Africa's motorbike taxis are going electric - saving money and cutting emissions

Every day in East Africa, 100 million people hop on the back of a motorbike taxi to get to work or run errands.

In Rwanda alone, more than half the vehicles on the roads at any one time are ‘moto-taxis’, an indispensable part of the transport system, but one that’s polluting the air and contributing to climate change.

For the drivers, or ‘motars’, themselves, these motorcycles are not cheap to run - they typically spend more than $11 each day on fuel and vehicle leasing costs, and only take home around $1.60.

But cleaner, more cost-effective change is arriving. The electric vehicle revolution is gaining momentum in Rwanda, where Africa’s first e-motos made by start-up Ampersand can help to reduce emissions - producing 75% less lifecycle greenhouse emissions than petrol motorbikes using grid power, and over 98% less on renewables.

One of the World Economic Forum’s newly announced cohort of 100 Technology Pioneers, Ampersand is on a mission to spark a mass-market transition to electric mobility in Africa, by creating an electric vehicle that costs less to buy, maintain and operate than a fuel equivalent.

As well as building and leasing e-motos, the company also operates battery swap stations, where it takes motars no more time to change their battery for a precharged one than it does to fill up with petrol.

Renting a charged battery also saves drivers more than $500 per year, says Ampersand, with each battery giving a range of 60 to 90km and needing fewer swaps than stops to refuel.

Etienne, one of East Africa’s estimated five million motars, says switching to an e-moto has changed his life.

“I can save extra money I would have used on fuel. I don’t waste time at the garage anymore. With my previous motorcycle I had to go at least 2 days a week.”

Ampersand launched in 2019 with 20 e-motos in Kigali with the goal of expanding across the continent and enabling half of all motorcycle traffic across Africa to be electric by 2030. The market for motorcycle energy alone in East Africa is worth $8 billion a year, it says.

Investors are starting to take notice. In April 2021, Ampersand secured $3.5 million from the Ecosystem Integrity Fund (EIF) - the largest e-mobility investment by a venture capital fund in sub-Saharan Africa.

"We hope we can show that the electric age is here - for everyone - and clean mobility isn't something that's just going to trickle down to the global south in a second-hand manner, decades from now. Rather that it's cost-effective, fundable, investable - now,” CEO Josh Whale told the BBC.

Ampersand is just one of many start-ups emerging in Africa’s electric two-wheeler market. As of the end of 2021, McKinsey estimates there were more than 20 start-ups in the ecosystem, which combined raised over $25 million in funding that year.

By 2040, there could be 3-4 million electric two-wheeler sales annually in Kenya and Nigeria - two of the biggest e-moto markets in sub-Saharan Africa - and outperforming other e-vehicle sales.

But there are bumps on the road ahead for wider EV adoption in sub-Saharan Africa, including unreliable electricity supply and low vehicle affordability, says McKinsey.

Nearly 550 million people lack access to electricity on the continent, according to the Forum’s Closing the Loop on Energy Access in Africa white paper, and batteries will be critical to closing the energy gap.

Meeting the growing battery demand at a lower economic, environmental and human cost will require high-quality recycling and repurposing, which is currently non-existent across most African countries.

The Rwandan government began addressing e-waste and battery waste issues more than a decade ago and, in 2021, it made mandatory its requirements for producers and importers to finance and organize environmentally sound collection and recycling.

Enviroserve Rwanda operates an e-waste dismantling facility to manage obsolete equipment. The company has accumulated 11 metric tonnes of lithium-ion batteries and is exploring battery repurposing as one solution to waste battery accumulation, with tests suggesting that more than 50% of battery cells are suitable for repurposing.

Rwanda’s emerging EV market - including Ampersand - could provide a new source of supply for repurposing initiatives, and would be particularly suited to mini-grid and grid-repurposed batteries.