It sounds like reinventing the wheel. Why not import the knowledge, rather than develop it again from scratch? Maybe you can imagine it could work with chocolate, but take something more complicated like cars, computers or phones.

It seems absurd to demand non-industrialized countries should develop all those things by themselves, while developed nations stand by. At the very least it would take decades, while people in the developing country remain poor.

Also, I take issue with the formulation "when developing countries are pressured into free trade agreements" - it is still simply a trade, "withholding aid" is not different from a sum of money offered in a trade. "pressured into it" is leftist propaganda.