It would be really nice if matplotlib could handle the plotting of spherical polygons. I (and several other volunteers) have been working to integrate spherical Voronoi diagram code into scipy (pull request: scipy/scipy#5232), but actually plotting the Voronoi regions on the surface of a sphere is problematic:

Possible applications include: visualization for search and rescue operations on the surface of the earth, global network coverage, epidemiology, airspace territory assignment (i.e., https://www.jasondavies.com/maps/voronoi/airports/), computational virology (my research), and many other sphere-based analyses.

I am not sure how difficult this would be and if it can be done in a 'lightweight' fashion, or if this really falls into the domain of mayavi and similar 3D-specialized packages.