It seems that in newer NDK versions there is a problem with Android builds because of missing tools and builds require additional environment flags.
From the original issue (openssl-src-rs): alexcrichton/openssl-src-rs#188
there is no i686-linux-android-ranlib in ndk 25.2, 25.1 or 24.0
A fix was proposed (alexcrichton/openssl-src-rs#196) but it still failed and needed some environment variables to be set for the Archiver: alexcrichton/openssl-src-rs#207
It was suggested by @alexcrichton for this issue to be a fixed upstream (here) - (see comment alexcrichton/openssl-src-rs#207 (comment))
I haven't had the pleasure to work with cc directly so any guidance and course of action are welcome on how to best fix this android issue.