> Are these Androids actually less powerful than an 11 year-old, base-spec MacBook?

Yes. Definitely. a Macbook Pro from 2013 has between 4-16GB of memory for one thing. The lowest spec phone in the article (Itel P32) has 1GB. A 2013 Macbook Pro has a 4th gen i5 processor. This phone has a MediaTek MT6580. It's not even in the same ballpark.

This is a bit of an extreme example, but the fact is that a very large number of people in many areas of the world use phones like these.