ABSTRACT
A price has to be paid for anything worthwhile: to redirect technology so that it serves man instead of destroying him requires primarily an effort of the imagination and an abandonment of fear. In the parlance of international financial institutions, structural adjustment means the comprehensive reform of macro- and micro-policies that hamper economic performance. Despite the passage of a decade of adjustment programmes, during which substantive empirical evidence should have become available, the arguments are still used to mask strong ideological views on the role of state and market, making 'truth' difficult to discern. If the problems which adjustment programmes address - price fixing, subsidies, overvalued exchange rates and inflation - are set aside, there remain a number of socio-economic distortions which strongly affect the choice of technology. The development of a technological capacity and of technologies appropriate to the needs of any country is dependent upon the institutional, economic and social environment in which they grow.
