Foreign Experts and Unsustainable Development

In the 1950s and 1960s, former colonies in Asia and Africa gained their independence and "new states" were created. Although they still maintained strong links with their former rulers, these links were no longer exclusive. For a variety of political reasons, discussed in this book, Israel was keen to forge relationships with these less developed countries. It offered expertise and technological assistance in agricultural development in exchange for political alliance. This book examines three case studies of such projects in Nigeria, Nepal and Zambia to discover how successful this type of assisstance was and what lessons could be learnt from these experiences. While most of the projects set up by the Israelis proved very successful initially, once the projects were established and the Israeli experts left, infrastructure problems often made the new agricultural technologies unsustainable. The main problems revealed in this book reflect how strongly changes in global politics and economics impact on small-scale local development projects. Using in-depth case studies from Nigeria, Nepal and Zambia, the book examines Israeli-assisted agricultural development projects and addresses the key issues and problems involved with such collaborative projects, where foreign experts introduce new technologies to less developed countries' rural communities.