Why The Shumiphone Is Not Widely Celebrated By Black South African Techies

 

First of all, yeah I'm a hater. First of all, yeah I'm anti-black-progress. First of all, yeah I'm about to commit some ICT black-on-black crime!

 

Now that we've got all the first-of-alls out of the way, I'm writing this as a Computer Engineer who genuinely cares about real growth and advancement of technology in Africa. I'm also highly sensitive to what progress we celebrate and the associated songs of praise.

What's with all the politicking? Let's start with these tweets:

Meet 26 year Lesley Ncube founder of Thatha, a tech company based in KZN. Last month he graduated with a degree in Computer Science and he already created his owned smartphone called Shumi. He designs the software and hardware by himself. pic.twitter.com/Bx4ofd3kPQ

— Tumelo Warona (@DjNewAfrica) July 27, 2020

Meet 26 year ol Lesley Ncube. Founder of Thatha, a tech company based in KZN. Last month he graduated with a degree in Computer Science and he already created his owned smartphone called Shumi!

We are young and we are in business! pic.twitter.com/Dr0Uq60wVq

— Youth in Business South Africa (@YouthinBizSA) August 10, 2020

 

When you qualify as a black ICT professional, you're immediately elevated to IT Guru/Oracle among family and friends in the black community. With this promotion, comes the responsibility of being the Go-To Expert for all things technology, including kettles that stop working in the dead of winter. This also carries weight when there are any news about African technological advancement.

 

We've all been sent an article about an African child that invented their own helicopter in their backyard and asked why we're not celebrating it enough, if at all. It's great that people fact check, but the why is often from a position of "this is fact and why are you being a hater" rather than "is there anything missing here"?

 

In the most recent case, a number of highly influential media houses published articles spreading inaccuracies about a phone being developed in South Africa and left our mailboxes in shambles. I even saw it posted in a social media group of ICT professionals. These media houses include, amongst others:

 

• DRUM (news24) (in my opinion the biggest culprit as a lot of social media posts, blogs and articles reference them)

• The South African (Subtitled - Lesley Ncube graduated in June and already has created his own smartphone and a software and computer hardware company. 😒)

 

• Briefly.co.za

 

It even managed to convince one of the Executive Producers at the South African Broadcasting Corporation and made it to both local television and radio stations:

 

So here's the Shumi smartphone (image saved from Thatha's website): 

It's going for R4k (at the time of posting). It looks good. I wouldn't hesitate to promote it in the name of supporting local business (as I've already done here).

So what's your problem? Lies detected:

 

Yes, the man is selling his own smartphone BUT

 

A number of the articles say he developed the hardware and software himself. I have a number of friends and associates who started their own smartphone startups locally. They're all essentially self-branded off-the-shelf phones. None of them however sell a story of having developed the hardware and software themselves.

Assembled the hardware here might have been more convincing...

On his Thatha website, Lesley Ncube lists the CPU used in the phone as:

MTK6761 Cotex-A53 Quad Core CPU

 

Why then does he publicly claim that he developed the hardware himself to those who typically don't read beyond tweets and videos?

I can point you to many smartphones in the continent and beyond that use this CPU and don't claim to have developed it themselves. There isn't even a need to go that deep into the hardware. Just looking at a few low-cost phones with a similar design should get an investigative mind ticking. I don't understand how this slipped through so many editorial offices made up of employees who get paid to do this stuff.  

This is the Vernee M7. I didn't have to Google-dig to find it here.

How about the CUBOT P30 below. Look familiar yet?

"With Thatha, I decided to go the traditional route by starting with developing hardware, then moving on to software. That’s when we developed the Shumi smartphone."

He didn't at least say that he just assembled the pieces locally. At his young age, having established a plant/workshop to assemble components here would have been a major achievement. A lot of such products get assembled outside the continent. The Maraphone and AfriOne are some of the very few local smartphones that can boast this manufacturing capability. Sadly, if you look under the bonnet for both, you'll discover that they're not really African companies.

Developed own software?

The phone is running on Android. I'll leave open the possibility that there may be some customization on top of Android and therefore we can say that the software was locally "developed". Actually, fuck that, the software was NOT developed here! These wild claims are mildly upsetting so let's not dissect the phone any further.

 

Straight outta varsity?

