Johannesburg, Feb 8: South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s hopes of the country becoming a major producer of mobile phones for Africa have been dashed with the closure of a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility owned by a Rwanda-based Indian-origin entrepreneur. In October 2019, the Mara facility in Durban’s Special Economic Zone was launched by Ramaphosa, who had secured a promise of investment by Indian-origin Rwandan businessman Ashish Thakkar at South Africa’s first international investment conference a year earlier.
Thanks to its value, quality and range of services, the Mara phone holds promise for our dream of access and connectivity for the marginalised people of our country and the continent, Ramaphosa had said. Mara phones is a proudly African venture, which is set to put the continent on the map with regard to mobile cell phone technology, he had said.
According to the company, it had spent about half of the promised 1.5 billion rands (USD 97 million) investment on the state-of-the-art manufacturing facility. Now, the entire factory and its contents are being auctioned, with a spokesman for Park Village Auctions saying that one of the interested buyers is from India.
Auctioneer Keith Green told the Business Insider South Africa website that the sale was mandated by one of the country’s five major banks, Standard Bank, and the semi-government funding agency Industrial Development Corporation. “We’ve had one call out of India, and we’re waiting for them to come through, and we’ve had probably about three or four other guys that have already done some viewing in that industry, that are keen on it,” Green said.
He confirmed that the auction lot includes the plant, manufacturing and testing equipment, smartphone components, and the completed phones kept in its storage facilities. The line is in very good condition and could be reworked to make other electronic components, Green added, suggesting that the Indian party or any other buyer could be looking at entering that market, which is growing on the African continent.
The South African facility was opened a few days after Rwandan President Paul Kagame opened a Mara factory in that country, making it the first in the African continent to manufacture phones. Mara has been operating on the African continent for over two decades, with operations in technology, banking, real estate and infrastructure after starting out as a small computer hardware trading firm in East Africa.
Thakkar founded the company at the age of 15 when he moved to Rwanda from the UK.
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