No outside polity would allow weapons and armor to be brought into their countries by non-citizens, and likely no armed merchant ships allowed to dock either. So a lot of these things are only gamisms, and not realistic.
Age of sail, armed merchantmen were in fact the norm, not the exception. Not heavily so - often just a handful of 10pdr or 20pdr. Even now, merchant ships often still have small arms lockers.
And sailors, both civil and military, have the right to use force to defend that territory. Chief Engineer Makoi (Philippines-ticketed Merchant Mariner) mentions that it's up to the company and skipper whether to use the arms locker, and whether or not it's stocked. Most of the time, merchants are better off surrendering...
Critical mass.
Which I suspect can't easily be calculated, since the more sophisticated a technological base, the more you need to invest to maintain it.
Critical mass for telephone over wire never hit most of central Africa... but from 2nd Gen cellphones, the insane ease - a $1500 sat dish, a $5000 to $20,000 cellular transceiver, and a tower (another $10k or so) in the 90's saw many, even nomadic herdsmen, go straight from no telephony to cellular. There have been a number of interesting photos of various nomadic herders, still wearing traditional attire, on their smartphones since the 00's. (even pre-iPhone - Blackberry and Palm phones...) moreover, many places have adopted the prior generation as the developed world moves on the the next, because the needed TXRX gear is "out of date" and can be sourced at fire-sale prices.
So critical mass is often intriguingly odd.
And ti's a fair thing to say that no Central African nation is building a strong cellular network - politically, that's a danger to the usually oligarchical leadership (even if they are elected). But there's a willingness of the people to spend on second rate hardware to have massive improvements in quality of life by access to news, weather, and on-line shopping and entertainment. Aside from weather, most of that isn't even economically beneficial to the end users... but the socio-political impacts of direct person-to-person via commercial entity provided networks...
There was a nat geo article on the whole phenomena.
But you have to be sure:
1. They need it.
They just need to want it. No one needs the internet 24×7×365¼.. Many of us want it.
2. They can afford it.
3. You'll make money on it or get the government to subsidize it.
The government may or may not get a choice on the roboticization of manufacturing. Several folks have been saying that they're going to replace human workers as soon as possible, even tho' it hurts the bottom line, simply to reduce the variability of quality and attendance. For some, it's a political stance: it's the ultimate union busting tool. Sure, it's hella-bad on the bottom line at first, but the added costs of human labor that don't show up on the contracts are important, too.
As for telecom in Africa - the governments largely didn't even want to
allow it... but it was allowed for the tourist trade, and the net effect was that shepherds, goatherds, and cowherds can play Angry Birds and Candy Crush... and talk politics on various social media sites.
And, as for other market disruption...
Roboticized workflows reduce the secondary supports needed: Restrooms, lunch rooms, coat rack space, parking space, evacuation routing and planning... it opens the way for more productivity per unit land area simply by not needing to make it person-tolerable.
At present, the only reason the high tech goodies still have people in the assembly side is that the sub-"living wage" employment in certain nations is cheaper than the programming and hardware to fully automate. But that's a downward trend...
As automation increases, the demand for robots will increase, and as that's met, it will drive others to do so. The thing is, in 1994, when I asked my aunt (who worked for Ford in some management capacity), she noted that the only reason they didn't automate everything but QA/QI was that the state didn't allow replacing workers... so they instead shut down a Detroit factory and opened a new one in another state, with half as many workers and twice the production. (4x the efficiency.) But it wasn't a cost savings - the net lifetime cost of a robot vs a person was about the same, but note that the robot is inflation proofed, as it's paid for in advance or on a contract. It's more stable. And needs less of the secondary considerations... breaks, places to take those breaks, allowances for illnesses...
The end of the manufacturing workforce will be when the autonomous robots can maintain the fixed industrial ones as well as human technicians. Then the entire manufacturing side goes sophontless.
Even now, certain companies are removing as much human interaction from their products as the law and the contracts allow... Automated 3d-printing of rocket engines, including drop-in of some separately manufactured elements, is a thing happening now, and bringing down the launch costs. It's going to get more and more common.
Elon Musk noted in an interview last year that robots don't yet weld as well as humans, and that he expects that to change, soon...
As for the native powerplant tech...
The fundamental need for power is a universal need. For electricity is not, unless/until a sufficently high tech level. Keep in mind that there are entire towns were the sum total electrical grid extent is "The owner has a Generator"... (McGrath, Alaska, comes immediately to mind. Likewise the few folks living at Shemya since the USAF pulled out.)
If the cost per watt-hour is cheaper for fusion than internal combustion, fusion wins. Given the tech as presented in Striker, MegaTraveller, TNE, and T4, it's somewhat so under Striker/MT, and MUCH more so under TNE/T4... even after cracking it from local hydrates (including hydrocarbons). Plus there's the long tail issue of environmental degradation.
Having run a colony game using TNE's World Tamer's Handbook. there's no incentive at all to not bring a fab and a fusion plant... it just makes everything cheaper locally to have the raw power of fusion available.
