I am a PHP developer, tasked to write Python scripts.
The script uses requests, which I found to be the easiest Python equivalent to PHP cURL.
If you use cURL in PHP, cURL must be enabled on the server, otherwise, the script won't work.
Is there likewise any activation or enabling necessary in Python to use requests other than import requests?
Install requests on machine you are going to use it: pip install requests.
Note if you are on linux you might have 2 versions of python installed: python 2.* and python 3.*
If this is the case using pip install <package_name> will install it for python 2.*, so you should use pip3 install <package_name> to install it for python 3.
(I would also suggest using virtualenv, but this is another topic).
If package is installed then you can use it in your scripts by simply importing it: import requests

Nothing more is needed to enable/activate libraries(packages). It is the case for all packages in python. (install -> import)
How do I enable Python requests?