Safaricom To Start Assembling Smartphones In Kenya

Kenya’s telecommunications giant, Safaricom PLC, has announced that it is in the final stages of setting up a smartphone assembling plant in Kenya that will produce affordable 4G devices for Kenyans.

The announcement by Safaricom comes amid endless promises by the government through the Ministry of ICT that the government was about to release locally-made smartphones into the Kenyan market in the “next few months.”

Safaricom has become the first private company to publicly announce that it will start assembling smartphones for Kenyans in the spirit of Buy Kenya, Build Kenya.

“We are in the final stages of launching our first ever device assembly plant giving Kenyans an opportunity to own locally assembled high quality 4G devices.”

“Cost is a major hindrance for the majority of our customers and through initiatives such as Lipa Mdogo Mdogo, our pay-as-you-go device financing plan, we can ensure that as many customers reap the benefit of being connected,” said Safaricom CEO Peter Ndegwa.

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Safaricom hopes that once the assembly plant goes live, the cost of smartphones in Kenya will go down, giving Kenyans an opportunity to own phones.

According to the Communications Authority of Kenya, penetration in smartphones increased from 54 percent in June 2022 to 61 percent in June this year, on the other side, penetration in feature phones dropped from 67 percent in June 2022 to 64 percent in June this year.

The total number of mobile phone devices connected to mobile networks stood at 62.9 million in the fourth quarter of and Financial Year 2022/23, with a penetration rate of 124.4 percent. Despite the penetration improvement, the statistic shows more feature phones are in the Kenyan market compared to smartphones at 32.1 million and 30.8 million respectively.

Worldwide smartphone shipments declined 6.8 percent year over year to 268.0 million units in the second quarter of 2023 (2Q23), according to data from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.

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