This post is a short follow-up to the two-part Substack I did in January 2026 (see Follow-up resources at the end) about the importance of computers to Africa. It looks at the promise that the Raspberry Pi holds for Sub-Saharan Africa. I talked to various people in the Raspberry Pi universe in Africa to take the temperature of how it’s doing.
Ken Okolo, Commercial Partnerships, Middle East and Africa joined Raspberry Pi five years ago: “There was an interest from Raspberry Pi to look more seriously at Africa from a desktop-type perspective, with the need for access to computers. Our mission is affordable, accessible computers but before I joined there was just one reseller in South Africa. Users elsewhere had to buy directly and that made them 3-4 times more expensive.”
In FY2024, Raspberry Pi sold 71.6 million units globally from its device portfolio. Since it’s a public company it’s hard to get more granular sales data except in broad geographic areas. Africa is part of the Rest of the World. But I’d estimate that somewhere around 1 million units are sold in Africa. On a very crude basis, that would make an average of roughly 83,000 units sold through channel sellers per country over 12 countries. In reality, countries South Africa like Morocco probably will be buying more and the remaining countries buying far less. (See table of channel resellers below) The country with the largest presence is South Africa followed by Kenya, Morocco and Nigeria: “The countries chosen have a nice congruence in terms of regional spread.” Raspberry Pi is committed to expanding sales on the continent has moved its not-for-profit, foundation arm to Nairobi.
Who uses Raspberry Pi’s?
African Raspberry Pi users are enthusiastic about the computer device because it’s low-cost, credit-card sized and energy-efficient. On this basis, it attracts three different types of users:
1. Hobbyists, tinkerers and enthusiasts who use it to make prototypes that are sometimes used more widely and are shared in competitions and events like The Makers Festival in Cape Town.
2. Education finds them attractive because Raspberry Pi ‘boards’ are simple, low-cost, fairly robust devices that can be used to get students learning about how to code and design. More recently, they are increasingly being used to teach students about Artificial Intelligence (AI).
3. Industry uses them on the factory floor for production processes, OEMs produce embedded industry devices to sell and Raspberry Pi has an accredited component for the Internet of Things.
Globally, 70% of units sold are industrial and embedded and 30% are educational and enthusiasts. According to Okolo: “Africa is mirroring that pattern.” Raspberry Pi was initially predominantly focused on education and into grew into the hobbyists space, with an interplay between the two. Okolo sees this as the beginning of the journey: “Users start out in education or being a hobbyist, then go into work or start their entrepreneurial journey. It’s transformed from a learning tool into engineers building things in industrial settings. We see some of that trajectory in Africa. There’s lots of students playing with devices in University and the later introducing Raspberry Pi’s into their own work environment.”
Circumstances have not been kind to the hobbyists/prototyping part of the market. In Kenya, its focus, Gearbox (one of Erik Hersman’s many inspirations), collapsed in 2023. Its founder Kamau Gichigi relaunched a commercial organisation – GbE Circuits - in June last year and there is Latiff Cherono’s Gearbox Europlacer offering a fully functioning, commercial “high-mix, low-volume electronic manufacturing services facility.” In 2016 Maker Faire Cape Town projected attendance of 6-8,000 but only expected 2,500 for last year’s event.
Raspberry Pi’s Kenyan dealer, Nick Wachira, Ivy Liam Gadgets started work in 2022 as part of the reseller network created by Okolo: “Sales have been constant over the four years. There’s been no magic increase and the market is very small. It’s a very niche market. We’ve seen an increase in sales in the first two months of the year with things like Open Claw for AI use.” He is a small operation and has nothing but praise for the support he gets from Raspberry Pi, particularly for large orders.
In terms of units sold, 70% go to educational and industrial users, with the balance going to hobbyists. To overcome the lack of marketing resources, Wachira has kept a recognisable profile on social media and placed the devices for sale on Jiji and Jumia locally. There are occasionally people who come through from the Raspberry Pi global site.
There are two big barriers to sales. There is a lack of skills amongst the average potential user: “You have to have had some experience with hardware and software development.” This is the chicken-and-the-egg dilemma. Without more people using Raspberry Pi’s those skills won’t magically arrive by themselves. But without those skills, it’s significantly harder to persuade people to buy them. They can be an ‘out-of-the-box’ product but that’s not really the point of having them.
The second barrier is ‘procurement’ with all the associations that come with that word. At a structural level, a state school, college or university is likely to have a computer and/or network supplier and they will not be supplying low-cost Raspberry Pi’s: “The average lecturer or teacher is at the mercy of the institution. They don’t want to change technologies. Government schools rely on donors for things like Raspberry Pi’s. Also, these are the kinds of clients who do not pay right away.” However, there are opportunities around the teaching of AI.
Some of the Raspberry Pi operational use cases have included the following:
• In industrial terms, there is a hospital in Abuja using the Raspberry Pi desktop computer in a hospital environment, in its doctors’ consulting rooms and in its health labs. The hospital runs its records and data software on them and the hospital likes their affordability, quality and low power draw.
