Green mobility in Africa: Leapfrogging to the future?

Every morning across African towns, thousands of people reach their workplaces using boda boda riders. Like experienced skiers, they slalom through traffic with skill and speed. Sometimes they are regarded as a menace, sometimes as a backbone of youth employment. Almost all ride petrol motorcycles. A growing number, though, are switching to electric. The reasons? Let us see them. 

One place where this transformation is ongoing is Kenya. The country has slowly but steadily grown its place as a renewable energy powerhouse and now draws nearly 90 per cent of its electricity from low-emission sources, led by geothermal, hydro and wind. However, mobility is still largely dominated by fossil fuels. Some start-ups are changing that.

One of them is Roam, a Nairobi-based manufacturer of electric motorcycles and buses. But EV transformation in future markets has its own rules. In much of the world, going green often comes with a price premium: early adopters pay more for electric vehicles or solar panels, hoping that costs fall over time. In African markets, the opposite must hold true: sustainable tech needs to be cheaper now, not eventually. This is a critical lesson for any founder that want to engage in the “emerging” or how I call them, future markets. 

On the factory floor, Hans van Toor, Strategy and Innovation Lead, framed the mindset simply:

“Here, you do not have a green premium, you need a green discount from the beginning.”

Let us see why, and what this means.

Roam’s product decisions start from the rider’s day: long distances, heavy payloads, rough roads, and minimal downtime. This is the reality of a boda boda rider. As van Toor put it:

“People need very high affordability and very high performance.” “Our vehicles need to go everywhere, be maintained anywhere, and charge anywhere.”

You have to take into account the reality of users who navigate unpaved roads and potholes while moving heavy payloads.

“You will see a couch, a closet, big things carried on a motorbike… anything goes,” van Toor says.

From my work in the milk value chain, it is not uncommon to see motorcycles ferrying 200+ litres of milk across mud tracks.

For boda boda riders at the bottom of the pyramid, an EV is not a statement about saving the planet. They are not there to signal that they are good. They need a tool to save daily fuel and maintenance costs. Any green solution must do good and do well at the same time, or it will not survive. Therefore any start-up or business needs to rethink its engineering and business model.

Hans put it clearly : 

“It is expensive to be poor… if you do not have savings and your daily income is uncertain, a lot of your daily expenses become more expensive.”

Many EV companies lock customers into proprietary battery-swapping networks, charging high fees per swap. That might work elsewhere, but for a Kenyan rider living hand-to-mouth, being tied to costly swap stations would make electric transport more expensive than petrol , it is an untenable proposition.

“The common business model in the industry is to lock in users and charge a very high arbitrage on energy… We said that does not work, because then it is expensive to be poor, and we do not want that,” van Toor explains bluntly. “We chose to give part of the energy revenue away so people have a home charger. We earn by making a great product, cutting out middlemen, and building locally.”

Accordingly to Roam’s data sheet, the Roam Air ships with a portable charger so riders can plug in at home or work from a standard outlet; Roam Hubs in the city offer fast charging, maintenance and battery rental as range insurance. Official guidance puts range at up to  80 km per battery, or over 160 km with the dual-battery setup, enough for a full day for most riders. Van Toor’s charging philosophy is pragmatic: make home charging the default and use public charging or battery rental only when needed.

Several riders in Roam’s telemetry exceed 100 kilometres a day on mixed urban–peri-urban routes. Van Toor’s benchmark is matter-of-fact:

“We see average duty cycles around 130 kilometres per day for commercial riders. The bike must cover that with margin, day in, day out.”

This duty-cycle reality also shapes engineering choices. Frames are reinforced, suspensions are set for corrugation and potholes, and drivetrains prioritise torque for steep, mixed surfaces.

And the differentiation does not stop there. Roam does not position electrification as a boutique climate play. It treats it as industrial strategy. Where many companies might simply import knock-down kits or fully-built e-bikes, Roam has invested in building vehicles locally a strategy that aligns tightly with Kenya’s industrial ambitions.

“Cut out the margins across the supply chain and bring production here. We create good jobs in Kenya,” van Toor says of the decision.

At Roam Park on the outskirts of Nairobi, over 230 employees , mostly young Kenyans ,  are building bikes and buses today. Local design and assembly remove import-margin layers, improve quality control, and create skilled jobs. The direction aligns with Kenya’s Draft National e-Mobility Policy (March 2024), which signals intent to stimulate assembly, components, charging standards and finance. The localisation plan is staged.

“We are around 40 per cent local content today. The target is 70 per cent,” van Toor said. “As local content rises, one job at Roam can translate to many more in the ecosystem.”

This hands-on manufacturing has a cascading benefit: it develops local skills and talent in advanced engineering. Van Toor shares the story of a Kenyan apprentice who trained at Roam and recently landed a role as a powertrain engineer at one leading EV companies worldwide, experience gained at home now contributing to the global EV industry. Moreover, some diaspora engineers who worked with firms like Jaguar Land Rover and Volvo have begun returning to Kenya, seeing opportunity in the nascent EV sector and bringing valuable expertise back with them.

Roam’s team sequences localisation: frames, racks, wiring harnesses and plastics first; then, as volumes and supplier capability grow, motors, controllers and battery-pack assembly. Van Toor points to momentum in the wider ecosystem:

“Today you can get automotive components at cost and quality to China and India… that has kick-started the component manufacturing ecosystem.”

This is visible on the line as well as on paper:

“I see bikes rolling off the line at increasing speed, and I see young Kenyan engineers solving real problems on the shop floor.”

The strategy is not only good for the company but also for the country. Policymakers have good reason to back local manufacturing: it keeps more value in-country, creates skilled employment, and reduces import bills for finished vehicles and fossil fuels. Van Toor, who chairs the electric mobility sub-sector at the Kenya Association of Manufacturers, notes that EV assembly has broad appeal in policy circles because it touches so many priorities:

“It creates good jobs; if done well, it changes foreign currency being spent on importing fuel… it has all of these economic drivers, social drivers, and climate drivers.”

He is equally frank about the pace of change and the tipping point:

“There are legacy stakeholder systems… a lot of different incentives in the ecosystem. But it is inevitable.” But the situation is changing “Almost 30–40 per cent of new registrations of motorbikes is electric [in Nairobi]… it has reached critical mass.”

And Hans noticed that Roam bikes are now used in countries where they are not yet present. 

The efforts have not gone unnoticed. The company’s trajectory has started to show up publicly, with recognition in Financial Times/Statista rankings of Africa’s Fastest-Growing Companies 2025.

Standing on the factory floor at Roam Park in Nairobi, it feels as if Kenya’s EV story is turning a page. As someone who works closely with farmers and micro-entrepreneurs in Africa, I am convinced that this transition is, at its heart, a productivity story first and a climate story second. Yes, cutting carbon emissions matters. But for a boda boda rider or a dairy farmer what matters more immediately is whether an electric motorbike helps them do more work for less cost. Roam’s journey shows that when technology is built with local fit, reliability and affordability in mind, it will find its market. The bikes must survive mud, hills and overloading; the power must be accessible off-grid; the price must be within reach , these are non-negotiables for future markets in Africa. 

And the lesson for entrepreneurs is clear. By meeting people where they are, companies like Roam turn climate friendly innovation into practical gains: lower transport costs, higher incomes, and home-grown jobs. The lesson for innovators eyeing “emerging” economies is simple: ground your solution in the community’s reality. The green revolution will not be imported wholesale; it will be assembled at home, empowering the customers to improve their livelihoods and incomes. 

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