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Abstract
Geographical Information Systems are seen by many as a quick `fix' for the problems of lower-income countries and people in those countries have been encouraged to adopt this perception, along with the technology. As teachers of students from LICs, we seek to avoid reproducing a context less transfer of technical skills and rather aim to promote an Education based on the limitations of the technology and on the nature and construction of information. While identifying GIS as one of many components of `geographical information', deemphasize the importance of including `non-GIS' staff in the education process. We advocate a `problem-posing' approach to the teaching of `Geographical Information for Development' and discuss some of the challenges which this raises, both for teachers and students.

1 Introduction
The export of skills and technologies from higher to lower-income countries (LICs) is process deeply influenced by culture, politics and finance. At the global level, institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have beencriticised for imposing capitalist-focused, finance-orientated strategies on LICs. Such perceived new economic `colonization' can extend into strategies for distributing foreign aid within individual LICs, such as the tying of aid to the purchase of Information Technology (IT) from the donor nations. Similarly, at the corporate level, most major IT businesses operating in LICs also promote the adoption of `western’ hardware and software, and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are a significant element of this sales thrust. The biases do not end here, however. Where higher education in the United Kingdom has been involved in training and education strategies in association with LICs, the main emphasis has so far been on technical courses with relatively narrow and specific practical skill outcome. The focus has been on a market demand for deterministic analytical tools that require sophisticated levels of understanding by skilled users, rather than addressing the broader questions which social scientists are increasingly asking of GIS.
In this paper the present authors wish to share their own doubts and questioning of the relationship between GIS training and `development'. Consider first the mode of educational delivery. The eminent Brazilian educator Paulo Frere (1972) made distinction between what he called a `banking type of curriculum' and a `problem-posing type of curriculum'. A banking curriculum is one where teacher and text books are the sources of knowledge, and where the purpose is the acquisition of technical skills and qualifications. In banking educational system the main currency is certificates, and status for both the teachers and the students follows from successful graduation.

References
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