The function of the smartphone aims to solve the "frustration" that individuals without formal education feel with technology.
Voice-activated cellphones are aiming at a sizable but largely untapped market in sub-Saharan Africa: the tens of millions of individuals who suffer significant obstacles in life because they are illiterate or blind.
In Ivory Coast, a so-called "Superphone" that employs a vocal assistant and answers to directions in the local language is being promoted to the country's sizable illiterate population (up to 40%).
The phone, which was created and put together locally, is meant to simplify common duties like deciphering documents, checking one's bank account, and contacting the government.
Floride Jogbe, a young woman who was captivated by advertisements on social media, said, "I've just bought this phone for my parents back home in the village, who don't know how to read or write."
She considered the 60,000 CFA francs ($92) she paid to be good investment.
The smartphone runs on Kone, a proprietary operating system developed by Cerco that supports 50 additional African languages in addition to the 17 Ivory Coast languages spoken there, including Baoule, Bete, and Dioula.
With the aid of a network of 3,000 volunteers, Cerco intends to increase this to 1,000 languages, reaching half of the population of the continent.
According to Cerco president and Benin national Alain Capo-Chichi, the initiative aims to solve the "frustration" that illiterate people experience with technology that expects them to be able to read, write, and spell correctly.
"Various organisations regard literacy as a higher priority than giving people access to technology," he told AFP.
The integration of people into economic and social life is the main focus of our approach, skipping reading and writing altogether.
According to UN data for 2016, the most recent year for which data is available, 27 percent of the 750 million adults worldwide who are illiterate live south of the Sahara.
Additionally, there are nearly 2,000 languages spoken on the continent, some of which are dialects with limited geographic distribution and are spoken by tens of millions of people.
These languages are frequently ignored by developers who have previously created vocal assistants for languages in bigger markets due to a lack of users or financial heft.
Other businesses making investments in the voice-operation sector in Africa include Mobobi, which has developed a voice assistant for the Twi language in Ghana called Abena AI, and Mozilla, which is developing a voice assistant for the Kiswahili language, which is spoken by an estimated 100 million people in East Africa.
Expert in telecommunications Jean-Marie Akepo questioned whether voice operation required a mobile phone's specific platform.
He claimed that current technology "manages to satisfy people."
A significant portion of the issue has already been resolved, for example, with WhatsApp's voice message services.
He suggested "software with local languages that could be installed on any smartphone" rather than a new phone.
The ICT and Biotechnology Village in Grand-Bassam, a free-trade zone close to the Ivorian capital, is where the Ivorian phone is made.
It was made possible by tight coordination with the administration. The corporation doesn't pay any taxes or customs fees, and the assembly plant has gotten more than two billion CFA francs in subsidies.
In return, Cerco will train about 1,200 young people annually and provide the state 3.5 percent of its earnings.
Since its inception on July 21, according to the corporation, 200,000 orders have been placed.
The phone will be sold in 200 stores around Ivory Coast thanks to a collaboration with French telecom company Orange.
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