Yeah, I'm going to second that. I've lived in (technically I am from what used to be a "developing nation" at the time), worked in, and worked with people from, "developing nations", both in education and industry. It's just not how things work.
The Pi is a good educational platform for e.g. Western organizations that need to kickstart education programs at a scale. It's infinitely easier to ship 100 Pis than to locally source 100 similar computers and set them up. And it's as good a platform for introducing people to computers as any, I guess. But it's not the kind of platform that gets "grassroots" adoption.
First off, if you live in a developing country, you want access to technology with wide-scale application (and the opportunities it brings). Realistically, what you want is something that runs Windows 11 or (dare dream...) macOS, that you can use to write mobile apps and games, web apps that target interesting and "hot" technologies and markets, learn system administration for contemporary platforms and so on. That alone kind of excludes anything that's not x86 or a Mac.
Hipster platforms for retrogaming and "radical simplicity" is something that engineering professionals in well-off countries can afford to do as a hobby. But if you're learning programming in the hope that it will be a development opportunity (for yourself and your family, or for your country, no matter what form it takes, whether you want to emmigrate or stay and develop your local industry) you want to learn things with real industrial relevance. The few Pis I've seen used in a scenario like these were almost exclusively embedded devices, largely because the Pi is an easily-available embedded platform, making it easy to outsource development for it.
But other than that? No, once you factor in shipping, currency conversion and all the accessories you need, a Pi is about as expensive as a hand-me-down laptop that can run a lot more software, with a lot less hassle, and isn't a fire hazard you have to be careful around with and/or fit into a makeshift case (because, if you have to scrounge money for a 50 USD Pi, even a 10 USD case is going to be kind of expensive).
I would add Chromebooks to your list of Windows and macOS computers. Chromebooks support video calls, are versatile, and offer a ‘good enough’ Linux system for educational use and light weight programming.
I use a $9000 macOS setup in my home office (stuffed Mac Mini and Apple’s very nice studio monitor). As a backup I have an older, but still very nice System 76 Linux laptop. I joke to my wife that everything I need to do, I can also do on my less than three hundred dollar three year old Lenovo Duet Chromebook - just not as efficiently. I had a friend who was a software developer for the Apache Foundation, paid well by IBM, and he only used a tiny NetBook laptop, little keyboard, tiny monitor, and he argued that using minimal hardware removed distractions.
The Pi is a good educational platform for e.g. Western organizations that need to kickstart education programs at a scale. It's infinitely easier to ship 100 Pis than to locally source 100 similar computers and set them up. And it's as good a platform for introducing people to computers as any, I guess. But it's not the kind of platform that gets "grassroots" adoption.
First off, if you live in a developing country, you want access to technology with wide-scale application (and the opportunities it brings). Realistically, what you want is something that runs Windows 11 or (dare dream...) macOS, that you can use to write mobile apps and games, web apps that target interesting and "hot" technologies and markets, learn system administration for contemporary platforms and so on. That alone kind of excludes anything that's not x86 or a Mac.
Hipster platforms for retrogaming and "radical simplicity" is something that engineering professionals in well-off countries can afford to do as a hobby. But if you're learning programming in the hope that it will be a development opportunity (for yourself and your family, or for your country, no matter what form it takes, whether you want to emmigrate or stay and develop your local industry) you want to learn things with real industrial relevance. The few Pis I've seen used in a scenario like these were almost exclusively embedded devices, largely because the Pi is an easily-available embedded platform, making it easy to outsource development for it.
But other than that? No, once you factor in shipping, currency conversion and all the accessories you need, a Pi is about as expensive as a hand-me-down laptop that can run a lot more software, with a lot less hassle, and isn't a fire hazard you have to be careful around with and/or fit into a makeshift case (because, if you have to scrounge money for a 50 USD Pi, even a 10 USD case is going to be kind of expensive).