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.