Africa’s high-tech firm, Mara announced on Friday the production of the first made-in-Africa smart phone known as Maraphone. The production was announced by the founder of the company, he stated that full-scale production of the smartphone will soon commence in plants across Africa.
“China has Huawei, Xiaomi; the U.S has iPhone and finally Africa has Maraphone,” Ashish Thakkar, founder of Mara Group told a BBC correspondent on the final day of the Africa Investment Forum ongoing in Johannesburg, South Africa. (See video below)
“This project will show the potential and ability that Africa can produce high quality and affordable smartphones in Africa, by Africans, for Africans and for the rest of the world. We are extremely grateful for the African Development Banks push in this sector which greatly encouraged our progress,” Thakkar said.
“This is going to be totally transformative and create thousands of direct jobs,” Thakkar said.
While global manufacture of phones is on the rise and expected to hit a billion in the next few years, none of them are produced on the continent, Thakkar said. The initial target market for the phones would be first-time African smart phone users, while the first manufacturing plants are to be located in Rwanda and South Africa.
The Maraphone phone will be produced to a high quality standard to serve the people of the continent before aiming to penetrate the rest of the world starting with Europe.
Thakkar commended the African Development Bank for its push to support industrialization of Africa through its High 5’s strategy under which the Maraphone had received support.
African development Bank President Akinwunmi Adesina said: “By 2020, the value of Africa’s mobile money industry is projected to top $14 billion. We need African-developed mobile phones to leverage this potential.”
“Africa is bold, strong and innovative. Africa’s time is now,” Adesina said.
Opinion
A lot can happen in Africa with the right leadership and a working strategy, Africa has all the raw materials used to produce virtually everything in the world but the people have been so marginalized and reduced to beggars by respective national government aided by the so-called western world.
The west certainly do not want Africa to grow and produce things like this as it will sure keep the labour market in the continent.
Chinese are all over Africa because of the enormous raw material they are able to freely and openly steal and rob unchallenged from the continent. Let us hope this will work well to stand the test of time, economically and environmentally, and remain in Africa for another ten years.
Long Live The Motherland…..
