provided to developing countries, excluding the forner communist countries (or current transition countries), was $US 1.0b in 1970, $US 4.5b in 1980, $US 9.5b in 1990, and $US 11.3b in 1993.5 As a percentage of total ODA, these amounts were 23 percent, 27 percent, 29 percent, and 39 percent, respectively. As these amounts do not include loans for TA, they understate the total share of TA in ODA.

Substantial TA from OECD countries to the fornerly socialist transition countries only began in 1991. If we include these amounts, the total grant TA for 1993 is $US 13.6b versus $US 11.3b if excluded. Therefore, 17 percent of TA went to transition economies in 1993 from less than 3 percent only 4 years earlier. African countries have taken the lion's share of TA, with about two-thirds of this portion going to Sub-Saharan Africa. While Africa's share has generally been greater than 50 percent, the 'rise' of transition countries has brought this amount closer to 40 percent in recent years. While we expected to find TA being increasingly dominated by African and transition countries, this had not happened by 1994, with their combined share being similar to Africa's percentage of TA in the 1980s.

At the beginning of 1996 the World Bank portfolio had 136 free-standing TA loans, with an average size of $US 20m, and TA components in 1300 other projects which ranged from $US 200,000 to $US 50m. Another $US 450m of TA also goes through grants and trust funds each year. Note that 41 percent of TA component lending in 1995 went to only 5 countries: Argentina, Russia, China, Mexico, and India. In the fiscal year 1994-95 there were $US 812m of new free-standing TA loans.<sup>6</sup>

# I(c): Benefits and Critiques of Technical Assistance: A Review

Technical assistance can be used to fill gaps for specific knowledge in development projects, assist in policy reform, and, most importantly, develop local capacity to undertake tasks by themselves either through institutional development or capacity building. While gap-filling TA was once quite common, the ability to foster self-reliance is now considered the main goal of TA. In the context of TA, Cassen (1994: 165) specifies 3 dimensions of self-reliance: (i) to determine knowledge needs that cannot adequately be met domestically, identify where in other countries such needs may be met, know how to acquire this knowledge, and know how to adapt and use it at home; (ii) the ability to undertake domestic research, problem-solving and policy formation; and (iii) the ability to sustain these capacities, which involves the institutional capacities for training successive generations of scientists, technicians, and managers.<sup>7</sup> S Berg (1993: 73) calculates that real TA grants to Sub-Saharan Africa grew by 44 from 1975 to 1989. Given that the African share of TA did not change substantially over that period in our larger, undeflated data set, this figure can be used as a rough approximation of the total real growth of TA in the period.

6 These figures come from Operations Evaluation Department (1996).

7 Note that in the original 1986 edition of his book, the chapter on technical cooperation was written by Robert Muscat. This chapter is substantially unchanged in the 1994 edition.

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