Rwanda Launches First Wholly Made in Africa Smartphones

The Rwanda government in partnership with Mara Corporation has launched the first wholly made in Africa SmartPhone. The phones dubbed Mara X and Mara Z was released for sale on Monday 7th October 2019.

It could be recalled that we shared a gist in April about the Rwanda government partnering with Mara Corporation to set up a smartphone factory. This factory has today, produced its first two Smartphones.

Mara Corporation is the first tech company to indigenously produce smartphone components including motherboards and subboards. This is unlike other smartphone companies that import the phone components and assemble in Africa.

The launch of Mara X and Z will serve as competition for foreign smartphone dealers like Samsung which controls the larger percentage of the Rwandan market and whose phones are cheaper than the Mara phones.

The Chief Executive Officer of the Mara Corporation, Ashish Thakkar expressed great satisfaction with this launch and believes that it will increase smartphone usage in Rwanda by 15%. Ashish noted that the company will leverage the African Continental Free Trade Agreement to boost its sales across Africa and to survive the indigenous competition.

The Rwandan President, Paul Kagame lauded the launch and described it as another milestone in East Africa. He termed it the journey of becoming an-high-tech ‘made in Rwanda’ industry.

Since its inception in April, the phone factory has gulped over $24million and has the capacity to produce 1200 phones per day. Mara X and Mara Z smartphones will make use of the Google Operating System and will be sold at $190 and $130 respectively.