Illustration: Luo Xuan/GT

The African continent has grabbed global headlines recently as Kenya's Eliud Kipchoge became the first marathon runner to shatter the two-hour barrier in Vienna on Saturday. The landmark achievement follows the opening on October 8 of Africa's first-ever entirely homemade smartphone factory in the Rwandan capital city of Kigali.

Compared with Kipchoge's achievement, which smashed one of the most difficult barriers in sports, Mara Group's smartphone plant and two Android gadgets the company unveiled the same day, touted as the first-ever "Made in Africa" models, are to steer the continent toward a new era that Africans will take pride in their innovation prowess and economic strength.

If this is the case, hopes for Mara phones to become the African version of Apple's iPhone, Huawei handsets, and Samsung devices will place the African smartphone maker in direct competition with established brand names. But that's not to say the African home brand could rise to smartphone prominence in the foreseeable future. 

Mara phones may represent national pride, but it remains a far distance from the phone vendor's commercial viability in the contested marketplace. 

For "Made in Africa" ambitions to materialize, the China story on achieving manufacturing excellence and building homegrown brands is worth reading. China's strong and established foothold in the African smartphone marketplace would supposedly contribute to Africa's smart-continent transition.

What sets Mara apart from other cellphone manufacturers on the continent is that the entirety of Mara products is claimed to be fully made and assembled in Rwanda. 

"The entire manufacturing process, from the motherboard all the way to the packaging of the phone is done in our newly opened factory," said Eddy Sebera, Mara's country manager for Rwanda, per a CNN report on Monday.

This suggests that Mara phones consist of locally made components, including motherboards and sub-boards, while handsets made in countries such as Egypt, South Africa, and Algeria rely on imported parts. 

That Rwanda is home to a motherboard manufacturer lives up to the country's reputation as a continent-wide innovation hub. With Mara Group, a pan-African technology and finance conglomerate that has operations in over 20 African nations, behind the smartphone advance, the odds seem high that their phones, which have prompted quite a few Africans to tweet their indulgence in a feeling of pride, might sell well. 

The African Continental Free Trade Agreement, a pact aiming to create a 55-nation trade bloc which is scheduled to begin trading in July 2020, should also provide a sales boon for the homemade phones across the continent.

Nonetheless, the price tags for the two Mara models that position the brand as mid-ranged might erode optimism. The Mara X running on MediaTek's MT6739 chipset, primarily used in small budget gadgets, goes for $159, while the more advanced Mara Z, featuring the Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 processor, retails for $229, according to the company's website.

By comparison, the continent's handset market is seen brimming with sub-$100 options from Samsung, Huawei, and Transsion.

Despite being lesser-known in its home market, Shenzhen-based Transsion, widely known as the king of mobile phones in Africa, continues to dominate the African market with its phone brands Tecno, iTel, and Infinix.

In the second quarter of the year, Transsion led the African smartphone market with a 37.4 percent share in shipments, followed by Samsung's 27.4 percent, and Huawei with 8.7 percent. 

With the tech specification pointing to nothing impressive about the phones other than Mara's claim they are fully "Made in Africa," their commercial success will be contingent upon how many locals will be willing to pay more for this latest source of national pride. 

The "100 percent locally made" claim should be discounted based on how the company relies on core components from MediaTek and Qualcomm to assemble the phone's brain, plus the continent has a long way to go before it becomes home to chipset suppliers.

Mara could realistically become a promising latecomer in the regional smartphone arena. Instead of envisioning an emerging rivalry between the new brand and established ones, notably Transsion, local market watchers are keen to see whether the phone vendor, touted to become Africa's answer to global smartphone heavyweights, can learn from Chinese phone brands. Such brands have, over the years, outsmarted the likes of Apple and Samsung on their home turf before battling them head-to-head globally.

The launch of the new smartphone models is merely the first step in Africa's long march toward innovation-enabled pride and China's success within the continent's smartphone arena. Such advances have been underpinned by Chinese vendor manufacturing superiority, technological innovation, and marketing sophistication, and should be included within the "Made in Africa" story unfolding today.

The author is a reporter with the Global Times. bizopinion@globaltimes.com.cn