When a Techpoint Africa investigation revealed in May that a fictitious restaurant could be set up and take live orders on both Glovo and Chowdeck without any real identity check, it laid bare a deeper crisis of trust in Nigeria’s USD 1.1 B online food delivery industry, and triggered an urgent response from one of its biggest players.

The controversy, which followed a December 2025 complaint by a legitimate food brand that had been impersonated on Glovo, prompted Chowdeck to overhaul its vendor verification framework. Today, the company rolled out a three-tier “Vendor Badge” system designed to give customers clarity about who is actually preparing their food.

“We built Chowdeck on trust,” founder Femi Aluko said in a statement. “A recent incident exposed a vulnerability in a system we created to support small businesses. It raised important questions about customer safety and how vendor verification works.”

Under the new system, “Verified” badges designate fully vetted official partners. “Awaiting Verification” badges apply to starter businesses completing their paperwork, while “Shopper” badges indicate a local store that is fulfilling orders through a trained Chowdeck shopper rather than a direct partnership. The platform’s official blog stressed that compliance does not end at onboarding, promising continuous monitoring and enforcement.

Yet for vendors whose businesses are being listed without their knowledge or consent, the badges do not resolve the core grievance.

A complaint shared publicly on May 28, seen by WT, detailed the frustration of yet another food business, an outlet called Norma known for its suya, which discovered an unauthorised listing on Chowdeck and struggled to have it removed. In the company’s official blog, it wrote that “we take unauthorised listings seriously and will investigate and resolve them promptly.”

Nigeria’s digital commerce ecosystem is steadily expanding, and the federal government has already announced a National Digital Trust Mark to combat online fraud. Industry observers have pointed out that weaker merchant verification on food delivery platforms can lead to consequences ranging from counterfeit goods to health risks.

Chowdeck’s introduction of transparent badges is a calculated step toward rebuilding consumer faith. But as Aluko acknowledged, “trust guides every decision we make.” Whether the badges can restore that trust, and protect the real businesses that are its engine, is now the question the industry is watching.

After years of venture capital chasing market-share narratives, the continent’s business leadership is pivoting toward institutional depth and verifiable performance, according to a new industry trends report seen by WT.

TheBoardroom Africa’s 2026 Industry Trends Report, released Monday, draws on insights from 30 senior executives, investors and policymakers across more than 20 sectors. It identifies four structural shifts already reshaping capital allocation, regulatory direction and competitive positioning: the repricing of risk, the maturation of artificial intelligence, the redesign of healthcare and a decisive move from governance as policy to governance as proof.

The report marks a critical departure from the narrative-driven fundraising that defined Africa’s last tech boom. Global venture funding is contracting, exit volumes are slowing, and investors are no longer relying solely on market-size projections. Risk is now assessed on cash flow stability and operational resilience, the findings suggest.

“Private credit is replacing equity-led growth as the dominant financing model across the continent,” the report finds. Structured debt, revenue-linked instruments and risk-partitioned facilities are proving more aligned with local operating realities than traditional venture capital. In April 2026, African startups raised just USD 110 M, the lowest monthly funding volume since March 2025; a 58% drop from the rolling 12-month average of USD 266 M.

The implication is that access to capital now requires durable performance, not potential. Accurate risk pricing, the report argues, is not exclusionary but foundational to sustainable lending and stronger repayment cultures.

Artificial intelligence, meanwhile, has moved decisively from experimental differentiator to operational backbone. Across fintech, energy, healthcare and compliance, AI is no longer a novelty but infrastructure. In financial services, it drives fraud detection, credit underwriting and compliance monitoring. In healthcare, it is redesigning workflow, triage and clinical decision support.

The competitive distinction, the report finds, has shifted from who is experimenting with AI to who has the governance frameworks to deploy it at scale. “Boards are increasingly expected to interrogate explainability, accountability and automated decision-making as central governance concerns, not technical matters to delegate downward.”

Governance itself is being redefined. ESG, AI ethics, cybersecurity and social performance are converging into a single accountability framework. Compliance effectiveness, the report warns, “will be judged less by policies produced and more by behaviours evidenced. A policy commitment is a statement. A proof point is an audit trail. For local and global capital alike, the latter is no longer optional.”

Nowhere is this shift more visible than in healthcare, where the continent’s underfunded, brittle systems are being redesigned from the ground up. The report identifies a decisive move from volume-based to value-based care, away from counting procedures toward measuring outcomes and cost.

