The Mara X and Mara Z are the first smartphones manufactured and assembled entirely in Africa

[Redaktion]

Mara Group, a Rwandan-based smartphone company, unveiled the Mara X and Mara Z smartphones. The phones carry the pride of being the first handsets manufactured and assembled completely in Africa. Mara Group hopes that the phones are merely the beginning of a tech revolution that will boost Rwanda's economy and standing in the region.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/The-Mara-X-and-Mara-Z-are-the-first-smartphones-manufactured-and-assembled-entirely-in-Africa.438326.0.html

[S.Yu]

...Does Africa have a single fab? At least this non-exhaustive list doesn't contain any. I don't think they made anything that counts as IC, just the board, the chassis, maybe a few low precision components like speakers and sockets.

[Sam Medley]

S.Yu - The manufacturing of the SoC is actually one of the questions I sent to Mara. I haven't received an answer from them yet (October 16th), but I'm assuming that components like the SoC, RAM, and storage were all imported. It's likely that the "made entirely in Africa" is just marketing and that the components requiring a fab were imported. However, I have no reason to believe that other components (like speakers and PCBs) were not made in Africa.
Either way, it's still a huge achievement to manufacture some of the parts, not to mention assembly and sales management. Rwanda is putting a lot of effort into becoming the Silicon Valley of Africa, and this is evidence of that.

[S.Yu]

S.Yu - The manufacturing of the SoC is actually one of the questions I sent to Mara. I haven't received an answer from them yet (October 16th), but I'm assuming that components like the SoC, RAM, and storage were all imported. It's likely that the "made entirely in Africa" is just marketing and that the components requiring a fab were imported. However, I have no reason to believe that other components (like speakers and PCBs) were not made in Africa.
Either way, it's still a huge achievement to manufacture some of the parts, not to mention assembly and sales management. Rwanda is putting a lot of effort into becoming the Silicon Valley of Africa, and this is evidence of that.

I see...Rwanda hasn't come up on any of my tech feeds before, but at least now they're a blip on the radar.