What I'm getting at is that even wikipedia is not useful for communities who completely lack education (and perhaps even reading ability), technology, and economic stability. They need, more than anything, to get sanitation, clean air, nutrition, larger crop yields from healthier soil and better practices, etc... Wikipedia doesn't have any of that info. Even Appropedia doesn't really - its too superficial (and not translated) to be actionable, especially for these groups of people.

Once those issues are sorted out via more appropriate teaching and logistical methods, solidarity, etc... they'll have health, time, and money with which academics and anything else can be pursued.

Its just basic Maslow's hierarchy of needs...

All of the people who are working on these sorts of offline education projects are completely out of touch.