“I have come to buy this phone for my parents who are in the village and cannot read or write”, explains Floride Jogbé, seduced by the advertising campaigns relayed on social networks.
For 60,000 FCFA (about 90 euros), the young woman was convinced by the promise of a smartphone that is easier to use.
Day-to-day operations such as checking your account balance, understanding a document or being able to correspond with the authorities are made possible by simply activating the “Koné” voice assistant integrated into the “Superphone”.
Equipped with an operating system unique to the company, Cerco’s smart phone already integrates 17 Ivorian languages, such as Baoulé, Bété or Dioula, and 50 other languages from the African continent.
French remains widely spoken in Côte d’Ivoire, alongside many local languages, but with 40% of the Ivorian population illiterate according to official figures, this “Superphone” fills a need, assures the president of the manufacturer Cerco, the Beninese Alain Capo-Chichi.
This phone can respond to the “frustration” encountered by illiterate users with the current technological offer, “forced to know how to read to use a smartphone, tablet or computer”, he explains to AFP.
“The various institutions first wanted to make people literate before making technologies available to them”, he notes, adding: “We can skip reading and writing and go directly to integration into life. economic and social of people”.
Relying on 3,000 volunteers mobilized across Africa, Cerco aims to include a total of 1,000 African languages in its operation. Objective: to be able to reach nearly a billion people in Africa, more than half of the continent’s current population, which is constantly growing.
– “Not smart smartphones” –
“Africa has missed several technological revolutions because of reading and writing which have been major blockages”, laments Alain Capo-Chichi, asserting that “speech is three times faster than writing.”
His company therefore intends to break into mobile telephony by offering a product “which makes life easier for communities compared to other smartphones which claim to be smart but which are not”.
“We didn’t make a smartphone, we made a Superphone, it’s a revolution,” says Alain Capo-Chichi, who is already imagining his invention going beyond the borders of Africa.
“The current offer still manages to satisfy people. With the voice message services offered by WhatsApp for example, a large part of the problem has already been solved”, tempers Jean-Marie Akepo, telecommunications expert.
Instead, he pleads for “software with local languages that could be installed on any smartphone”.
Manufactured on the site of the Village of Information Technologies and Biotechnology (Vitib) in Grand-Bassam, a free zone near the Ivorian capital, the development of this 100% Ivorian telephone is the subject of close collaboration. with the government.
The company does not pay taxes or customs duties. The establishment of the assembly plant has also benefited from a subsidy of two billion CFA francs (more than three million euros).
Aid in exchange for which Cerco has undertaken to pay 3.5% of its income to the State and to train some 1,200 young people each year.
Since its launch on July 21, the company has not communicated its sales figures but claims to have received 200,000 orders.
Thanks to a partnership with the French telecommunications giant Orange, the “Superphone” will be distributed in 200 shops throughout Côte d’Ivoire.