A friend of mine is from Ghana, and wanted to be a programmer. He had to build a battery bank to power his laptop, so he could do his exams without issue.
I helped him design the bank, and another little tool we found helpful.
Because power is such an issue, we used a couple Arduinos to build something reminiscent of the TRS-80, 200 [0]. Instead of BASIC though, we inbuilt a C-repl, based around Cling [1], though much less featured. It ran off 4 AA batteries, and lasted about six hours between charges, which though kinda crap, was enough that his power bank was always ready to recharge it, and he could keep going. It was all his idea, I just served as the technical expert.
I believe he's currently building and selling a few of these out of his house since he went back to Ghana, to help people get a hang of computing.
Why use C as a starting language?
He was doing remote study with an Australian course, which required it. For the Python parts he still had to use his normal laptop, because MicroPython wasn't around then, (and I took a look at porting CPython to an AVR and immediately gave up), and he hated it.
Constant power glitches caused the laptop to misbehave.
His BW-1 (Borkwei-1), and it's tiny portable power, meant he got a lot more done.
If I was to redo it today, because it was about 6 years ago now, I'd probably make one with either MicroPython or eLua. Basically hook a keyboard and screen up to a NodeMCU or MicroPython board (maybe an ESP32), because those sort just about everything out nowadays. (MicroPython even comes with a FAT filesystem. Add a board with WiFi, and you have a very decent system.)
He tells me that every house in his village has one of the little laptops we designed now, though he has upgraded it to use an SD card, so more programs, and WiFi for when they hit town. He now calls it the BW-2.
That made me remember having to update the BIOS firmware and doing it at 3AM and on a night without wind when there was almost no chance of power going out.
a) how common solar panels are (and how easy it is to partially repair broken solar panels)
b) how simple they are to make if efficiency doesn't matter (optional glas + conductive grid + any black isolator + aluminum foil will result in power delivered between the grid and the aluminum. Paper (even white laser printer paper frankly) will do fine as isolator, also I heard balloon plastic works very well. Of course a transparent conductor works way better than a grid (which is where 80% of the efficiency comes from), but it works at like 5-10% efficiency with a grid) (the optional glass is to keep it clean, you can of course also just clean it regularly)
c) how long batteries last if you only ever use 5% of their capability
not very long if they're alkaline. And its doubtful anything but their phones got li-on batteries in ghana, the markup probably isn't worth it. And there probably are hardly any phones. so mostly no li-on batteries anywhere.
but i've never been there, just economically speaking.
Maybe a third of the people had a smartphone, most people had a basic phone. The smartphones were $100 Chinese Android things.
I felt perfectly safe wandering round with my 3 year old smartphone out, since I'd clearly taken less care of it than the average Senegalese would have.