• Nigerian defensetech start-up Terrahaptix will be integrating Raspberry Pi for its work securing infrastructure like hydroelectric plants. It will be integrating them with its proprietary AI-powered “Artemis OS” to power drones (Archer VTOL) and ground robots (Duma).
• Five hundred Raspberry Pi 5 devices are being used to monitor how energy is used across the Nigerian grid from the different privatised Distribution Companies (DisCos).
• Nigeria’s Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy is running a Digital Economy Buildathon with 2,000 students making electronics projects, using Raspberry Pi’s. The Ministry wants to scale the project across the country.
Although I have written above as if Raspberry Pi’s were a single product, it is worth breaking down the range (see link in Further Resources at the end for more detail):
1. The flagship Raspberry Pi, which has a full linux OS, comes in several different versions with the form factor of about the size of a credit card.
2. The Raspberry Pi Zero, again with full linux OS, essential ports and minimal form factor.
3. The compute module with fewer parts and no on-board pins, the latter being added separately depending on the application.
4. The Pico Versatile microcontroller board which does not run linux or allow for removable storage. It is programmed by flashing its on-board flash storage unit.
Teaching AI using OpenClaw and open source robotics
One big selling point is that the Raspberry Pi is a good way of teaching how AI works in practical, physical applications. OpenClaw takes the same generative AI capabilities as chatbots and adds the missing piece: action. Instead of just generating text, an AI agent can use tools, run commands, interact with APIs, manage workflows, and carry out tasks on your behalf.
Dennis Njuguna is the Director of the private St Nicholas Schools in Nairobi. It has both a primary and secondary school that offer both an international curriculum (IGCSE) and the national Kenyan curriculum. He started using Raspberry Pi’s in the schools four years ago: “It was a difficult uptake. Everybody said this is not Microsoft. This attitude is so entrenched that even national exams have questions with phrases like ‘Open your MS Excel…”
Initially, he hid the devices behind the monitor and as the students were only interested in whether they could get online: “It was easier to do with the children than the teachers.” They now have 10 in the High School and 7 in the Primary School, in their computer labs and are using them, among other things, to teach coding.
There is a students’ Coding Club that created a thumbprint reader that could recognise thumbprints from a database: “We’ve done a bit of robotics because there’s a lot of Open Source robotics, with simple stuff like opening a door.”
He wants to expand usage in the future because “for the bigger boys and girls it opens eyes to a bigger pool of devices than a laptop.” He has found space for another club organised by the kids themselves on a Saturday based on the devices that involves both children who are pupils and those who are not. He has also done presentations to state-funded schools, arguing that it is an alternative to an expensive laptop: “You need to look at what you want to do with it.”
So, what might Raspberry Pi’s as computers cost? At the low-end, there’s an RP500 that comes straight out of the box, as a desktop computer (8GB) in a keyboard. With the addition of a monitor this works out at around US$230. At a slightly higher spec is the RP500+ (16 GB) which has a mechanical keyboard and is a sturdier product, costing around US$360.
My view
If there was a tech product that has relevance to Africa written all over it, the Raspberry Pi is that product. It has considerable potential and the effort to harvest that potential has only really just started. However, in the short to medium-term, the Raspberry Pi is a niche product and it’s just that the niche is not yet big enough. Metaphorically, it’s like being an Apple computer owner in the 1970s. You had great conversations with fellow owners but the rest of the world could not understand what it was all about.
• Some of the activity around Raspberry Pi in Africa has been performative in the best sense. Companies or institutions wanted to include its name in what they are doing to show how things might be done differently. But sadly, this kind of ‘pilot-based” use has not led to better take-up. The missing piece in the story is how bright students using it at school or university transition to creating products using it that sell locally. From that, the next strategic piece is the possibility of local assembly.
• The maker sector has declined from a high point around 2015. Tinkerers will be tinkerers but maybe the smart people attracted into making are now looking at things like drones, other industrial technologies and/or creating start-ups. Somehow, those promoting Raspberry Pi’s have to help create the kind of durable user communities that have been so successful in the start-up communities of some African countries. Raspberry Pi also has to convince ambitious, middle-class African parents that this is a technology that will give their children much-needed skills for their future.
• The base argument for Raspberry Pi’s – the teaching of skills around hardware and software – is more urgent than ever. But given the difficulties with procurement, it needs a major initiative, both to create the narrative arguments at a continental level (why this is important) and support locally from an alliance of governments. If Raspberry Pi’s can be used to monitor electricity use in Nigeria, where else in the private sector and government are there business cases?
• People understanding AI generally has a long way to go globally and nowhere is this truer than in Sub-Saharan Africa. So why not ground the next cadre of young Africa tech leaders in AI through practical applications like OpenClaw, that increase that understanding? This will be a long journey that needs to outlast the current, hyper-ventilating promotion around the topic.
Further resources
The Raspberry Pi range explained
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-product-series-explained/
Using Raspberry Pi with Open Claw
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/turn-your-raspberry-pi-into-an-ai-agent-with-openclaw/
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.