Eleven months after opening its first African manufacturing facility, Sun King, the off-grid solar startup, is now making smartphones in Kenya as it expands its PayGo model into Kenya’s growing financed-device market.
The move puts the company in direct competition with M-KOPA and Watu, which have built businesses around financing smartphones for customers who might otherwise struggle to afford them.
Sun King’s EZ 3 smartphone requires a KES 2,299 ($18) deposit and KES 55 ($0.43) a day for 365 days, bringing the total cost to KES 22,374 ($173).
The company does not offer the phones for outright purchase, Victor Agandi, its vice president for PayGo in East and Southern Africa, told TechCabal in an interview on Thursday. Customers instead enter a financing contract and make payments throughout the year.
“A good phone should not need a large sum of money on one single day. Most people do not have that,” Agandi said at the EZ 3 launch. “But almost everyone can manage a little each day.”
Sun King entered Kenya in 2009 as Greenlight Planet, selling off-grid solar products through small instalments. It has since built a large distribution network and claims one in five Kenyan households has access to a Sun King product.
In October 2025, Sun King opened a manufacturing facility in Tatu City, a large planned development north of Nairobi, with capacity to produce up to 700,000 units a year. The plant assembles smartphones and solar-powered televisions, extending a business that previously relied more heavily on imported finished products.
In February 2026, Sun King launched its first branded smartphone, the EZ 1, in Kenya at KES 2,999 ($23) upfront and KES 60 ($0.46) a day. The EZ 3 offers a cheaper daily payment and deposit for a 6.75-inch display, 5,000mAh battery, 4GB RAM, and 64GB…
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Read Full Article by Kenn Abuya at techcabal.com
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