ENGO Holdings Limited, a subsidiary of Chinese tech firm SIMI Group on Thursday broke ground to construct a facility that will host Uganda’s first phone and computer manufacturing plant in Namanve Industrial Park, one of Uganda’s largest factory hubs.
The construction works expected to last six months commenced this morning with a groundbreaking ceremony presided over by state minister for Investment Evelyn Anite and the minister of Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) Frank Tumwebaze
who in their speeches all stated that the development is aimed at strengthening the country’s ICT capacity by training more local manpower, providing market for local innovations and proving to the world that Uganda can host such powerful initiatives.
Of late, Uganda has been championing the BUBU (Build Uganda Buy Uganda) policy, which calls for promoting local content. And in her speech, Minister Anite urged ENGO Holdings to train and hire local talent.
“We expect you to hire and train local Ugandans to handle the various operations in the manufacture of these products as stipulated in your MOU with NITA-U,” she said, adding:
“The Government of Uganda is on an accelerated path to industrialization. It gives me great Joy whenever we add a new player in the industry and manufacturing sector. However, today is special because it demonstrates that Uganda is now a favored destination for investments in high-tech manufacture and all the advantages, they bring especially in skilling our people. Brace yourselves, we are taking ‘made in Uganda’ to the next level.”
Ares Chow Yu Qing, the executive director ENGO Holdings Limited says the firm will unveil the first generation of products manufactured and assembled from the plant to the market before close of 2019.
Yu says the plant will rely on Chinese imported motherboards, screens, touch panels, batteries, cameras and speaker receivers and vibrators as well as circuits for the domestic manufacture of the phones until qualified workers have been trained to undertake the commercial process from Uganda.
According to Yu, the firm will invest $15 million (approx. Shs 55.6 billion) over five years to increase the production capacity from initial 1 million mobile phone gadgets a year to its maximum. The firm’s trademark is known as Simi Mobile and will produce both cheap analogue and smartphones.
Yu says “We will do this step by step. We will use experienced Ethiopians until we have trained our own workforce. So we will start will 100,000 gadgets per month. For computers, the target computers is one million a year – depending on demands. But we will bring more machines if the demands are high.”
Dr Emily Kugonza, the chairman of the board of Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) says he is confident the company will revolutionize the ICT sector in Uganda. He said the development is coming at a time when Africa is the next frontier of development.
“We wish to congratulate ENGO Holdings for this great milestone. I got the opportunity of visiting your assembly plant in Ethiopia and I got convinced that you’re the right people to come to Uganda and help us take off in the ICT sector the way we’re witnessing today.” Kugonza said.
Tumwebaze said the development is a huge milestone for the country. He urged the franchise to explore the use of Uganda’s manufactured software in their manufacturing value chain.
James Ssaka, the executive director of the National Information Technology Authority (NITA-U) says Uganda’s ICT sector has dramatically grown over the last ten years.
“In the past year, there has been an increase in the national budget expenditure allocation by 43% from Shs 104bn in 2017/18 to Shs 146bn in 2019/20. A significant allocation of the ICT budget is spent on imported ICT goods such as software and hardware. This is why the commencement of this factory will give Ugandans an opportunity to replace foreign software and hardware with local innovations thereby spurring development.” said Ssaka.
According to NITA, there are 22 million mobile phone subscribers in Uganda. It says the sector is growing at 27 per cent per annum.
