Mara introduces smartphones assembled in its own Rwandan factory
The Mara Group from the Republic of Rwanda has introduced two Android smartphones. The manufacturer assembles the Mara X and Mara Z in its own facility in Rwanda, where it also solders parts to motherboards and PCBs.
Mara Group CEO Ashish Thakkar told Reuters that his company is the first smartphone manufacturer in Africa. “Assembly does take place in countries such as Egypt, Ethiopia, Algeria and South Africa, but they import the components. We manufacture ourselves. We make the motherboard, we make the sub-boards throughout the process,” said the CEO.
A country manager of the company told CNN that in addition to the work on the motherboards, the packaging of the smartphone is also taking place in the newly opened factory in Rwanda. Mara Group does not provide further details about the actual manufacturing process. It appears that the company is soldering imported parts to motherboards and further assembling the smartphones, giving the company a little more control over production than, for example, Onyx, which announced in 2017 that it would assemble low-cost smartphones in South Africa.
Source: the Rwandan news site KTPress
The new Mara X and Mara Z will receive suggested retail prices in their home countries of 175,750 and 120,250 Rwandan francs respectively. Converted that comes down to about 172 and 118 euros. This makes the devices, with 32GB and 16GB storage capacity, more expensive than the cheapest Samsung smartphone of 49 euros and the unbranded phones from about 34 euros that are sold in Rwanda, but according to CEO Thakkar, the company mainly aims at consumers who be willing to pay a little more money for quality. The market leader in Africa is the Chinese Transsion with its cheaper Tecno smartphones.
The new factory in the Rwandan capital Kigali cost 55 million euros, employs two hundred employees and currently has a production capacity of ten thousand telephones per day. The Mara Group hopes to benefit from the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, a free trade zone between the African countries that will come into effect from July 2020. The Mara Group expects that trade in Africa will increase strongly as a result of this treaty, so that more smartphones will be sold. In Rwanda itself, about fifteen percent of the inhabitants currently own a smartphone.
Image: Mara Group