President Emmerson Mnangagwa, on Thursday, officiated over the launch of Zimbabwe’s first mobile phone and laptop manufacturing and assembly plant.
Located in Msasa, the plant, Zimbabwe Technology Company (ZITCO) is a joint venture between TelOne, Chinese company Inspur, will be involved in the assembling of computers, laptops, tablets and other technological gadgets.
The factory is expected to directly offer employment to 30 workers and has capacity to produce 50 000 gadgets per year.
Mnangagwa said the project would enable Zimbabwe to join the international highway.
“ICT is the way to go. We need to modernize our economy. We need to catch up with the rest of the world,” he said.
“To do so, we don’t need to invent the wheel anymore. We need to access technology from those countries which are willing to engage and co-operate with us and China is one of such countries.”
Jeremiah Munembe, who is leading the project, said they had invested close to US$1 million to come up with the production line of Infinity brand of desktop computers, laptops and tablets.
“We are looking at assembling desktops, laptops, tablets and other ICT devices in this factory and the benefits of that are import-substitution and we will spend less and we will also be able to empower and create employment not only in this plant, but also to downstream industries.
“We are also looking at opportunities where we will work with other small to medium enterprises and innovation companies in terms of software components. We are looking at a number of products that feed into laptops, desktops and ICT devices.” Mr Munembe added.
