Maraphones, South Africa’s plant for ‘true’ African smartphones is up for sale

The Maraphones factory, which makes smartphones, is set to be sold on an “offer” basis. It was once seen as a boost for the South African labour market and a step toward making South Africa a tech giant.

A report by Business Insider confirmed that the high-tech facility was “empty” and “on auction.” Standard Bank and the Industrial Development Corporation, the two lenders who helped fund the smartphone factory, had ordered the sale of the building.

Keith Green, the manager of Park Village Auctions in Durban, told Bruce Whitfield on 702’s The Money Show that the auction house had already closed. Park Village has been given the job of getting rid of the assets on behalf of the financial institutions. “We’ve decided to sell the equipment on an “offer” basis rather than an auction basis so that we can find the right buyer and also give the buyers time to do their research”. 

On the radio show, Green said: “The plant was set up to make cell phones. However, it can be changed to make circuit boards that can be used to make other things, like amplifiers, tracking devices, or anything else that has circuit boards in it”. He explained that the factory wasn’t solely built for the cell phone business.

The Mara Phones factory, situated in KwaZulu-Dube Natal’s Trade Port Special Economic Zone, was inaugurated in October 2019 as a centre for the production of ‘truly’ African smartphones. Ashish Thakkar, the founder and CEO of Mara Group, said at the time, that while some smartphones were assembled in the continent, Africa has no history of actually producing a smartphone locally. He then pledged, at the Africa Investment Forum, that he would give R1.5 billion to help make South Africa the “first high-tech, high-quality, and affordable” smartphones in Africa.

According to some, the establishment of the Mara Phones smartphone production factory in South Africa communicated to the country its confidence in local manufacturing and the broader “buy local” movement. Soon after the factory opened, Mara signed deals with two of the big four banks and Pick n Pay to sell the locally made smartphones. The first Mara Experience Store opened in Maponya Mall, Soweto, in November 2020. 

In January 2021, Sylvester Taku was named the company’s South African MD, and he said that Mara Phones wanted to be in the top three smartphone brands in South Africa. Mara Phones won the government’s multibillion-rand RT-15 contract last April because the state decided to focus on locally made phones. In order to qualify for the tender, local mobile device manufacturers must be given first consideration.

However, in an official statement to MyBroadband, the South African first smartphone factory said it failed due to a lack of uptake in its products, fewer government tenders for its devices than it had anticipated, and the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown. “Unfortunately, the lack of uptake in the South African domestic market coupled with a shortfall in tender materialisation and lockdowns has prompted this course of action,” Mara’s executives said.

Mara Phones Global CEO Chris Corsi and founder and board member Ashish Thakkar said the ambitious plan to launch a facility in South Africa was “untenable” due to the pandemic and lockdowns that followed four months after opening. The company will now work with Standard Bank and the Industrial Development Corporation, the financial institutions that provided R1.5 billion for the facility’s setup and operations, to support the “transition”.