{"id":26141,"date":"2019-10-17T06:25:21","date_gmt":"2019-10-17T04:25:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dev.radioislam.org.za\/wordpress\/2019\/10\/17\/ramaphosa-to-officially-open-mara-smartphone-factory-in-durban\/"},"modified":"2019-10-17T06:25:21","modified_gmt":"2019-10-17T04:25:21","slug":"ramaphosa-to-officially-open-mara-smartphone-factory-in-durban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/ramaphosa-to-officially-open-mara-smartphone-factory-in-durban\/","title":{"rendered":"Ramaphosa to Officially Open Mara Smartphone Factory in Durban"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News &#8211; 17-10-2019<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>(<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/FaizelPatel143\" rel=\"alternate\">Twitter: @FaizelPatel143<\/a>)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">President Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to launch Africa\u2019s first smartphone manufacturing plant at the Dube Trade Port in Durban.<\/p>\n<p>Rawanda\u2019s Mara Group headed by CEO Ashish Thakkar announced plans to manufacture the affordable Mara X and Mara Z smartphones in South Africa at the inaugural South African Investment Conference held in November 2018.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Thakkar pledged an investment of just over R1.5 billion to manufacture the smartphone and has reportedly already pumped just over R700 million into the Durban plant.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The group launched two smartphones in Rwanda earlier this month, describing them as the first \u201cMade in Africa\u201d models.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The two smartphones are developed in partnership with Google, as part of the Android One Program.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Mara Group&#8217;s website says the plant was set to produce just over 1,2 million smartphone handsets annually.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The company says the staff complement at the Durban plant would comprise 90% youth and 60% women.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News &#8211; 17-10-2019 (Twitter: @FaizelPatel143) \u00a0 President Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to launch Africa\u2019s first smartphone manufacturing plant at the Dube Trade Port in Durban. Rawanda\u2019s Mara Group headed by CEO Ashish Thakkar announced plans to manufacture the affordable Mara X and Mara Z smartphones in South Africa at the [&hellip;]<\/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-26141","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-6ND","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-01 07:27:42","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\/26141","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=26141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radioislam.org.za\/a\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}