Re: "a LOT of effort"
All that effort is just a further education programme for a country's engineers. Whichever big organisation buys some shiny new gear also budgets for some good engineering analysis of said shiny product and publication of the information obtained.
If you were running a developing country with big ambitions you would likely have introduced a similar system. And after all, you bought the shiny products so you can do what you like with them,