Rwanda is a country in Africa. Last October, Mara, a company in Rwanda，opened a factory in Kigali to make the first smartphones built completely in Africa. A week later, Mara opened a second factory in Durban, a large city of South Africa.
Africa already has some factories that put phones together out of a few large components (零件). But Mara is actually making phones from the lowest level. When it comes to creating complete smartphones, Mara is still at the early stage (阶段).
Both factories have about 200 workers. In Kigali, that number is expected to grow to about 500. The Durban factory could one day have as many as 1，500 workers. The company says that about 60% of the two factories' workers are women.
Mara has started by making two types of smartphones. The Mara X sells for $130, and the more powerful Mara Z costs $190. That's a little more than most phones sold in Rwanda. But Mara hopes that people will spend a little bit more to have a better phone. About 15% of the people in Rwanda have smartphones. In South Africa, the number is around 36%. Mara believes that these numbers will keep growing. They hope that lots of new buyers will choose Mara phones because they're made in Africa.
Mara has opened many stores for selling its phones. But the company isn't just selling the phones in Rwanda and South Africa. So far, it has shipped its phones out to 41 other countries. The company has already produced tens of thousands of phones and believes that in the future it will be able to make several million phones each year. Mara hopes to open a third factory in Nigeria in the next few years.
