It sounds like they did the design locally and manufactured the boards and case and other such mid-level components. Presumably the highest-end components like displays, processors, and other ICs are imported.

So it's not really manufacturing the entire device locally, but it's a good first step. You gotta take these steps to build local expertise before you can think about building stuff like IC manufacturing that's local in a meaningful way. It sounds like they're on the right track, and I wish them the best.

To be honest, I think China is the only country that can fit the strict definition of "entirely" made in".

So I'm happy enough to give credit to rwanda for assembling the motherboard component by component.

If we’re talking about smartphones, I think South Korea and Taiwan would fit the bill.

Raw materials are sourced in Africa -> Can't say made in cause those materials have to be harvested first

no need to go to country level, they days it's ENTIRELY made in Africa, I think we can all agree they can make entirely phones only in (Eastern) Asia

To make an apple pie from scratch you have to invent the universe.

They "manufacture the phones from the motherboards to the packaging" ... perhaps the case, motherboard, packaging, but still importing the components, in particular the system-on-a-chip and display? In that case, "made entirely" wouldn't be accurate.

Are there even any producers of low-level components & lcd displays outside China, Taiwan, Korea etc?

Wikipedia has a list of chip foundry plants, along with process size and production capacity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabricat...

In addition to the US, there are and several throughout Europe, Russia, and former Soviet countries. Plus many countries throughout Asia.

that list seems to be entirely missing the upstate new york chip fab, which has been around since 2003 or so.

https://phys.org/news/2019-04-semiconductor-firm-upstate-ny-...

Also missing the ON Semi fab in Rochester that made Kodak's image sensors.

Great list. Also a reminder of why they call it Silicon Valley after all... Maybe Rwanda will push towards researching making their own chipset. ARM is kind of a spec and not some specific processor is how I have understood it. You take the spec and design your own processor from it.

>You take the spec

You have to pay license fees :) but yeah that's the idea. SPARC and MIPS are a bit more open actually.

I missed that bit, and I didn't think about SPARC / MIPS to be fair. Wasn't there another one recently opened up by IBM? Isn't RISC or RISCV? I only focused on ARM because then you can usually take advantage of Android. I do wish there were competing phone OS' though that were open source as well.

Don't forget RISC-V and POWER.

Lol, I don't see any production in Silicon Valley. Most CA production listed is around LA area.

Called it Silicon Valley then, fair enough!

Japan, unless it was not implied by your "etc" :)

There's a 32 nm fab in France (ST Microelectronics) doing a lot of components. I am not sure about the displays though.

The best measure I know of this is -- cost of the final product minus cost of imported inputs, or that divided by cost of final product.

Ultimately what matters is things like how much value is created in the local economy (employment), and how independent they are from loss of their source of imports.

How about Android license? I assume they must be purchasing an Android license from Google in order to use the Play Store etc.

Hardware/electronic design maybe? Often the boards are custom made for each model. But I could be wrong.