Ringing in SA’s first smartphone plant

Within 10 days of opening its first phone factory in Rwanda’s capital Kigali last week, the Mara Group is set to open a second smartphone manufacturing plant at Durban’s Dube TradePort special economic zone tomorrow.

Mara Group CEO Ashish Thakkar confirmed that President Cyril Ramaphosa would officially open the factory.

The opening comes within a year of Thakkar committing to invest $100 million (R1.5 billion) into SA’s first fully fledged smartphone factory during Ramaphosa’s SA Investment Conference in Sandton last October.

Thakkar said the group was investing about $200 million in the set-up of both factories in Kigali and Durban, which will manufacture “made in Africa” smartphones for the first time. There are other mobile phone facilities in Africa, but these operate as assembly plants.

“Most importantly our high-quality but affordable smartphones will be manufactured at our Mara Phone plants in Rwanda and South Africa.

“We’ve already invested $50 million in the Kigali plant and more than $50 million in the Durban plant,” he said, adding the plants were the same size.

Thakkar said each plant would employ 200 people at the onset, of whom more than 60% were women and more than 90% were youth.

This would increase as production increased and the full $200 million investment was rolled out.

The Mara phone plant at Dube TradePort would ultimately “generate over 1 500 direct jobs and thousands of indirect jobs” when it got to full capacity.

The Rwanda operations would target the east and central Africa markets, while the SA plant would largely target the local market and export to southern Africa.

“Our capacity [at our plants] is a few million smartphones a year,” he added.

Thakkar said: “We strongly believe in the South African fundamentals and the leadership.

“KwaZulu-Natal and Dube TradePort have been amazing and it’s the perfect location for Mara Phones in South Africa.

“Literally everyone, from the department of trade and industry to Trade and Investment KZN, InvestDurban, Proudly SA, the Industrial Development Corporation and the presidential envoys for investment came together to make this investment happen.”

We strongly believe in the SA fundamentals