| Abstract | Utilization of technology to enhance economic activities in the rural societies of Tanzania, in most cases has been a disappointment. A major cause of failure has been the lack of a coherent conceptual framework for technology development and promotion. The problem of "fitting" technology with needs of society and thereafter providing for effective utilization, has been highlighted in an experimental sunflower oil processing project covering two districts in the Iringa region of Tanzania. The women's groups as owners of the sunflower oil processing projects encountered operational problems related to technical, social, economic, cultural, political, and environmental matters, depending on the geographical location of the group. The oil processing technology was arbitrarily acquired from the Institute of Production Innovation (IPI) at the University of Dar-es-Salaam in 1987, through the sponsorship of the Joint UNICEF/WHO Nutrition Support Programme (JNSP) in collaboration with the government of the United Republic of Tanzania. Operational problems arising from utilizing the IPI technology, resulted in a need to conduct technology assessment prior to introducing a technology to the women’s groups. A survey of available literature on technology assessment, indicated the existence of technology choice models capable of selecting a technology from technological alternatives, assuming that technological alternatives always existed. However, the term technology has been defined differently by different analysts each focusing on the specificities of the socio-economic conditions in which the term technology is being used. Technology, often related to machines and processes, or hardware and software, has recently been reported to consist of four components, technoware, humanware, inforware and orgaware. Technoware being the physical facilities; humanware, the human abilities; inforware, the document facts and orgaware, the institutional framework. The environment in which the technology operates was called “technology climate". The analysis of literature, however, indicated that many of these existing technology choice models were found to lack the capability to assess and identify attributes needed by technology to suit groups in rural areas. An integrated model based on the four component definition of technology, was developed to provide a comprehensive assessment of technological alternatives in rural areas, using the merits of the existing models. The developed model consists of three successive decision levels of technology assessment. The first two levels assess the responsiveness of the national and group environments with respect to the technology being sought. The national and group environments are surroundings in which the IPI oil processing technology has been operating, and are named "technology climate". The women’s groups, as users of the IPI oil technology are located inside the technology climate. The third assessment is at the group level and is made in relation to the attributes sought by the women’s group with respect to technoware, humanware, inforware, and orgaware. The appropriateness criteria used to assess the national environment (first level) were the cost of financing the technology, while the quantity of raw materials and the size of market were criteria for assessing the group environment (second level). The appropriateness criteria for assessing the group (third level), included technical aspects such as operational logistics and maintainability/adaptability; socio-cultural aspects; and economic attributes such as benefits of the technology. All assessment criteria at the group (third level), were disaggregated into the four components of technology. At each criteria level, a fitness index was obtained by pairwise matching of the IPI oil processing technology requirements with the socio-economic resource endowment in the women’s group. A fitness index which registered less than 5, meant a "poor fit region” which described the technology as being too demanding for the resource generation in the group and/or technology climate. Thus, the technology which fell in the "poor fit region", did not meet the requirements set in that particular criteria. Any technology which did not meet the requirements set in any of the three assessment levels (i.e. national environment, group environment, and group itself), was rejected from further considerations. A data survey was conducted in the Iringa region of Tanzania in mid-1991, to assess the socio-economic impact of the technology on the women’s groups and their families as well as to assess the extent of technology utilization. The collected technology input data on factors related to adoption of the technology such as, cost/benefit analysis, raw materials and market, operational logistics, maintainability/adaptability, and socio-cultural aspects sought by groups, were used in the developed model to predict the extent of technology utilization. The socio-¬economic impact data covered impact evaluation factors of the IPI oil processing technology such as loan repayment, income distribution, children’s nutritional status, and child deaths. The socio¬-economic impact analysis based on index formulation, exhibited different performances in utilizing the TPI oil processing technology within the six women’s groups. The technology input data was fed into the model and the predictions on the extent to which the IPI oil technology was utilized in the six women’s groups, was found to be similar to that shown by the socio-economic performance, based on impact evaluation factors. The utilization of the IPI technology was dependent on the technology climate, humanware, and orgaware. Technoware and inforware did not significantly affect technology operations. The model identified the weaknesses and strengths in each of the six women’s groups in using the IPI oil processing technology and helped generate information such as the required quantities of sunflower seed to process oil, the market size for the oil, supply of machine spare parts, energy inputs from labour etc., which were useful in planning remedial action to best utilize the technology. Three sunflower oil processing technologies in Tanzania, namely, IPI, CARL, and traditional technologies, were assessed with respect to each of the six women’s groups, so as to demonstrate the applicability and usefulness of the integrated model for rural development in Tanzania. The IPI and CARL oil technologies were accepted by three groups each. The traditional oil technology was rejected in all six women’s groups. Technology climate was correlated with humanware and orgaware at a 95 percent confidence level. The weaknesses of the IPI technology, identified by the model were useful in providing policy directives to build a conducive technology climate which would facilitate effective use of the technology. The policy directives included access to resources by women's groups from formal lending institutions, an increase in sunflower seed production, strengthening the supply of spare parts, and recruiting extension staff possessing relevant qualifications. |