Recent years have seen
countries across the African continent investing deep into the tech industry.
Rwanda is angling to get ahead of the pack.
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| Thierry Falise/LightRocket via Getty Images |
The business district in Kigali, Rwanda
The recent announcement of
the Mara phone, a smartphone manufactured entirely in Africa, has highlighted
African countries' recent forays into the high-tech industry.
The continent boasts more
than 450 tech hubs, and while some countries have a larger market, Rwanda —
where Mara phones are manufactured — is angling to become a major tech hotspot
in East Africa.
There's a lot of competition; what is Rwanda doing to try to beat it?
For the past few decades,
Africa has been changing. Despite a history of setbacks ranging from
colonialism, corruption, and civil wars, countries in the continent have begun
to see growing infrastructure and investment from foreign companies and
a slew of new, local startups.
In particular, Africa's
tech scene seems to be especially thriving. According to venture capital firm
Partech Africa, African tech startups raised $1.163 billion in equity funding
in 2018, a 108 percent year-over-year
growth. These startups are clustering in the nearly 450 active tech hubs that
dot the continent. Now, Rwanda is angling to stand out from the pack.
In the past decade, Rwanda
has developed impressively quickly, averaging 7.5% GDP growth, which is among
the highest on the continent. This is in part due to tech ventures like the
Mara Group's recently released Mara Phone, which has taken the title of the
first African-made smartphone. Other smartphones have been made in Africa
before, but Mara phones are the first to
manufacture all of its components in Africa.
Mara is manufacturing two
phones in the country: the Mara X, which boasts 16 GB at a $130 price tag, and
the Mara Z, with 32 GB and a $190. The Mara Group's CEO, Ashish Thakkar
told CNN that tech and
smartphones in particular were key to supporting African societies.
"We realized a few
years ago that to create positive social impact on our continent. ... We need
to have high quality and affordable smartphones," said Thakkar. "This
will enable financial inclusion." In building the phones, Thakkar hopes to
give Africans a third option beyond choosing between smartphones that are
"high quality but not affordable, or affordable but not high
quality."
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| Mara Phones |
The Mara X, shown in three colors.
Kigali, the capital of
Rwanda, is already turning into a regional tech hub for East Africa, hosting
events like the Africa Tech Summit and the GSMA Mobile 360 Africa. Though other
East African countries like Kenya boast a larger concentration of tech
companies, Rwanda stands out for its rapid growth in the tech scene and for how
easy the country makes it to do business there.
The World Bank has listed
Rwanda at 29th in its 2019 "Doing Business"
report, in part because of the government's promotion of information and
communication technology. For instance, the country offers an entrepreneur
visa, free spaces to work from, steady rule of law, and a quick registration
process for businesses, features which have led some to call it the "test kitchen of Africa."
Turning Rwanda into a
high-tech hub, however, depends quite a bit on having the appropriate
infrastructure and resources. Five years ago, Rwanda had little 4G coverage,
but today, that number has reached over 95 percent. Thanks to
that infrastructure, start-ups have been able to introduce a variety of
projects, such as implementing a cashless tap-and-go system
for the Kigali bus system and offering wi-fi on public
transportation.
The resources necessary
for a successful tech business are starting to accumulate in Rwanda, as well.
The pan-African company Andela, which identifies
and trains software engineers, has opened an office in Kigali. Last year, they
signed an agreement with the Rwandan government to recruit and offer six months
of paid training in software development to up to 500 Rwandans.
Rwanda has also partnered
with China's Alibaba to establish Africa's first electronic world trade platform,
which provides Rwandan enterprises with cloud computing and mobile payment
services to enable local companies to sell their products and services outside
of Rwanda. This last example also highlights China's investment in African
countries in general, and its timing — at the height of the U.S.-China trade
war — demonstrates how China is looking to expand its trading partners.
Similar changes are taking
place all over Africa. While Chinese investors are trying to turn the continent
into the next "factory of the world," it may be the case that in the
coming decades, Africa and Rwanda will have fewer factories than they will
high-tech hotspots.
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