How Spiro Plans To Outrun Its Single Biggest Foe In Africa’s EV Race

As the race to electrify Africa’s transport sector heats up, and more so on two wheels than more, Spiro is positioning itself as one of the continent’s leading electric motorbike companies. But while the company’s growth has been impressive—placing over 20,000 electric bikes on roads across Benin, Togo, Rwanda, Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria in three years—the biggest challenge it faces isn’t other EV companies. 

The formidable opponent? It’s the entrenched dominance of gasoline-powered motorcycles, around 25 million of them,  which still make up the vast majority of Africa’s two-wheeler market, as Kaushik Burman, Spiro’s CEO, points out.

As he told WT, gasoline-powered bikes represent the company’s biggest hurdle. “We don’t see other EV players as our competition,” Burman emphasised in an interview, welcoming the efforts of rivals such as Ampersand, Roam, and Dodai, among others. “It’s the gas-powered motorcycles that remain our biggest challenge.”

Despite the promise of a clean-energy future, Africa remains deeply entrenched in the use of traditional internal combustion engine motorcycles.

These motorcycles are more than just a mode of transport; they represent an essential part of the daily economic and social fabric in many African countries. In bustling cities and rural areas alike, motorcycles serve as the backbone for commercial transport, especially as motorcycle taxis (known locally as boda boda/okada) proliferate across East and West Africa.

To succeed in Africa, Spiro, which calls itself Africa’s largest EV player, faces the monumental task of persuading motorcycle taxi operators and delivery riders to go electric despite the relatively higher upfront cost.