Twitter: @FaizelPatel143<\/a>)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rwanda\u2019s Mara Group has launched two smartphones describing them as the first \u201cMade in Africa\u201d models.<\/p>\n
Reuters reports, the Mara X and Mara Z will use Google\u2019s Android operating system and cost 175,750 Rwandan francs (R 2,890) and 120,250 Rwandan francs (R 1,970).<\/p>\n
The two devices are expected to compete with Samsung, whose cheapest smartphone costs 50,000 Rwandan francs (R 823), and non-branded phones at 35,000 Rwandan francs (R 575).<\/p>\n
Mara Group CEO Ashish Thakkar says the company is targeting customers willing to pay more for quality.<\/p>\n
Thakkar says companies assemble smartphones in Egypt, Ethiopia, Algeria, and South Africa, but import the components.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are actually the first who are doing manufacturing. We are making the motherboards, we are making the sub-boards during the entire process. There are over 1,000 pieces per phone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rwandan president Paul Kagame who was also in attendance at the launch says he hopes the phones would increase Rwanda\u2019s smartphone usage, currently at around 15%.<\/p>\n
\u201cRwandans are already using smartphones but we want to enable many more. The introduction of Mara phones will put smartphones ownership within reach of more Rwandans.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thakkar says the plant had cost $24 million and could make 1,200 phones per day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 09-10-2019 (Twitter: @FaizelPatel143) \u00a0 Rwanda\u2019s Mara Group has launched two smartphones describing them as the first \u201cMade in Africa\u201d models. Reuters reports, the Mara X and Mara Z will use Google\u2019s Android operating system and cost 175,750 Rwandan francs (R 2,890) and 120,250 Rwandan francs (R 1,970). The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pc0QIf-6MO","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-17 22:12:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26090"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26090\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}