NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb 5 – A total of 194,000 locally made mobile phones have been released into the market as the government aims to bridge the wide digital gap in the country.
Information, Communications, and Technology Cabinet Secretary (CS) Eliud Owalo said that the state is targeting the release of a total of 3 million handsets annually to meet the in-country high demand.
“We may have a deficit in the market in terms of the number of Kenyans who have got access to smart enabled telephones and that is why the government embarked on the process of local assembly of cheap smart enabled telephones,” said CS Owalo.
In October last year, the William Ruto administration rolled out a state-of-the-art East Africa Device Assembly Kenya Limited in Athi River in fulfillment of its promise to establish a local smartphone assembly plant with the capacity to produce up to 3 million mobile phone units a year.
The assembly factory was set up as a joint venture between local mobile network operators and international device manufacturers.
“The local assembly plant has released a total of 194,000 handsets going for 50 US Dollar per unit, We target to hit 3 million handsets annually to fill the void available in the market for optimum capacity utilization level,” added CS Owalo.
