Pan-African multi-sector business services company Mara Group announced the production of the Maraphone – the first made-in-Africa, full-scale smartphone, soon to be manufactured in plants across Africa.
According to Ashish Thakkar, founder of Mara Group, Maraphone is Africa’s phone, referring to Huawei’s Xiaomi for China and Apple’s iPhone for the US.
He added that “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.
The Maraphone phone, a first-of-its-kind in the history of Africa, will produce high quality and affordable smartphones to primarily serve the population of Africa and also with the aim to export to other continents such as Europe. The Maraphone received support from the African Development Bank through its High 5’s strategy.
“This is going to be totally transformative and create thousands of direct jobs,” Thakkar said.
As confident as Ashish might be, one wonders whether Mara has the resources to match the Chinese phone companies that have entered into Africa. Would the Maraphone be cheap enough to compete with the imports from the grey market?
With the likes of Tecno, Infinix who are going for the same target market, does Mara group have the resources to compete with them? The various parts required for the manufacture of the Maraphone will certainly not be sourced from Africa. Or would it be just another phone made in China but branded African?
I applaud the vision of Thakkar when he says that “This is going to be totally transformative and create thousands of direct jobs.” However I wonder if he has the financial muscle to go the long haul.
Only time will tell but I will still go ahead to say congrats!!
