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
“..That ain’t a clean room....”
Good for them. Looks like it’s about 2 or 3 generations out of state of the art but it’s MUCH better than landlines and hopefully brings the technology to the last billion or so people in dire poverty.
Rwanda is actually a fairly bright spot in Africa, it looks like its trying to crawl out of shithole status which is amazing considering they were chopping each other up by the 100s of thousands with machetes 30 years ago.
“in New York they hung a picture of the Virgin Mary made out of elephant dung.”
In South Africa they make gin from it:
Nahh.. I’m sure it will be top-notch manufacturing. Top-notch.
/s
“That’s some good s***!”
Good for them. As Celine Dion once said: “Let dem haff nice tings!”
Fake news. Wakanda built the first all-African smartphone while whitey was still using quill pens.
I spent a month in Africa from the end of August to the end of September 1994. The Alaska Air National Guard sent two C-130 aircraft as part of the famine relief effort. We flew a lot of food stuff to Goma, Zaire, where a lot of the Rwandan refugees wound up. Flying over Rwanda was surreal, as the villages were totally empty. Even flying into Kigali I saw one person walking and one truck driving down the road. Other than that, the entire city was totally deserted. One more reason why I am against any type of gun control.
When Hutu Met Tutsi
Even 15 years ago my brother commented about working in a poor village in central America. See some guy walking a donkey with a load of supplies while on his cell phone is really odd.
I read that in Haiti after the earthquake(?), storm(?) or both that the cell phone towers are the first thing the government gets running. So the government can provide soothing, false information and maintain control.
Going back 2 decades, I heard that phone communications in Eastern Europe and the Middle East weren’t so hot but that both regions leapfrogged technology and went cellular.
But the only ringtone one can get is ;
Toot, toot, Tutsi, good-bye!
Toot, toot, Tutsi, don’t cry
Makes sense to skip laying telephone wires if you don’t have it in already. Probably don’t want to plan things like that though.
“I’m not getting a car, I’m waiting for when the flying cars come out.”
A ring away, a ring away, a ring away, a ring away;
A ring away, a ring away, a ring away, a ring away;
In the jungle, the mighty jungle,
A lion sleeps tonight...
The picture in the post after yours shows that it is far from two coconuts and a string. You underestimate Rwanda
Rwanda has been doing incredibly well under Kigame. He has successfully ended the inter ethnic mistrust and has grown the economy by taking a capitalistic stance
Well, unless you live in sub saharan Africa, you aren’t in the target markets.
That’s correct - as someone who lives in Poland and earlier lived in the US and UK - besides visiting India and China quite often
Those countries that in the 80s and 90s were lagging behind due to a lack of telecommunications and financial infrastructure have leaped ahead.
Mobile connectivity and the things done on mobile in China, Eastern Europe and then India far outstrip the USA - and are a fraction of the cost.
And financial innovation as well - in China and EE they never used checks in a big way and now they don’t at all - so pieces of paper are not shuffled around for days. Everything is online transactions. And in many parts you do it all on your phone.
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