As for local innovation, it think it very much depends on where. I've visited and lived in many communities in developing nations in Latin America and there's a distinct dearth of not just innovative solutions, but even just basic and seemingly obvious ones. Upon seeing and feeling this 7 years ago, I decided to dedicate my life to it. I'm hopeful that in the coming year I'll finally be ready to share what I've been working on to facilitate it in a more scalable way...

https://worldbicyclerelief.org/mechanics-of-mobility/

One product which I can still remember back from when Banana Republic was still an obscure and cool and independent company with a charming hand-illustrated catalog was pairs of slippers/shoes made in 3rd world countries where the sole was a repurposed worn-out bicycle tire.... Interesting inversion of the usual order of things.

Buying and shipping X amount of Y to <country> is easy to calculate the cost. And it's a fixed one time cost. Perfect for PR OP, and humanitarian operation with limited budget and/or available work hours.

Teaching takes the most valuable resources of all: Time. And it's harder to predict how long (and therefor how much $$) it will take before having sustainable results. And it requires on-premise staff and usually to setup some building for the staff, for the teaching grounds, etc.

Tl;DR teaching can easily be 10X the time and money budget of a quick 'send stuff' operation. This is why these are usually big operation handled by big non-profit.

The counterargument is, of course, "but what's in it for me?"

That said, I'm also disgusted by the fact this is necessary at all. We designed and/or let an inherently unfair game go on unimpeded and give the losers some scraps so they may survive and continue to play along with can only be called the naturally occurring and less entertaining variant of The Hunger Games.

Any changes to the status quo will have to contend with powerful questions because why build bonds with people you distrust? Why bother including insignificant nations in your decision process? Why not be top dog and trample everyone under your righteous boots? Why not exploit and generally harvest the shit out of everything in sight and retrieve resources for the absolute minimum you can get away with? These sound annoying and they are, but they are really tough questions and they demand a good answer. Just "be a good person" is not cutting it. We need systemic solutions.

In case you're wondering I have the answer: sadly I do not, but I am convinced a couple of you do so please enlighten me.

These tools might be useful in war, weird remote situations or maybe when no capital/investors are willing to inject capital in some remote poor african village. But I can't see why any government that can borrow money should do that.

Bike maintenance isn't a skill issue. It's an issue of specialised tools and hard to get spares. Talk to your own Grand parents. If they weren't rich they'd have had to fix their own bike, and they wouldn't have had Google helping them.

It is not about aesthetics but functionality achieved with cheap avaiable material. That looks seldom beautiful.

Since materials can be scarce and inconsistent, much of it is improvised. That in no way diminishes their efforts, results, or knowledge. If anything, that's way more impressive. Lots of engineers in the first world will throw a tantrum if they can't have things exactly their way and probably still make something that doesn't work as well. Entire businesses have shit their pants and gone bankrupt the moment a part is discontinued.

Trying to do better than the people who live there is not only arrogant, but it's own variation of Chesterton's Fence.

EDIT: I can't help myself and have to post an engineerguy video. It's too important of a topic to not drive this point home crystal clear by someone who is far more respected than me.

"Building a Cathedral without Science or Mathematics: The Engineering Method Explained"

https://youtube.com/watch?v=_ivqWN4L3zU

Tools foster conviviality to the extent to which they can be easily used, by anybody, as often or as seldom as desired, for the accomplishment of a purpose chosen by the user. The use of such tools by one person does not restrain another from using them equally. They do not require previous certification of the user. Their existence does not impose any obligation to use them. They allow the user to express his meaning in action.

Industrial tools deny this possibility to those who use them and they allow their designers to determine the meaning and expectations of others. Most tools today cannot be used in a convivial fashion.

1. Identify a locally viable deciduous tree species.

2. Plant this species on the afternoon aspect of the sun in your location. So for northern hemisphere plant to the southwest. For southern hemisphere plant to the northwest.

3. Enjoy shade in summer and sun in winter, plus cleaner air.

Another option depending upon your architecture is to take advantage of forced air within a roof cavity. Buy a large diameter fan with an electronic control, install at apex, and set it to operate when the temperature exceeds a certain point. This will result in a house wide temperature drop with no need to expend $$$ setup plus dollars per hour per room on air conditioning.

Another option is simply shading. One of the simplest and most traditional approaches here is the drop awning. A drop awning consists of a retractable material expanse which can render a building surface in shade and thus promote rapid air movement and cooling in the hottest periods.

Two final options include internal forced air: passive variant (open all the windows and doors) or active variant (ceiling fan, solar works) and insulation or thermal mass.