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Jevans Nyabiage

Motorcycle taxis – often called boda-bodas in East Africa and okadas in Nigeria and parts of West Africa – serve as the primary mode of transport for millions in Africa. Now, Chinese investors are pouring funds into the continent’s multibillion-dollar two-wheeler market, driving an energy shift from petrol to electric power.
The investors supply essential components and batteries for local assembly, while supporting infrastructure such as battery-swapping networks to ease the transition.
Last month, Shanghai-based NewTrails Capital, which counts Chinese smartphone giant Transsion Holdings as a major shareholder, made a US$55 million investment in Spiro, Africa’s largest electric two-wheeler provider.
The funding is part of a US$270 million financing round supported by Impact Fund Denmark, Equitane and the Fund for Export Development in Africa.
Transsion – the company behind the brands Tecno, Infinix and iTel – controls more than half of the continent’s mobile phone market, earning it the title “smartphone king of Africa”.
Spiro is using the funding to scale its mission to replace petrol-powered motorcycles with electric bikes and build a continent-wide battery-swapping network.
The deal opens the doors to Chinese suppliers, offering the manufacturing power and technology needed to grow quickly while avoiding common supply chain bottlenecks.
Spiro has rolled out over 100,000 e-bikes and 2,500 swap stations in seven African countries. The company aims to localise 90 per cent of production value by next year and is in talks with two Chinese suppliers about local battery cell manufacturing.
In addition to cells, key suppliers have agreed to localise the production of tyres, batteries and Internet of Things components by the second quarter of next year.
“Tyres will be manufactured. The battery will be assembled. The components will be made. That is as far as the bike is concerned,” Spiro founder Gagan Gupta said in an interview this month.
Once most components are manufactured locally, it will help move Africa from being an exporter of raw materials, such as lithium or copper, to a producer of finished technology.

Gupta said that Chinese electric vehicle and hardware companies were looking beyond the saturated domestic and Southeast Asian markets and saw Africa as the next big growth frontier.
With the continent’s two-wheeler market projected to grow from between 16 and 20 million units today to about 50 to 60 million by 2030, he described Africa as “the world’s most compelling untapped market for commercial transport electrification”.
“China’s strength is in the supply chain,” Gupta added. “They ensure that the technology we are deploying is mature, and we are trying to bring that.”
Zhang Yufan, a founding partner at NewTrails Capital, said the fund’s investment was based on the massive, untapped potential of the African EV market, mirroring China’s own recent shift towards new energy vehicles.
He said the fund’s strategy focused on industrialisation and the energy transition, adding that the firm was “thinking about the factory and also the stations and all the infrastructure methods”.
Major Chinese manufacturers are making inroads into the African EV market. They include Yadea, which recently unveiled an e-bike brand in Kenya, and Tycorun, which has been supplying electric motorcycles and battery-swap technology across the continent. Firms such as Tailg and Kollter are also expanding their footprint through strategic local partnerships.


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News

China

Diplomacy

By backing local production and infrastructure, Chinese firms are driving a shift to clean energy in Africa’s two-wheeler market


By backing local production and infrastructure, Chinese firms are driving a shift to clean energy in Africa’s two-wheeler market.


Africa

Shanghai

How Chinese investors are supercharging Africa’s multibillion-dollar e-bike boom

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}By backing local production and infrastructure, Chinese firms are driving a shift to clean energy in Africa’s two-wheeler market

By backing local production and infrastructure, Chinese firms are driving a shift to clean energy in Africa’s two-wheeler market