Liberation and Technology: Development Possibilities in Pursuing Technological Autonomy by Gussai Sheikheldin.

Abstract

With an introduction and six chapters, Sheikheldin’s Liberation and Technology has successfully ducked one of the limitations of technological determinism namely, the politically insensitive characteristic. He ducks this by suggesting that the global South nations should adopt state-driven adoption of technologies that suit their ecological conditions, fits their people and that reduce dependence on foreign technologies. One would say, he is calling for delinking from the global technical development as a way attaining social development to individual nations of the South. Such a proposition is not fundamentally novel. In the politics and history of social development, delinking is a paradigm that surfaced in the early postcolonial development practice in the South through the industrialization drive.