[jl6]

My takeaway from observing “tech in developing world” projects is that the key gap is usually maintenance. That is, continuous small investment to prevent things from breaking in the first place. To be fair, that’s not exactly a solved problem in developed countries either!

Sometimes development projects just throw solutions at rural communities then move onto their next project, leaving no legacy of training or continued supply of parts/tools/funding.

Sometimes solutions get treated as resources instead of infrastructure, like a water treatment plant that got strip-mined for metal (that example was from South America).

Tech is a whole ecosystem, mindset and lifestyle, not just magic hardware to parachute into situations that aren’t set up to manage it on a long term basis.

[gertrunde]

I knew a charity group many years ago that targeted this issue.

They noticed that aid charities would give modern motorcycles to rural medical workers that rapidly ended up in a non-working state.

So they gathered older motorbikes, more suitable and more repairable in the destination country, and spent time training the end users in maintenance and upkeep, and ongoing support.

[kulahan]

Not an uncommon problem with charities working with foreign nations. They fail to capture the local populations because they think of these problems in a vacuum.

Person lacks reliable transportation -> give them some -> problem solved

There's another example - a charity provides treated mosquito nets for free to millions of families in Africa. Great!

People lack reliable mosquito protection -> give them treated nets -> problem solved!

But in reality it went like this:

People lack reliable mosquito protection -> give them treated nets -> many of these families are starving -> fine mesh nets are great at catching small fish -> all their food is now infected with insecticide, mosquitos continue to access the family as well

[fwipsy]

Givewell did an analysis and concluded that while this is a problem, it's not nearly enough to offset the benefit which comes from using the nets for their intended purpose: https://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/in...

Certainly improving public health in developing countries is a hard problem! But it's not impossible and existing efforts have had an effect.

[yabones]

That was exactly the goal with the Buffalo Bicycle project, and I'd say it worked pretty well. Make a bike that's mechanically simple & reliable, maintainable with common tools, and train technicians to fix and upkeep them. Basically create the Toyota Landcruiser of bikes. I kind of want one, even though it's a "bad" bike by the standards of most western audiences (heavy, slow, ugly, etc)

https://buffaloride.org/buffalobicycle https://worldbicyclerelief.org/product-development/

[red-iron-pine]

ain't just tech in the developing world.

even in the Big IT Enterprise "support" is a byword that appears in all discussions.

it's not enough to have, or to build, you gotta maintain, fix, replace, and eventually, remove.

those discussions aren't fun or sexy, and everyone hates when you tank a blue-sky "it'll fix everything" discussion with the unpleasant realities of long-term care and feeding

[lo_zamoyski]

> it's not enough to have, or to build, you gotta maintain, fix, replace, and eventually, remove.

Indeed. I think many in the West fail to appreciate - and take for granted - the cultural dimensions (which include cultures of knowledge, skill transmission, cultivation, and development, and also worldview[0]) as well as the economic ecosystems and supply chains involved.

Dropping off a tractor in Africa or a bulldozer in rural India and calling it a day is superficial and worthless. Imagine shipping something suitably technologically advanced to some Germanic tribe during the Roman conquest of Europe if you need an analogy.

[0] The worldview bit might surprise some. As some have argued, there are reasons why enterprises like modern science arose and flourished only in the West, whereas everywhere else scientific development was historically quite limited. These reasons include a culture formed under the notion of the Logos which entails the belief in a thoroughly intelligible universe that can be fully known in principle; a rejection of pantheism with a distinction made between the transcendental and the immanent, allowing for exploration; a rejection of pantheism and so a world infested with capricious, personified natural phenomena; an omniscient and omnibenevolent God who is not capricious or voluntarist. Without these elements, the confidence and motivation needed to confidently exercise and develop intellectually, to try to understand the world - which contribute to the formation of a robust scientific culture - is stifled.

[scottLobster]

It's not just a failure to appreciate, it's an outright demonization of many of these observations as racist/imperialist. One of the prime motivators for this kind of development "aid" is the mistaken belief that the only issue is a lack of resources or external exploitation, and if you just provide the resources and/or remove the exploitation a given place will naturally turn into an enlightened Western nation-equivalent. Maybe with some fun unique cultural festivals, local cuisine, and some harmless, quirky native dances in exotic outfits!

Meanwhile even in the West it's easy to find people who win the lottery and are broke a year later, or rich celebrities/pro athletes who make tons of money and lose it all, or die with far less than you'd expect. Those people are laughed at and/or pitied, because even they are held to to a higher standard than some poor 3rd-worlder who's just a pure victim

[soperj]

> As some have argued, there are reasons why enterprises like modern science arose and flourished only in the West

Majority of inventions came from Asia... as they're currently doing.

[lo_zamoyski]

Before the so-called scientific revolution and the later industrial revolution, that may be true - arguably for largely uninteresting reasons - but afterward, this is patently false.

Modern science arose only a couple of centuries ago in Europe. Prior to that, we see a long period of great European intellectual ferment, most notably the Scholastic period, that supplied the intellectual foundations and vocabulary that made modern science possible.

You're also reducing science to technology production, but even here, the sophistication of technology that modern science made possible far outstrips anything pre-scientific.

[tbrownaw]

The claim being that it's a gap there, a thing that gets overlooked in these projects. Whereas here it's a standard line item in whoever's budget.

[zdc1]

I don't understand this space very well, but I wonder if an iFixit-esque solution would work there: publish DIY guides on identifying and fixing common faults, and have a network of sellers for replacement parts and tools.

[Scoundreller]

I’m confused by everything tbh.

I maintain a 20 year old Corolla, which is incredibly common throughout Africa (exported 2nd/3rd/4th hand).

But users from there rarely pop up in the forums or anywhere else I’ve found.

I dunno how they diagnose obscure condition XYZ without the like 9 retired mechanics on the forum.

Do they all use closed WhatsApp groups? Do they just consume tech info but not produce?

I appreciate they don’t all speak English, nor a language that Google Translate is good at.

They’ve gotta be dealing with the same problems we do fixing these, if not more.

[MrsPeaches]

Solar Aid who wrote this report have an app called SunnyMoney which has repair guides.

Don’t know about uptake:

https://solar-aid.org/news/repair-app/

[cogman10]

Absolutely a possibility. Solar systems, especially when not connected to a grid, are fairly simple beasts at the end of the day. Simple enough that I've seen more than a few youtube videos where guys build out their own custom solar system on a van.

There's only a few parts that go bad (it's probably a capacitor somewhere).

[jncfhnb]

On some level economies of scale and improving technology don’t warrant maintenance