Phone maker to start production in Nigeria

The first factory of a smartphone manufacturer has been set up in Nigeria’s commercial hub of Lagos to provide Africa’s biggest mobile market with low-cost smartphones amid an economic recession. AfriOne’s devices, using the Android operating system, will cost between N29,000 ($92) and N33,00, targeting middle-income buyers in a country of about 180 million people, as stated by Lekan Akinjide, director of Strategy and Government coordination at the company. Its first factory has an installed capacity to produce 120,000 units per month, with one other factory planned, he told Reuters at an event in Lagos. Parent company Contec Global invested $10 million in the project. Cheaper smartphones are pushing internet penetration in Nigeria, with most people getting online via mobile devices rather than computers. The country had 154 million active mobile-phone users as at February this year, according to data from the Nigeria Communications Commission’s website. Lagos-based AfriOne, which has developed a financial technology app, is also betting on the growth of e-commerce, which will account for 10 percent of all retail sales in the continent’s largest economies by 2025, or some $75 billion in annual revenue, according to consulting firm McKinsey.