ABSTRACT
The transfer of technology, knowledge and experience from the North to the South, from the so-called ‘developed countries’ to ‘developing countries’ has been promoted over the decades by international institutions as well as national AID agencies. The rationale behind such efforts was to assist these countries in their endeavor to overcome the negative impacts of underdevelopment. Much has been written about the underlying motives for this generous assistance. The arguments range from political ambitions to export promotion, from ideological reasoning to encouraging world peace, and from health to environmental concerns. Throughout the history of globally practiced development aid, the paradigms of transfer changed – first from infrastructure and water to agricultural development, then from integrated rural to urban and squatter redevelopment and, more recently, from sustainable development to institution building. All this has been backed up by continuously changing development paradigms, reflecting the short-term fashions of academics, publishers and AID bureaucrats.
