The playing field cannot be too new of course. Even the the GVCS system cannot be completely self-sufficient and insular before it is properly established. OSE has taken inspiration from other organizations like Working Villages International (check it out and watch the attached video) and envisions "pilot infrastructure-building and poverty-alleviation projects" based on this model of largely independent 1000 person communities.
Working Villages International however, relies primarily on cattle to raise the economic wellbeing of its members. Cattle herds of course, are much easier for people of largely undeveloped regions (such as the eastern Congo) to grow, maintain, and use for work than the system of machines that GVCS is. IF OSE decides to work by this sort of model then, they must turn to communities that fit the needs of the GVCS.
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As I see it, OSE would therefore have to look to stable communities with some sort of basic infrastructure in partially developed nations such as Ghana or Kenya. These nations have at least rudimentary transport systems for OSE's guiding experts to access communities with basic starter tools and gather needed scrap metal and other materials. There would also be less danger of corruption or the seizure of the system by vying rebel or governmental groups. Local government would likely be easier to work with and more helpful in protecting and advancing villager and OSE goals. Finally, working with local entrepreneurs and villagers who simply feel confident that what they make will last would make progress much easier. Attempting to implement a GVCS in a place like the eastern Congo would inevitably be doomed to failure, while trying it in a nation that fulfills these requirements would at least be plausible.
It would require a great deal of work and time however. OSE would have to come up with some efficient, sequenced way of progressively educating locals in the production and use of each machine as they gradually advanced up the chain of microfactory replication to the final machines. Also, they would have to build an effective working relationship with the people in charge. The experts that OSE used to create their GVCS's in developing nations could not just be intelligent engineers, manufacturers, and agriculturalists. They would have to be highly adaptable leaders, diplomats, administrators, and teachers, capable of communicating effectively with villagers and outside groups and reacting to contextual problems and local concerns. Only with this kind of inspired leadership and understanding of local societies could the GVCS really take off a begin to spread in a grass-roots way that resulted in the locals having full control of the technologies they are given.
The payoff could be huge though. As Marcin Jakubowski states, OSE is all about "lowering the barriers to entry into taking up the means of production." The GVCS system allows the leapfrogging of the slow technological and infrastructural advancements that led to the developed world having those means of production, potentially without the oppressive degree of foreign interference and aid that marks many nation-building efforts today. Getting started would be the toughest part. With a great deal of hard work and good fortune, it would be possible for the GVCS system to truly take off in a developing nation. If it did, local economic growth, and by extension human development, would catapult exponentially.
So, when Open Source Ecology does finish their Global Village Construction Set, where, and in what ways do they expect to begin implementing it in developing countries? A lot of interest has built up around this question, as people see a great deal of potential in taking the open source hardware revolution to a new playing field, one that has not already been dominated by the consumer/mass producer economic system of most of the developed world. If open source hardware can take root in a world where most people are still forced by their economic situation to be self-sufficient, then maybe it will eventually seem a more feasible and attractive option to the consumption-dependent populations of first world nations. Plus, of course, a successful open source hardware operation in a developing nation would impart all the benefits of a successful economic aid platform with arguably (depending on how it was implemented) a more natural and self-reliant method of local growth than the operations of most first to third world assistance operations.
If the hardest part is the startup cost, that might actually be an optimistic note. Often, philanthropists are most willing to fund the start of a project and are much less willing to fund continuations of it (ie, lots of people donate after a natural disaster hits and response starts, but few people continue to donate once it loses media attention).
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