Publisher's Synopsis
The role of technology in economic development is critical, pervasive, and indispensable. In today's world, the degree of a country's development or underdevelopment depends critically on the extent to which technology has been harnessed to facilitate the production of goods and services in agriculture, industry, commerce, and professional activities. This at least implies a systematic approach to control of production through labor-saving techniques and a sophistication of communications, transportation network, etc. However, the key issues of the role of technological change in the development process have received vary scanty attention by the policy makers in the developing countries. Furthermore, the development of science and technology in the poor countries are implicitly taken usually by default since for a long time those nations did not seriously direct their attention to the formulation and implementation of explicit technological policies let alone devote adequate resources to research and development (R and D) and other science and technology activities. The science and technology scene in the majority of developing countries is accordingly dominated by the views and actions of aid donors, foreign academics and multiplicity of foreign consultants. Technology, which is now science-based continues to develop at such an exponential rate that its role in the development process has become complex. In spite of this complexity, the level of science and technological progress in a country is now acknowledged to be a major determinant of that country's standard of living and, in fact, political and military power. The poor countries, especially in Africa, still continue to grapple with pressing development problems by prescribing short-term macroeconomic solutions which over the years have proved ineffective. Poverty rates continue to feed on itself. Without adequate resources to implement programs and projects, these poor countries continue to rely mainly on dwindling export earnings of a few primary commodities and on loans they could obtain from the (IMF) and donors to finance their socioeconomic development projects. These programs are devoid of any technological considerations since meaningful science and technology policies are either absent or not explicitly incorporated into their socioeconomic plans. The fundamental problem of Sudan is that of a vicious interaction between excruciating poverty and abysmally low levels of productivity in an environment characterized by serious deficiencies in basic and social infrastructure. Those are particularly physical capital, research capabilities technological know-how, and human resource development. Several other problems such as inflationary pressures, instability of exports earnings, balance of payment deficits, rising debt burden and host of other exogenous factors which a bearing on the economic performance serve to aggravate the crisis. Although many studies have attempted to investigate their causes, policy deviancies, recommended policy changes etc, no one provided an in-depth analysis of the role technological progress in the process of development. The study seeks to redress the gab by constructing a macro-econometric model for Sudan as an analytical tool. However, in view of inadequacies and data limitations, a combination of both qualitative and quantitative analysis was conducted.
