Five months ago, the main technology portals and blogs around the world announced the arrival of the first African smartphone “Huawei 4Afrika” which, according to rumors, would be valued at just 150 USD, as you can read this article. The great news is that it has just been officially presented in Angola, during FILDA 2013, the "Huawei 4Afrika"Which is already sold at Unitel stores with the price of 27.000 Kz, almost twice the price that was anticipated.
According to manufacturer's website, the Huawei 4Afrika, is designed to bring more cutting edge technology to reach more people in Africa and at a price that is right for its consumers. But is a mobile phone that costs 270 USD the best solution for Africa? Where the biggest problem for the expansion of technology lies in the weak economic power of the population at the bottom of the pyramid.
Unitel itself has created a line of Android smartphones that cost between 10 to 15 thousand kwanzas , which are, in my view, a more appropriate solution for our reality. And you can see that there is a huge demand for these products, proof of that is that they “fly” from the agencies and yet the supply is not meeting this demand, as they almost never have stock.
Another major technological project designed to solve the problem of connectivity in difficult access areas is the Loon from Google, which aims to deliver 3G Internet to new parts of the world through solar powered balloons that rise through the stratosphere. However, according to Kenyan Perez Kariuki, a former technology consultant for the World Bank, this is not a real solution for Africa because “In Kenya, most regions of the country have access to 3G“In the case of Angola, Loon would be just another competitor of Unitel and Movicel, which already offer these services at affordable prices.
With this article, I would like to invite our readers to a debate in order to understand what are the best technological solutions for our reality and to suggest suggestions and strategies to solve our “technological problems“. So be sure to comment and share.
