Rwanda Releases First Smartphone Made Entirely In Africa (fastcompany.com) 45
Rwanda's Mara Group just released two smartphones, earning the company the title of the first smartphone manufacturer in Africa. Their grand ambitions are to help turn Rwanda into a regional tech hub. Fast Company reports: 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. 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.
There's no way these aren't repackaged Chinese (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no way these aren't repackaged Chinese phones. Africa does not have the ability to crank out state of the art chips. This is how things like this work in the third world: someone in the government allocates huge sums of money to their cronies to "spur innovation", by which they mean steal all the money in exchange for kickbacks. Most of the money gets promptly stolen. A small fraction of it is used to buy some rebranded Chinese products and put together a bombastic press conference.
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The company is headquartered in Dubai. So that explains how they actually COULD have the money and tech needed to manufacture their own motherboards and such.
Re:There's no way these aren't repackaged Chinese (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:There's no way these aren't repackaged Chinese (Score:4, Informative)
Uh, the headline on both the summary here, and the linked article state "Made Entirely In Africa". And, they contrast that with other companies which "import the components." If they're not sourcing African SoCs (and other component parts - semiconductors, passives, connectors, etc.), then they too are importing components.
Re:There's no way these aren't repackaged Chinese (Score:4, Informative)
There seems to be a bit of confusion about how manufacturing works. The phones being assembled in other countries are exactly that - they get shipments of pre-populated PCBs, cases, cables etc. and put them together. It's often cheaper than shipping completed products due to tariffs or sometimes due to logistics.
When companies talk about "manufacturing" PCBs they generally mean making the substrate and then populating it with components they bought elsewhere. TFA isn't very clear but I assume that's what they are doing here.
It's all rather arbitrary. Where do you draw the line? At the guy who mined the silicon and rare earths? The factory that churned out billions of 100 ohm resistors that went into tens of thousands of different products? Almost nothing is made entirely anywhere or by one company.
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To claim "entirely", as here, seems an even more restrictive claim - it implies no foreign content. I'm not saying Africans are bound by US law, but simply point to that as
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Keep in mind that English is a second language for this guy and we only have the Reuter's quotes which may have been prompted by the journalist, so I wouldn't get too hung up on the exact wording.
The interesting part of this story is really that Africa is on the cusp of becoming a player in the market for things like consumer electronics.
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I don't think they're saying that, the issue is with saying, **entirely* made in Africa.
Apple does not claim their product is made entirely in the USA.
I believe if they'd simply said, "Made in Africa" no one would be balking. Well, probably not.. maybe..
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This is how things like this work in the third world: someone in the government allocates huge sums of money to their cronies to "spur innovation", by which they mean steal all the money in exchange for kickbacks. Most of the money gets promptly stolen. A small fraction of it is used to buy some rebranded Chinese products and put together a bombastic press conference.
I would never have thought to see someone admit so openly on /. that the US is a third world country.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
That would have needed state of the art South Africa tech
Well (Score:1)
They probably have plenty of tantalum.
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Why do you say that? Anyone can buy equipment to make PCBs, mould plastic, mill out metal parts etc. They have some decent academic institutions to supply skilled engineers.
What is the basis for your doubt?
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"What is the basis for your doubt?"
The quasi-religious belief that no one in Africa is capable of doing anything more complex than pickpocketing. It's a common delusion among conservatives. Never mind that the first successful commercial drone delivery service **on the planet** is located in Rwanda.
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Same for phone based money transfers.
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Not quite (Score:3, Insightful)
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So, you say, they do have only motherboards on offer?
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As long as you're clear about what you mean an use it consistently I don't think your definition of making their own smartphone is unreasonable, but out of curiosity, could you name a company that under you definition makes their own smartphone?
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As long as you're clear about what you mean an use it consistently I don't think your definition of making their own smartphone is unreasonable, but out of curiosity, could you name a company that under you definition makes their own smartphone?
Moving the goalposts. The story is about a country claiming to make a phone. AFAIK, only China can supply all of the components for a phone at this time. Willing to be wrong here...
Re: Not quite (Score:2)
You are correct, I just assumed that companies made phones but as you point out, the articles claim they are made by countries, my bad.
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I think South Korea might as well, since Samsung has completely moved out of China. But they might still source some parts from Taiwan, I don’t know.
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I like the bit in the Reuter's article that had the President of Rwanda quoted that he hoped that these new phones would help increase the mobile phone usage from 15%. I don't know how they are going to do that when they are priced three to four times higher than the lowest priced Samsung phones. If people aren't buying those then I doubt that they'll be getting something that costs a number of times the price.
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By that logic China is the only country in the world that can built electronics. Maybe Japan could build some stuff as they have component level manufacturing, but a complex device like a smartphone would be difficult. I don't think they make cellular modems there but I could be wrong.
This claim seems reasonable. They are buying in all the off-the-shelf parts like the screen, battery and SoC. They are then making the bespoke parts themselves, the PCBs, the case etc, and assembling them. Turning generic part
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They build phones, from parts.
So: they are building phones.
No idea about what you are nitpicking. Oh, they did not invent their own new chip and new OS? So you can blame every Android/ARM phone maker for the same.
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Damn they are light years ahead of the USA now! (Score:1)
Should have just outsourced to Wakanda (Score:2)
Good. (Score:2)
Apple, watch out! (Score:2)
Might be hard to sell your next iPhone when the hipsters start virtue signaling by "buying African".
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You underestimate the fickleness and fad-dependence of virtue signaling.
Not thier only tech first (Score:2)
Rwanda is also home to the world's first successful commercial drone delivery service, Zipline. https://flyzipline.com/ [flyzipline.com] Over 21,000 deliveries of blood and other medical products so far, and a failure rate of (IIRC) 0.01%
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That's cool!
I think a concern people have is that Africa might be to China, what China was to the US... only the Chinese might be more invested in keeping ownership of businesses. Granted it is a smarter move than what the west was doing to help (by giving stuff away without actually supporting African entrepreneurs.).
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I've already sent them a resume, the day they open operations in Peru I'm going to be knocking on their door.
Run *on* Android (Score:2)
Wow, that is pretty clever.
How much is "a bit more" (Score:2)
Hell, I live in Europe and I don't think most of us would pay more for a phone just because it was made locally.
I wish them the best of luck though.
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Actually locally made phones are amoung the cheapest and highest quallity: https://www.ingenieur.de/techn... [ingenieur.de]
Obviously assembled from parts made in Asia :P