Am really pleased with the way Rwanda is growing in the technology and inversion part, the country has stood out to be the best in Africa with the invention and new discovery on how to embrace western technologies and development, for example, Rwanda is the first country in Africa to implement Drone technology in the hospital sector in Africa, they are the first, to look more into invention than natural resources, they are the first to implement many things other African countries have not dreamed of.
The new update has it that Rwanda’s Mara Group has just launched two wonderful smartphones, making the country the first “Made in Africa” models and adding a very big boost to the country’s ambitions to become a regional technology hub.
The smartphone which name and model is Mara X and Mara Z will be running on Google’s Android operating system and cost 175,750 Rwandan francs ($190) and 120,250 Rwandan francs ($130) respectively.
The aim of this new invention is to compete with big smartphone brands like Samsung, Huawei, and ZTE in the African market, as we all know that this big smartphone companies cheapest smartphones cost not less than 50,000 Rwandan francs ($54), and non-branded phones at 35,000 Rwandan francs ($37). The CEO of Mara Group Ashish Thakkar said it was targeting customers willing to pay more for quality.
“This is the first smartphone manufacturer in Africa,” Thakkar told Reuters after touring the company alongside Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame.
He added that Companies assemble smartphones in Egypt, Ethiopia, Algeria and South Africa, but import the components.
“We are actually the first who are doing manufacturing. We are making the motherboards, we are making the sub-boards during the entire process,” he said. “There are over 1,000 pieces per phone.”
The plant cost not less $24 million and could be making up to 1,200 phones per day.
Mara Group hopes to gain profit from the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, a pact aimed at forming a 55-nation trade bloc, to boost sales across Africa, Thakkar said.
The agreement was due to begin trading by July next year 2020, aiming to unite 1.3 billion people and create a $3.4 trillion economic bloc. But it is still in the very early stages and no timelines have been agreed for abolishing tariffs.
Kagame added that he hoped the phone would increase Rwanda’s smartphone usage, currently at around 15%.
