Firefox OS in its pre-shutdown iteration did not serve these people perfectly yet, but it was well on its way to be a solid choice for them. A choice that held their values first, not just the values of western consumers trimmed to fit.
And now there are no 'open' choices for an open mobile internet device (below 50USD) The cheap knockoff Android phones that dominate that market are preloaded with untrustworthy applications, and ship with unverifiable firmware. The latter is almost never updateable to anything recent or patched for security. This makes for a very exploitative, dangerous web, and it grows more so as it grows more integral to peoples livelihood.
I applaud Mozilla for starting it, but I think the decision to shutter the whole initiative was incredibly damaging. At the very least because now it, falsely, appears to be a cautionary tale to anyone else that may wish to attempt this initiative.