Modem industry has become highly technical. Often heavily depending
on research, continuous up-grading and modernisation, requiring high
technical skills and involved management procedures. In most cases the
challenge of competition in world markets and of the best possible ser-
vice to the national consumer poses a critical choice between slow and
hopefully progressive development of the Tanzanian industry reduced to
its own pace and left to rely solely on local hired human resources of ac-
celerated development of the highest possible type, which needs the
assistance of world leaders in managerial and technical knowhow and ex-
pertise.?” (Emphasis mine)

In the praise of these world leaders — the multinational cor-
porations — Neil H. Jacoby, Professor of Business Economics
and former Dean of the Graduate School of Business Ad-
ministration, University of California, in an article published by
Topic, the Magazine of the U.S. Information Agency for
distribution in Africa, has argued that the multinational cor-
porations are ‘an international carrier of advanced management
science and technology, an agent for the global transmission of
culture, bringing closer the day when a common set of ideals will
unite mankind’.?® He concludes:

The multinational corporation is, beyond doubt, the most powerful
agency for regional and global economic unity that our century has
produced. It is fundamentally an instrument of peace. Its transactions are
transnational in nature and purpose. Its interest is to emphasise the com-
mon goals of peoples, to reconcile or remove differences between them.
It cannot thrive in a regime of international tension and conflict. Is it too
much to hope that, through the instrumentality of multinational
business, the imperatives of world economic progress will ultimately
help to bring unity to mankind?2®

Since the multinational corporations are the world leaders, they
can command the best brains of the academic world, most widely
circulated mass media; widely publicised conferences, and so on to
make and propagate their case. It is therefore not necessary for me
nor my intention to join in to catalogue ‘great deeds’ of the
multinational corporations. Brilliant brains like those of Professor
Jacoby and his numerous colleagues can amply take care of that.
Instead, in this section, it is proposed to discuss briefly the losses
incurred by ‘the led of the world’ when ‘their’ public corporations
go into partnerships with the multinational corporations.

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