provide a forum for academics, health professionals, and computer system professionals to present and exchange ideas and research results. Prospective contributors are encouraged to address topics in the following list: (1) technology including community health data net works, health data communication protocols, appropriate technology and telehealth; (2) policy, including community health system assessment and planning, program evaluation, cost/benefit analysis and technology assessment; (3) applications including community health information sys tems and resources, diagnostic and clinical expert systems, and systems for developing countries. Papers should be limited to 20 minutes. Abstracts of 250 words will be accepted up to 15 February 1994; authors will be notified by 15 March and completed papers will be due 15 August. Abstracts to: Kenneth Thornton, Chairman, ITCH '94 Scientific Program Committee, School of Health Information Science, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3050, Victoria, Canada, V8W 3P5; tel. +1 (604) 721-8575; fax: +1 (604) 721-1457; e-mail: * * * HOW TO JOIN VITA'S ELECTRONIC FORUM VITA's free, public, online discussion forum, DEVEL-L, provides for the exchange of ideas and information on a wide range of issues and topics related to technology transfer in international development; for exam- ple, technologies, communications in development, sustainable agricul- ture, women in development, the environment, small enterprise develop- ment, meetings, and book reviews. Subscribers to DEVEL-L automatically receive this newsletter and can download documents free from a special archive by using FTP requests or e-mail messages. To join the forum, send this command or message that reads: SUB DEVEL-L your_real_name to this address: or . You can receive the same benefits by joining the newsgroup bit.listserv.devel-l. You can subscribe to DevelopNet News without joining the discussion forum by sending the following message to the same address: SUB DNN-L your_real_name . Please do not send these messages to VITA. * * * DevelopNet News is an electronic newsletter published monthly by Volun- teers in Technical Assistance (VITA), a private, nonprofit, interna- tional development organization located in Arlington, Virginia. The newsletter needs your stories: you are invited to send them to the editor in electronic form. Your redistribution of DevelopNet News is encouraged. Kindly send us a message on the approximate size of your mailing list; it will be helpful in our planning. President: Henry R. Norman Acting Editor: Vicki Tsiliopoulos Editorial Assistant: Rafe Ronkin, VITA Volunteer VITA specializes in information dissemination and communications tech- nology. It offers services related to sustainable agriculture, food processing, renewable energy applications, water sanitation and supply, small enterprise development, and information management. It has long- and short-term projects in 10 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. VITA's publications, on a variety of practical subjects, are designed to assist persons and organizations in developing countries. You can request a descriptive publications list by postal mail, phone, or fax. Be sure to include your postal address. Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA), 1600 Wilson Boulevard, Suite 500, Arlington, Virginia 22209. Tel. +1 (703) 276-1800, 24-hr BBS: +1 (703) 527-1086 [up to 9600, N,8,1], fax: +1 (703) 243-1865, telex: 440192 VITAUI, cable: VITAINC, e-mail: or , FidoNet: 1:109/165 .