Care delivery is migrating from centralised hospitals toward decentralised networks of outpatient centres, community hubs and virtual platforms. Impact investment, the report finds, has become a catalytic complement to public funding, not a replacement.

“Africa’s challenges have always been its most compelling investment case. What is different now is that its leaders are building the institutions to prove it,” Marcia Ashong-Sam, Founder and CEO of TheBoardroom Africa, emphasised.

For a continent long defined by its potential, the shift is fundamental. The era of narrative is giving way to the era of evidence.

Africa has crashed the party. While the conversation around global outsourcing has focused on Asia’s mature markets, the 2026 Global Outsourcing Talent Index, released by U.S.-based firm Ataraxis, reveals that the continent is reshaping the field.

The study, which evaluated all 193 UN-recognised countries, is a data-driven rebuttal to the old “cheap labour” narrative. For the first time, seven African nations—South Africa (5th globally), Nigeria (6th), Kenya (11th), Egypt (15th), Ghana (17th), Ethiopia (23rd), and Uganda (24th)—now occupy 28% of the world’s top 25 outsourcing destinations, a share that now matches Asia’s.

The African countries leading the pack are doing so on the strength of high-value metrics typically associated with traditional knowledge economies. While cost remains a major factor, the region’s comparative advantage is evolving quickly.

Data shows Nigeria, Ghana, and Kenya each boast an English Proficiency score of 90/100, outperforming France and Spain (80/100) and challenging long-held assumptions about linguistic supremacy in outsourcing.

Furthermore, a recent analysis from the Boston Consulting Group found that Africa’s developer community is expanding at an annual rate of 21%, the fastest globally, with a 4.7 million-strong base that positions the continent as a key source of engineering talent.

African countries are playing a strategic role in the USD 328 B global BPO market, which is projected to reach USD 696 B by 2033. While South Africa leverages world-class English and stability, and Nigeria uses its massive workforce scale, another more nuanced trend is emerging in the strategic partnership model, spearheaded by Kenya.

Kenya ranks 11th globally, but the index notes its digital infrastructure (50/100) far outpaces the African average, though it remains only 102nd worldwide. However, Nairobi is leapfrogging this gap by focusing on governance. Kenya is on track to become the first African nation to secure an EU data adequacy decision, a designation that would open seamless access to the bloc’s EUR 800 B (USD 873 B) data economy.

This positions Kenya not as a low-cost alternative, but as a regulatory partner. With a young workforce where 75% are under 35 and a time zone alignment with Europe, Kenya is solving a critical pain point for European firms facing a severe ICT talent shortage—Germany alone has an estimated 14,000 unfilled tech roles.

This rapid ascension presents a critical tension, however. The index’s own methodology places a heavy weight on business, legal, and political stability (5%) and digital infrastructure (5%). While African nations now match Asia in top-tier rankings, the depth of their tech ecosystems tells a different story. Africa’s entire developer base stands at 4.7 million versus Asia’s 73.9 million.

To maintain growth, governments are aggressively building physical hubs, from Nairobi’s “Silicon Savannah” to Itana in Lagos and Kigali Innovation City, to structure these innovation ecosystems at scale.

Two years after a high‑profile rescue by a Paystack‑led consortium, Nigerian business banking startup Brass has ceased operating as an independent entity, with its operations now absorbed into Paystack Microfinance Bank in a move that closes the chapter on the once high-flying fintech as a standalone entity.

Founded in July 2020 by Sola Akindolu and Emmanuel Okeke , who met while working at Kudi and Paystack respectively, Brass raised a USD 1.7 M round in October 2021 that drew backing from Flutterwave CEO Olugbenga “GB” Agboola and Paystack co‑founder Ezra Olubi. The startup built a digital banking platform that offered business accounts, payroll tools, expense management and cash‑flow tracking, positioning itself as a modern banking layer for African SMEs.

But by October 2023, cracks began to show. Customers reported delays in processing withdrawals, sparking liquidity concerns across the ecosystem. In March 2024, Brass furloughed an unspecified number of its roughly 50 employees, with Akindolu citing “significant economic shifts” in a public statement. The delays continued for months, and ecosystem stakeholders worried that the collapse of a deposit‑taking fintech could trigger a wider bank run on digital financial services.

