The result of seven years of work, the “Superphone” designed and manufactured in Côte d’Ivoire is a keyboard-less telephone created with the aim of facilitating access to various mobile telephony services for illiterate people.
Equipped with an operating system unique to the company, Cerco’s smartphone already integrates 17 Ivorian languages, such as Baoulé, Bété or Dioula, and 50 other languages from the African continent such as Wolof but also English. , French, Spanish or Arabic.
“We didn’t make a smartphone, we made a Superphone, it’s a revolution”
Alain Capo-Chichi, creator of the Ivorian company CercoAFP
At the origin of this innovation, the Beninese Alain Capo-Chichi, president of the Cerco company based for 20 years in Côte d’Ivoire. This voice recognition phone, “made in africa”is able to carry out any order: all you have to do is talk to him.
Daily life operations such as consulting the account balance, understanding a document or being able to correspond with the administrations, are made possible by simply activating the “Koné” voice assistant integrated into the “Superphone”.
Alain Capo-Chichi designed this new mobile phone product inspired by his parents: “Both my parents didn’t go to school, they can’t read or write, and very early on I experienced the frustration a parent can have when you hand them a letter and they don’t know the read (…). When I had the chance to do my doctoral thesis, all my hope was to find how to create a product to try to relieve these people”he explained.
According to the information provided by the promoters of the Ivorian brand, thousands of models ranging from 30,000 to 60,000 CFA francs (between 45 and 90 euros approximately) of this phone have already been sold in a few weeks. “I have come to buy this phone for my parents who are in the village and cannot read or write”explains Floride Jogbé to AFP, seduced by the advertising campaigns relayed on social networks.
Relying on 3,000 volunteers mobilized across Africa, Cerco aims to integrate a total of 1,000 African languages into its telephone. 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.
“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. The latter pleads for a “software with local languages that could be installed on any smartphone”.