The rapid technological progress seen in developing countries between the 1990s and 2000s is almost entirely due to the adoption and adaptation of pre-existing technologies—rather than because of cutting-edge inventions.

A World Bank report, Global Economic Prospects 2008: Technology Diffusion in the Developing World, finds that scientific invention and innovation—measured by the number of patents and journal articles—plays virtually no role in explaining the level of technological achievement in developing countries.

The graph on your right shows that developing countries are scarecely active at the global technological frontier.

This is mainly because many developing countries lack the critical mass of technological competencies necessary to participate at the global technology frontier. 

This does not mean that top-level scientists do not exist in these countries. Many people from developing countries perform cutting-edge research in developed countries.

In the United States, 2.5 of the 21.6 million working scientists and engineers were born in developing countries (Kannankutty & Burelli, 2007).

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How have various pre-existing technologies spread in developing countries? The picture is somewhat different for older technologies than it is for newer ones.

The major innovations of the past 200 years—such as steam power, electricity, and telephones—exist to some degree in virtually every country. But access to these older technologies varies widely between countries, depending on both the technological absorptive capacity of the country and the affordability of the technology.

While countries of the former Soviet bloc enjoy near-universal access to electricity, in Sub-Saharan Africa, only 8 percent of the rural population has access to electricity, and just over half the urban population. Moreover, the quality and regularity of the service is low.

Some newer technologies such as mobile phones and broadband Internet have penetrated developing countries much faster than older technologies.

• The near-doubling of mobile phone ownership in low-income countries between 2000 and 2004 may be of great value too poor people in rural areas constrained by poor infrastructure. For example, Teba Bank in South Africa has developed a smart card that uses mobile phone technology to provide low-cost electronic banking services to low-income customers.
• Internet bandwidth consumption and the number of broadband subscribers have more than doubled from 1999 to 2004 in both middle- and low-income countries.

But personal computers—more expensive than a shared Internet connection such as through an Internet café—have spread more slowly.Three-quarters of low-income countries have 15 or fewer personal computers per 1,000 people, and a quarter have fewer than five.

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Weak internal diffusion of technology holds back overall technological achievement in many countries.

While major centers and leading firms in Brazil, India and China may operate close to the global technological frontier, most firms in these countries operate at less than a fifth of the top productivity level.

Full Text of the report >>