For someone to make such wildly inaccurate claims made me suspicious about their qualifications so I did a bit of searching in that area. The articles and tweets keep promoting this phenomenon as someone who just recently graduated from Tshwane University of Technology (TUT).

The TUT student newspaper, BUA, published an article about this recent graduate just this month (August 2020), stating that he's currently studying for an Advanced Diploma in Computer Science at TUT so I decided not to search any further. Assuming that they at least did some confirmation that he's really one of them.

What caught my eye out of this exercise though, was that TUT seems to have published an article about this smartphone earlier and later removed the post.

Screenshot from Google Search Results

Why would the institution take down the article? Did someone advise them of the inaccuracies of this story and so they chose to distance themselves as an institution?

 

Screenshot of page after clicking link on Google Search Results

I'm willing to bet that some of the media houses I listed earlier will either edit their posts or remove them entirely as the truth reveals itself.

Why Haven't We Manufactured our own African Phone from scratch?

Manufacturing circuit boards is not as simple as the chip looks. Even if we were to recruit hundreds of locals at cheap labour costs to sit around the clock with soldering irons, we'd still see little return. Mass production of phones is not a parent's garage or backyard job.

Asia is well ahead of us in terms of hardware manufacturing. It's going to take many government-corruptionless years to catch up with China and his neighbours on manufacturing circuit boards for instance. They have far cheaper labour than all of Africa and a greater output of Electronic and Computer Engineers/Scientists for us to catch up or present a business case worth pumping money into. Unless we're looking into next generation technology instead of re-inventing the wheel, we'll never catch up.

To maximize profit and try to be "first-to-market", the rest of the world (including first world countries) still goes to the Far East for manufacturing and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that capitalistic approach. It also allows businesses to focus their energy on everything else that supports the product and brand.

In other parts of Africa, the trend and adoption of these low-cost unknown-brand phones is much greater. The Maraphone in Rwanda for instance is faced with a steep run against the entrenched and cheaper Chinese brands like Tecno. It will be a long time before ordinary users start spending their money on our phones, especially with an upcoming brand conscious generation.

Parting Sanitizer Shot

It actually took a while to get myself to write about this even though it was bothering me for some weeks. A part of me felt that we were starved for good stories (even before the global covid-19 pandemic) and I should just let this story slide in hope that it doesn't cause any harm. The most it's done is get a few non-tech people excited for a day and it will quickly be forgotten. I see it, however, popping up in WhatsApp groups and being believed by too many people close to me. I had to get it off my chest. If it dies it dies.

The way I see it, this whole stunt is driving traffic to his Thatha website where he also promotes his Development (Mobile Apps, Websites, etc) business services. I hope that's working well for him.

Mineral Rich Continent Without Enough Tech Start-Ups To Match

It is well known that Africa has vast wealth of mineral resources and that the Mining Industry contributes significantly to its economy. For many African countries, Mining remains an important source of export earnings. In 2012, the Mining Industry contributed 5.5% to South African GDP and accounted for 38% of its total exports, for example. Globally, some of our mineral reserves are ranked either first or second. Botswana, for instance, is the world’s largest diamond producer by value.

In the past decade, however, Mining companies faced various challenges and we’ve seen some of its contribution to GDP decline. In South Africa for example, some of the Mining sectors saw rising costs and labour unrest. Mining overall has been under an unsustainable environment and continues to call for innovative solutions.

Goldman Sachs lists “Driving innovation via increased investment in research and development and technology” as one of the 10 key issues to address South Africa’s declining global competitiveness [1]. I would imagine that the same would be recommended for other African countries.

With the impression that Africa is a world leader in Mining and given its Technology challenges, should we not have deafening activity in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) from local Small, Medium and Micro-sized Enterprises (SMMEs) in this space?

ICT Adoption in Mining

We’re past the stage of convincing Africa’s Mining Industry that advantages exist from Technology Investment if applied well. We're over the period of “lack of business commitment to/awareness of IT” as an impediment [2]. ICT is seen as a strategic necessity for improvement of safety and operational effectiveness [3]. Africa’s Mining Industry invests billions of Rands per annum towards ICT and Innovation. This stems from the need for Mining companies to innovate to meet falling real prices. Between 2011 and 2013, Gold has had its steepest decline in 30 years for example.

