One of the first smartphones to ever be designed in Africa has been unveiled by a Congolese inventor.

According to the Chinese news service Xinhua, the device, which has been assembled in China, is to be sold under the brand VMK in the second half of October in France, the Ivory Coast and the Republic of Congo for about $160.

The smartphone is called 'elikia', meaning 'hope' in the local Lingala language.

The design of the elikia smartphone in Africa comes after Tecno Mobile Ethiopia, a subsidiary of the Hong Kong-based mobile manufacturer, announced earlier this year that it planned to release its first smartphone completely assembled in Ethiopia in July.

The elikia will sport a 3.5-inch touchscreen, a memory capacity of 512MB and a 650MHz processor. Its internal memory of 256MB is also reportedly expandable to 32GB.

Other features of the phone include GPS, a 5 megapixel camera,Wi-Fi capabilities and Bluetooth.

Mankou says it took close to a year to develop the device, with an investment of about $120,000.

"We decided to assemble the smartphone in China because as you all know, it's difficult to find a company with the necessary materials and capacity to do the work here. So just like most companies in the world, we decided to keep China as our factory not only because of a better quality there, but also because of the lower production cost which enables us to sell the phone at an affordable price," Mankou told the Xinhua news agency.