Appropriate technology / by Intermediate Technology Development Group

The Intermediate Technology Development Group was formed in 1965 by a group of engineers, economists, scientists and others from industry and the professions, to provide practical and effective self- help techniques for developing countries. It is a non-profit organisation registered as a charity.

Its aim is to demonstrate and emphasise that aid must be designed to help the poor to help themselves.

The most urgent and intractable problem of the less developed countries is rural unemployment and mass migration to the cities. The highly sophisticated capital-intensive, labour-saving methods and equipment currently being exported create few jobs and waste scarce capital resources, whereas the technologies most likely to be appropriate for the poor countries are those which are labour-intensive, capital saving, use local materials and are simple enough to be used and maintained by the people themselves.

The Group is an action group which concentrates on research and development into self-help technologies for use in rural and village life; tests and demonstrates the results through field projects, programmes and consultancies; communicates the information to the developing countries through governments, organisations and individuals and by publishing material through its subsidiary, Intermediate Technology Publications Ltd.