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Is Secondary Economic Activity different in LEDCs?

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What is it like?

• Where you have TNC like Coco-cola, the factories are no different from anywhere else

• But as we saw, LEDCs do not have much secondary economic activity.

• A lot of what they need is still produced by hand with very few machines – if any

• But they have many needs, such as equipment for pumping and cleaning water, for example.

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What is it like?

• To start off with, NGO’s like OXFAM and CATHOD went in when there was a famine or floods or some other natural disaster and provided food and shelter in an emergency.

• But as time went on, they realized that these people needed long term solutions to problems like fresh water, building materials and cooking and food processing

• The solutions needed to be local, cheap and sustainable.

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Out of these Needs came New Ideas

• Some called these new ideas ‘Intermediate Technology’

• The idea was that currently there was• Indigenous technology – meaning locally

created, mostly carried out by hand, very slow• Or there could be• Industrial technology – western ideas – large,

expensive and highly mechanised• But there maybe there could be Intermediate

that fitted in the middle

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Grain Milling, for example

• With the indigenousindigenous grain processing techniques found in many African cultures, women may spend many hours every day pounding grains by hand.

• Takes about 1 - 3 hours every day to grind grain for their families

• Costs less than $5 for equipment

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Grain Milling, for example• The industrialindustrial solution is a

conventional commercial grain mill, which can grind this much grain in a few seconds.

• Takes about 10 seconds to grind the grain for a family for one day

• Costs abut $8,000• Far too expensive and too

efficient for a village to share

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Grain Milling, for example• The intermediateintermediate

technology solution for grain milling is a small mill operated by a local entrepreneur or co-op

• This is an Amy Smith’s hammer mill.

• It’s nearly as fast as the industrial solution, grinding a day’s worth of grain in about 1 - 3 minutes for a family for one day

• Costs abut $500

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Water collection• In many regions the

indigenous indigenous for water collection requires women to carry jugs of water many hundreds of meters to several kilometres.

• Obviously the time and effort required is a drain on other things they might be doing.

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Water collection• The industrialindustrial

solution for water collection is classic “big development.”

• Dams and associated infrastructure cost many millions of dollars, and operate on a scale that may create other environmental or social issues.

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Water collection• This treadle pump is

an example of an intermediateintermediate technology solution

• Low cost, small scale, and very useful.

• It was designed and constructed by an NGO.

• It allows one person to collect enough water in a couple hours work to irrigate fields for several days.

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Ideas on Intermediate Technology

• People may view intermediate technologies as transitional, on the way to industrial solutions. In other words, intermediate technologies would not an end in themselves but a means to the industrial end.

• why transition into Industrial can be a good thing?

• Maybe the big brick factories can make lots more bricks at lower overall cost, which in turn can create more/better housing.

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Ideas on Intermediate Technology

• But why might it be good to consider an Intermediate Technology to be a worthy end in itself?

• Matches local skill levels• Matches rural demand and cost structures• Creates more jobs than industrial solutions• Producing locally is more sustainable and is often a better

match for size and portability needs of developing countries.• Doesn’t fuel rural-to-urban migration, which is a pitfall of the

large scale of industrial technologies.• Because Intermediate Technology is a smaller step from the

base indigenous technology, it allows other aspects of infrastructure (roads, distribution, raw material resources) to evolve together in proportion.

• The lower cost of Intermediate Technology allows more people to step readily into the entrepreneur/ownership role.

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Ideas have moved on a bit since then

We tend more to talk about appropriate technology

It is similar in many ways, but takes more account of the place in

which it is practiced

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What are appropriate technologies?

• low in capitol costs• uses local materials as much as possible• creates jobs• small scale• can be understood, maintained and repaired

locally• uses decentralized, renewable energy sources• Sustainable• Culturally acceptable• Durability

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The Pot-in-Pot

In this AT solution for food storage and preservation, the

water between a nested pair of clay pots evaporates,

refrigerating the interior of the inner pot.

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Whirlwind Wheelchairs

• These chairs are locally produced, sometimes by users themselves, and use locally available parts and materials, e.g. from bicycles and ceiling fans.

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Light Up the World: Solid State

Lights• The NGO Light Up The World has

developed an AT lighting solution using very low power full-spectrum LEDs paired with solar or other appropriate power sources. Parts are shipped into each country for local assembly. They also provide local repair.

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Grameen Phone

• This cell phone company uses micro-finance to bring service to rural Bangladesh, through village-level ownership of infrastructure.

• Howard Guy invested 10 - 12 years of effort to get this service off the ground.

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Here is an example of intermediate technology

becoming more appropriate

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Fuel from the Fields Project (Charcoal Briquettes) – Haiti

• Background• The charcoal briquettes project

began in Haiti, evolved out of student interest in addressing trash disposal.

• Haiti is 98% deforested.• Charcoal is the primary cooking

fuel. In the traditional charcoal-making process, you set fire to a pile of wood and then bury it to restrict the oxygen, thus slowing the burn.

• Charcoal is sold in large bags.

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The Original Project – Briquettes from Waste Paper

• The briquette starts with paper pulp.• A hydraulic press made from a car jack

compresses the pulp into a small disk.

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• After the initial test, the D-Lab team made some improvements to the press to make it easier to use and more productive

• HOWEVERHOWEVER – the improved press didn’t address a more fundamental problem:– the briquettes didn’t burn easily and required training to use properly!

• Original Design• $100• Requires 3

people to operate

• Improvements• Bracing

makes press safer and easier to use

• Improved process to eject briquettes

• Throughput increased to 2 briquettes/minute

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Search for Better Fuel: Sugar Cane Waste

• The team looked for other fuel sources, and came upon waste sugar cane.

• After sugar is extracted from the sugar cane, farmers are left with huge piles of waste sugar cane stalks.

• Traditionally the waste has been burned, simply to dispose of it.

• The team brought sample of cane back to the lab for tests.• One of the issues was how to form the cane into a shaped,

compressed briquette. • It was found that that a sticky cassava porridge binds well to

the sugar cane.• The sugar cane briquettes seemed easier to use (and thus

more Appropriate) than paper-based briquettes and they burned well.

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But this would only be appropriate where there was sugarcane waste

• Sugar cane can only be a solution where sugar cane grows.

• In India, other locally available materials like cow dung are the cooking fuel of choice.

• Cow dung is “very smoky,” so another D-Lab project in 2003 looked at combining some less-smoky material (i.e. rice straw or wheat straw) with a cow dung “binder.”

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Guiding Principles for D-Lab

• Identify functional requirements• Encourage participatory

development• Value indigenous knowledge• Promote local innovation• Strive for sustainability