1938: Africans Need Bednets, Vitamin A, Clean Drinking Water. Sound Familiar?
From a paper called "Can the West Save Africa?" [PDF] by William Easterly, comparing findings about Africa's technological troubles from one Lord Hailey in 1938 with a 2005 U.N. Millennium Project report:
Says Easterly:
All of the above seem to forget that technology does not implement itself. Technical knowledge needs people to implement it—people who have the right incentives to solve all of the glitches and unexpected problems that happen when you apply a new technology, people who make sure that all the right inputs get to the right places at the right time, and local people who are motivated to use the new technology. The field that addresses all these incentives is called economics.
Via Bill Goodwin's Google Reader.