I'm interested in learning the sorts of skills that a village blacksmith in a developing country would need. One of the smiths I know of spent time working as a village blacksmith in Sri Lanka after he completed his apprenticeship and his work is incredible (his name is Jake James, he started in the UK but he's in the Pacific Northwest now). My goal is to do a similar thing to build up skill. Seeing as my country doesn't have a formal apprenticeship system I'm going to continue to learn on my own for the next few years before taking my next blacksmithing certificate course, during which I'll focus on honing these particular skills under an experienced teacher.
I know that each village would differ in its needs. I'd like to build up a diverse skillset so I'd have a good chance of doing well wherever I went and and not being incompetent. I'm sure that forge welding, heat treating and tempering, and recycling would all be useful skills to develop to a high degree, amongst many others. If anyone has any experience with or stories about forging in these conditions I would love to hear about it.