According to “Tracking The Trends 2014” (Mining) by Deloitte, “Rather than one-off cost reductions, mining companies must embark on sustainable cost management programs to become – and remain – lowest-quartile-cost producers.” Deloitte lists some strategies to consider in these programs and one of the key elements of these strategies is Technology.

AngloGold Ashanti CEO Srinivasan (Venkat) Venkatakrishnan recently told Mining Weekly Online that technology is the “single key we have to improve productivity, which is the answer to a number of issues within the South African mining industry”.

Diminishing Engineering skills on mines means that companies have had to reduce capacity to experiment with alternative solutions in-house. They’re also looking for you, “garage inventor”.

Status Quo

We've seen a number of excellent Technology solutions come out of big Mining companies, primarily sourced from Technology companies outside Africa. For decades we had South African gold mining companies pioneering innovation through the Chamber of Mines Research Organization (COMRO) with Hydraulic Technologies, for instance.

We currently have great Innovation Research Programmes like Coaltech 2020 which involves some large corporations and research institutions. Mintek is another formidable player in South Africa. I’m by no means discrediting any of their contributions. The average South African Techie unfortunately doesn't know much about such programmes, regardless of the size of this industry.

Big companies aside, I've personally come across very few SMMEs looking at ICT solutions in this space. Besides, having only seen "repeat technologies" adopted from other continents and the lack of Invention/Innovation, I find that these Entrepreneurs are not vocal about what they’re doing or visible enough. At least not to the degree I would expect, given that Africa is a world leader in Mining.

I've seen relatively few products or discussions come out of Innovation Hub, JoziHub or Silicon Cape primarily focused on Mining Technology. Are discussions around Mining Technology ever featured in Tech Hangouts or any of the TedX events in Africa?

If we have to examine the activity of 100% black owned companies in this space, the picture becomes even more displeasing. That’s however a topic that deserves its own article.

Where’s the challenge?

I've heard many stories of employees in Mining companies writing innovative software applications to optimize existing Mining methods or processes, and having the Intellectual Property taken from them by their employer. We cannot say the capability is not there. What could possibly keep the average Techie from exploring this industry?

• Perhaps the culture of Tech Entrepreneurship is not mature enough in Africa to be prominent in the Mining industry. Historically, IT penetration in the Mining industry has been lower than in many other industries, which is understandable given the high correlation between IT penetration and the scale/scope of the knowledge work performed by an organisation. Could it be the lack of lucidity of “Ability to Service” and the assumption that a Mining background is mandatory?
• I think we can rule out the old belief that majority of IT spend goes towards in-house IT support and less towards development of new solutions aimed at efficiency. This has changed significantly over the past decade.
• Recently, the South African mining industry is seen as unstable and marred with labour strikes leading to business change. Business change affects the complexity and spend for the IT landscape. This instability and, an industry tainted with corruption and unaccountable bureaucracies could be contributors.
• Could there also be a fear of labourers and unions opposing certain Technologies that might be misconstrued as being introduced to police or replace jobs. Sabotage by the labourers is a problem faced by many companies that introduce ICT change.

There are solutions to overcome some of these challenges. For instance, the method of transparency and clear communication of change benefits has been used to overcome resistance from labourers.

The above considerations don’t warrant this amount of silence from Tech SMMEs in this industry.

Let’s Get Cracking

There is no doubt that First World countries have decades of research behind them. They’re significantly advanced in terms of Tech Development and measures taken to address problems of adoption. However, the closer you are to the problem the better a solution you can produce. Local Entrepreneurs have that advantage.

Governments and mining companies have committed to injecting billions of Rands into Technology and Innovation. We have an industry with identified needs and not enough SMME activity. Outside of what existing companies traditionally explore (mining methods, process control, etc), there are many technologies that SMMEs could be looking at (training applications, solutions using Augmented Reality, surveillance systems, product tracking systems, etc).
If you're already out there, you're not loud enough.

References

1. Two Decades of Freedom – Goldman Sachs
2. South African Coal Mining Industry, State of IT - Deloitte
3. The implementation of new technology in southern African mines: Pain or panacea by A.S. Macfarlane*
4. Mining: Tracking the trends 2014, Deloitte
5. http://www.miningweekly.com/article/exciting-new-gold-mechanisation-achieving-more-success-anglogold-2014-02-19