I learned of this book from reading David Edgerton's "The Shock of the Old". On that basis, I was expecting a book primarily about how technology is used in developing countries, and especially about how traditional materials are adapted for local needs. There is a lot about that in this book, but as suggested by the subtitle, "Lives of some African engineers", the emphasis is slightly different. The book is the British author's reflection on his years teaching engineering in Ghana and managing a Technology Consultancy Centre there, including many stories about the enterprising people he met. Its theoretical context, which is kept pretty low-key throughout, is based more in economic development than technology studies. The one villain in the book is the International Monetary Fund, which devastated at least 20% of Ghanian small businesses during the 1980s.
This book has many interesting things to say about how technology is adopted in a developing country, but an unexpected attraction is the writing. The title itself is a nice pun: a "fitter" is the Ghanian term for an auto mechanic and "informal industrialist." One or two of the 14 chapters lapse into the sort of dry institutional history typical of such books, but one more often finds passages like this one (@2): "The fitters' community is marked by the carcasses of the vehicles that have finally come to the end of the road. These serve as a spare parts and raw material store that constitutes an important factor in the fitters' economy. Between the dead vehicles the living are tended, but one needs to be a resident to tell one from the other. Many of the living spend months in a deep coma and the dead have been known to rise from the grave. In hard times the graveyard extends but at times when foreign credit allows the importation of spare parts, tyres and batteries, the resurrection of the Last Days is spectacularly accomplished."
Such a graceful combination of information, style and gentle humor is beyond the skill of most writers, but it's all the more impressive coming from someone with a BSc and PhD in mechanical engineering. A charming and informative book.
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