When the idea of Kenyan made phones was mooted last year it sounded great though many of us realistically thought it needed more time and not the one-year timeline that the President was talking about. Something like a five to ten-year duration is more like it. Basically what the country need is a Grand Technology plan with laser focus in hardware and software production.
Before we get there let us start by looking at why we need Kenyan made phones in the first place. Two reasons, one this country needs manufacturing to solve the unemployment problem and to move to the next level. World over manufacturing acts as an engine of growth for low- and middle-income countries. As a country we admire the Asia Tigers like Singapore but one thing that they did quite well was putting the plan in place for manufacturing and executing it well.
I know, one might argue that phone manufacturing is high tech and a country like Kenya should concentrate on low tech manufacturing. That is probably true but it ignores the fact that we can do both and furthermore unless you try something, it is hard to see how you would be good at it. China is the world factory at the moment but when you look at some of the phones that came out of China back in around 2008, they were terrible and nobody wanted to be associated with them at all. 15 years later and Africa is now dominated by Chinese high tech phone vendors like TECNO, OPPO, Xiaomi. Better still, the story of Huawei should be a motivation to do things through thick and thin. They have seen it all in the last few years and this year they shocked the world by producing a fully China made phone, Mate 60.
The second reason is that our reputation as Silicon Savannah needs to be rescued. Mpesa has been the flagship innovation for Kenya and much has been done on top of it by many developers. Apart from that people have been doing other things but none of them can be considered ground-breaking like MPESA. Kenya has real tech talents but they mostly end up working just as advanced users of technologies made from somewhere else. Yes, the last time I said that about Kenyans techies working as advanced users on Twitter/X, it rubbed people the wrong way but I know that was mostly because i did not have time to expand on what I meant. That is a story for another day and I promise to write a follow up article to dwell more on that issue. Meanwhile as a country that prides itself as the most innovative in Africa, it is time to demonstrate clearly that indeed we are silicon Savannah. And doing a Kenyan made phone would be a great start.
Having said that we have to be realistic with where we are and the steps we can take to get there. We have to acknowledge that it impossible to move from zero to best phone makers in town. To come up with a design for electronic device, takes time, actually years. Kenya does not have the capacity to design a smartphone at the moment and the only way out is to go Original Design Manufacturer (ODM). Yes, not the party
There is a great interview that Latiff Chereno the General Manager at Gearbox, did last year with Eric Latiff on Spice FM Situation room “What It Will Take For Kenya To Fulfil Ruto’s Promise To Manufacture Africa’s Cheapest Smartphone”. Where he explained this much better than me and it is worth watching and listening to the end.
Safaricom which already has IP for the Safaricom Neon Phones was a good starting point. To be honest in Kenya, apart from the Government Safaricom is probably the only one within the Kenyan tech sector that has the resources to do something closer to what we are talking about. And yes, after industry-wide consultations Safaricom partnered with Jamii Telecom to set up Assembly Factory.
According to Safaricom the Assembly Factory’s primary objective is to assemble affordable smartphones with the target retail price of around Ksh. 7,499. One example of such phone is Neon Ray Ultra that I am currently using
Overall the key objectives for Safaricom are to:
– To create access to affordable 4G devices
– To scale device penetration to over 20 million customers by FY25
– To drive connectivity and mobile data use
– To support the Government of Kenya’s digitization agenda
I will be reaching out to Jamii Telcom in the coming days to get their perspective and vision for the project. In conclusion starting by assembling phones in Kenya is the right way to gain the required technical know-how. As already mentioned above Kenya has tech talents and great engineers and this project is one of those that has the capability of giving them an opportunity to hone their skills and create greater things. It reminded me of a documentary about Chinese Electronic vehicles and where at one point someone said that China would have not made the steps they have made with EV If Elon Musk had not opened a branch of Tesla in China
Meanwhile check my thoughts here on the Safaricom Neon Ray Ultra phone that is now being assembled at the Factory
