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machinery purchased; therefore Tanzania must also seek managers
from the company supplying the technology. This argument,
which is advocated by Carvhalo in his article referred to earlier, is
frequently part of a broader argument which treats the problem of
underdevelopment in similar deterministic fashion, claiming that
the predominance of modern technology in the developed world
and its relative absence in underdeveloped countries is the real
causual factor underlying the disparity in the level of productive
forces between rich and poor. This more general argument, still
popular in conservative western circles, has been convincingly
refuted by Marxist economists who argue that it was the ex-
ploitative character of imperialism that created, and of neo-
colonialism which continues to consolidate, ‘underdevelopment’;
and that the technology gap is itself a product of this exploitation,
so that simple technological transfers will not close the gap until
these more fundamental exploitative ties have been severed.
Related to this theme is Shivji’s argument that nationalisation is,
by itself, insufficient to eradicate exploitation when foreign
management ties remain intact.*® What then is the justification for
the use of foreign managers and how far is their presence due to
the technology gap?

It is our belief that there has been an overemphasis on the
technological content of managerial tasks, in part because the
broader technological determinism theory of underdevelopment is
accepted by large sections of the Tanzania elite and in part because
western firms have a vested interest in providing complete
management services and not just technical advice and expertise
for the simple reason that complete control of the managerial
function qualifies them for the management fee and a share of
profits (even of turnover in some cases) and also gives them access
to any number of ways of making money for themselves. The
worst abuses in the Kilimanjaro and MECCO cases took place
precisely because the foreign involvement covered the whole
management field instead of being confined to the more complex
technical aspects of the business. This led one observer to state
that MECCO ‘developed the law of . . ., everything for big Dutch
business and nothing for Tanzania. This they applied to the letter
where personnel, profits and building materials were concerned’.*!
This separation of the broader management function, which is of
course partly technical but which is also concerned with social

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