Dominated by the Chinese and South Korean brands in this case “Samsung”, “Huawei”, “Tecno”, “Infinix”, “Itel” which capture nearly 60% of the market share on the African continent, the market for “middle” range phones are on the rise. It is through this sprawling galaxy of Asian manufacturers firmly established in Africa that Fadima Diawara, CEO of the Guinean brand “Kunfabo” and the other South African, Rwandan and North African manufacturers intend to make their way. Just starting out and aware of the immense challenge to be met, the young Guinean entrepreneur is betting on the “low-cost” strategy while imprinting an African identity on “Kunfabu” to establish herself on this market. Fadima Diawara shared her experience with Financial Afrik.

Interview by Mamadou Aliou Diallo, Conakry.

FA: How has the Kunfabo project been doing since its launch?

The startup is doing very well, we proceeded to our first launch in January 2020 for a first introduction with 3000 units. We didn't expect there to be so much enthusiasm for our products. We have a lot of demand in Guinea, all over Africa and also at the level of the diaspora.

FA: What is the specificity of the Kunfabo brand and what is your sales pitch that sets you apart from the telephony giants?

We position ourselves as a “low-cost” African brand. Kunfabo is certified through EU standards and stands out with its affordable price of 99 dollars to promote digital inclusion in Africa. Kunfabo integrates applications that meet the needs of Africans. In particular the application of geolocation of health centers, hospitals, local pharmacies, "Findme" with the aim of putting technology at the service of health to save lives; a culinary application "Afrocook" to prepare African recipes in order to promote African culinary art, an African instant messaging and mobile payment application "Dikalo". The concept of kunfabo is to offer Africans a quality smartphone in line with African realities, which values Africans and above all accompanies them in their daily lives. We have an efficient after-sales service and our smartphones are all reliable and insured...

FA: After seed investments, what types of financial or strategic partnerships are you relying on to accelerate your growth?

We have started looking for financing which, we hope, will allow us to accelerate our rate of growth, improve our offer and meet the growing demand from users. We are also considering partnering with phone companies to take advantage of their distribution channels. That said, to achieve our goals, we need to mobilize the necessary funds to meet the demand.

FA: How is your market entry going and what are your priority targets? what is the return?

In Guinea, we have good feedback from our users. There is a lot of demand and above all, they are satisfied with our after-sales service. It should be remembered that in Guinea our smartphones are insured; the Société Générale bank, which is our partner in this project, is participating in the distribution of our smartphone and in particular makes our telephones available to its customers on interest-free credit, repayable over six (6) months.

FA: on a technical level, what are your partnerships, in particular for the supply of design equipment (microprocessors, batteries, etc.) software and operating system?

We obviously work with several partners, in particular the assembly plant, in close collaboration with our engineers, designers, developers, in short, an entire technical team. We develop our own applications. We want to make Kunfabo a platform where young African innovators can express themselves through their talents and collaborate on an African project by Africans with a continental and possibly international scope. It is in this perspective that we are also collaborating with a Cameroonian startup that has developed the African messaging and mobile payment application “Dikalo” available on our smartphone. We are always looking for new African startups able to bring their expertise to the project so that we can all grow together. For the operating system, it is the essential Android system that equips our smartphones. In the near future, we plan to develop our own operating system.

FA: How do you plan to benefit Guinea and Africa from your innovation, whether in terms of creating value chains or employment?

Already it is young Guineans who work on the Kunfabo project and we benefit from the expertise of African professionals in many areas… all these collaborations bring more to training, to sharing between professionals. We are working hard to achieve our goals to create more jobs for youth. Today, the age range of professionals working on Kunfabo varies between 20 and 35 years old.

FA: As an actor, with the objective of finding a place in the sun on the African and international market in the long term, what do you think today of the difficulties that the Huawei group is experiencing in the face of the USA? What are your perspectives?

The differences between the Chinese group Huawei and the United States are a political and leadership problem. As far as we are concerned, our primary ambition is primarily continental, but we plan to open up to the rest of the world once the African market has been conquered. We are however aware of the difficulties of the telephony market and new technologies with players like Samsung, Huawei and others, but we are confident about our assets and strength that we intend to put forward to offer us a place on the African market with as our main ambition to seize leadership in the “low-cost” range already occupied by Chinese brands.

I think the time has come to get Africa out of dependence and its status as an eternal consumer of foreign products. We must give strength to our own innovations so that they impose themselves and get us out of dependence. The world is changing, Africa should not be on the sidelines. Our ultimate goal is to be able to produce our smartphones in Africa in our own factory in order to create a real value chain and thousands of jobs, train African professionals and generate more wealth for the continent.