Posted on 01/20/2020 7:31:26 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Rwanda’s Mara Group has grand ambitions. The company hopes to help turn Rwanda into a regional tech hub, and it just got one step closer to completing that mission. This week, the company released two smartphones, earning Mara Group the title of the first smartphone manufacturer in Africa.
Rwanda President Paul Kagame has announced Africa’s “first high tech smartphone factory,” CNN reported. While smartphones are assembled in other African nations (Egypt, Algeria, and South Africa all have assembly plants), according to Reuters, those companies all import the components. But at Mara, they manufacture the phones from the motherboards to the packaging, which is all done in the new factory. Kagame made the announcement in a press conference on Monday in the capital of Kigali.
The phones, called Mara X and Mara Z, are the first “Made in Africa” models. Here are the details:
Both run on Google’s Android operating system. While the company admits they are a little more expensive than other options, like the popular Tecno brand phones made by a Chinese-owned company, they hope customers are willing to pay a bit more for quality and Made in Africa pride.
The facility is “an important step” for Rwanda, which has worked to transform itself into an economic innovation leader. They hosted the World Economic Forum on Africa in May 2018, and work is reportedly well underway on the Kigali Innovation City, which will house innovation labs and provide training and funding for technology companies.
*PHOTOS*
President #Kagame arriving at Special Economic Zone where he is launching Mara Phones Manufacturing plant.
These Smart Phones will be the first #MadeInRwanda Smart phones.
The President is now touring the plant.
Watch live https://t.co/ZDuH11x7iP #RBAnews pic.twitter.com/1FKjZAynKO
— Rwanda Broadcasting Agency (RBA) (@rbarwanda) October 7, 2019
Which Mara X is your favorite?
Silver or Goldhttps://t.co/2Zq4q4m1fy#smartphone #MaraX pic.twitter.com/cjpgPfuHsl— Mara Phones (@MaraPhones) August 13, 2019
I wish them great success.
Good for them!
Nothing says “made in Africa” like a Dubai based company founded and run by a British born and educated Indian.
But I suppose it’s a start. I wish them well.
Should name it the ObamaPhone - made in the continent of Obama’s birth using donated/outdated Chinese technology and comes preinstalled with malware.
Good for them! I hope they have success. The nay sayers on this thread are the minority. Any success of developing nations is a plus.
Good lord, did anyone actually READ the article?
These are not Chinese parts assembled in Africa. These are almost entirely African-made phones. The Chinese Tecno phones are their biggest competition.
Based on the spec sheet, they appear to be pretty decent phones. They use Qualcomm chips (Korean, not Chinese). They spec out as comparable to a Samsung A10 (not S10) but it’s pretty impressive given all that Rwanda has been through since 1994.
Good on Rwanda. I hope for their continued economic success.
still no thanks
I can’t wait to see the photos of lunch and more strangers’ pets.
I admire their ambition and wish them the best of luck.
That’s nothing, in New York they hung a picture of the Virgin Mary made out of elephant dung.
This is very, very cool. Good for them. Anyone that can claw back their own independence has my best wishes.
The real advancement here is in communication.
A smartphone connects you to the world. Reading publications, books, news, etc.
More portable than a tablet. A bit inconvenient but really powerful.
Then again even in the US with the world’s history in print and recorded sight and sound at your fingertips, most people wallow in ignorance of the past and present.
This sounds like an incredible turnaround.
If this kind of technological and commercial progress can take place in Rwanda, it can elsewhere in Africa.
I hope they have all the best.
So they manufacture the Qualcomm MSM8940 10nm Snapdragon chipset in Rwanda that the phone uses? I don't think so.
Therefore the headline, and also saying that "those companies [in other African countries] all import the components. But at Mara, they manufacture the phones from the motherboards to the packaging," is rather misleading.
Rwanda is kind of a garden spot in East Africa - a nice place to visit.
Chinese businessmen do a lot of business in Africa, and have established significant manufacturing operations in nearby Ethiopia. Some of it is strategic, directed by the communist party, but some of it is businessmen coming to Africa to get out from under the iron grip of the Party.
Overall, things are changing quickly in Africa. Ten of the top ten fastest growing cities in the world are in Africa. They have a young and fast growing population.
It is the last great frontier for low cost labor, and the last frontier for lifting significant percentages of the population up from extreme poverty (which is underway).
The African Union is adopting common market business regulations, that make their unified market big enough to start being really (realistically) interesting to multi-nationals. There are some particular success stories around the continent, like Ethiopia and Botswana. Ethiopia has enjoyed double digit growth rates for its GDP, for most of the last 20 years - sometimes called the “African Lion” economy.
As a continent, Africa has about 1.3 billion people, but a dis-proportionally large amount of land, natural resources, and higher GDP growth rates than most of the world. The World Bank estimates that Africa will reach middle income status (on average) around 2025. It could well become a major engine for global growth over the next decade.
It looks a lot like a drum.
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