In May 2024, a consortium led by Paystack, with participation from PiggyVest, Ventures Platform, P1 Ventures and angel investors, acquired Brass for an undisclosed amount, replacing Akindolu and his founding team with new leadership. The acquisition ended months of speculation, though some investors raised questions about liabilities, with two sources describing a NGN 2 B (~USD 1.4 M) hole in the company’s balance sheet that Brass’s leadership could not account for.

On Monday, Brass announced that interested customers would be migrated into Paystack MFB before July 31, 2026, integrating its business banking operations into Paystack’s regulated banking infrastructure. “As we rebuilt and as our platform became more mature, something became increasingly clear: the next phase of our growth could not be achieved alone,” the company said.

Paystack, which was acquired by Stripe in 2020 for USD 200 million, absorbs Brass to deepen its expansion from payments processing into full‑stack financial services; a shift that began in January when it entered Nigeria’s banking sector by acquiring Ladder Microfinance Bank.

The integration also signals the maturity of Africa’s fintech market. After years of venture‑backed startups building overlapping products, consolidation is now accelerating as capital and regulation tightens.

Mobile money users in Kenya could see transaction costs rise by up to 18.4% under proposed tax changes, industry players have warned lawmakers, potentially reversing years of hard-won gains in financial inclusion.

The warnings come from two of Kenya’s most prominent digital payments players—the operator of the dominant mobile money network, M‑PESA, and global card giant Visa—as Parliament considers the sweeping Finance Bill 2026.

Safaricom, which owns M‑PESA, appeared before parliamentarians to oppose a clause in the bill, which would slap a 16% value‑added tax (VAT) on digital payment platforms on top of an existing 15% excise duty already charged on mobile money transfers.

The telco calculated that the two levies would push the effective tax burden on an M‑PESA transaction from 15% to 33.4%, translating directly into higher costs for Kenya’s 51 million mobile money users. On a typical transaction, fees could climb by as much as 18.4%, the company said.

“What I’m foreseeing happening is us going back to instances where people would have money stuck underneath their mattresses,” Kiema Onesmus, KPMG East Africa Associate Director for Tax and Regulatory Services, told CapitalFM, warning that the shift could push users back to cash-based transactions.

Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi has defended the digital tax push. “The person who supplies ICT to enable payments is the one subject to VAT,” a Treasury official said, stressing that the levy targets platform fees, not the money being transferred directly.

But analysts and payment firms say that argument misses how mobile money works. Fees earned by PSPs come from user charges, they point out, and the additional 16% VAT will simply be passed on in the form of higher costs to the customer.

Visa has also stepped into the fray. The global payments company is tracking proposals to impose withholding tax on interchange and merchant service fees on every card transaction. Visa’s detailed modelling found that for a typical KES 10 K (about USD 77.00) purchase, a merchant currently receives KES 9.8 K. If the bill passes in its current form, that same merchant would receive just KES 9.768 K, a KES 32.00 (USD 0.25) hit on a single transaction.

The Kenya Bankers Association (KBA) has lodged formal opposition, warning that the compounding tax burden could push total digital financial transaction costs from 15% to 58.4%, potentially reversing the country’s celebrated status as a global leader in mobile money adoption.

The stakes are starkly illustrated by M‑PESA’s recent performance. The platform moved KES 41.68 T (USD 323 B) in the last financial year, with active merchants expanding 71% to 3.1 million. A meaningful hike in those transaction costs could dent a digital economy built on low‑cost, high‑volume transfers.

“The proposals, if they sail through as they are, will set us back way more, almost like a thousand steps,” Onesmus warned, urging a rethink of a revenue strategy that could ultimately shrink the very tax base it aims to expand

For most Africans, sending money across a border is often a hassle marked by high fees, slow transfers, and funds that disappear for days. But that pain is now driving one of the continent’s biggest business opportunities.

A new industry ranking reveals that sub-Saharan Africa is on the cusp of a cross-border payments boom as it’s becoming the continent’s biggest fintech opportunity. Five African companies: Flutterwave, M-PESA, MTN’s MoMo, Mukuru, and Onafriq, have made the 2026 Cross‑Border Payments 100 list by FXC Intelligence, standing alongside global giants like Visa and PayPal.

For a construction worker in Lagos whose brother in London sends USD 200.00 home every month, or a trader in Nairobi buying goods from South Africa, or a student in Ghana paying tuition in Canada, each transaction bleeds value. International transfers can cost 8% or more, and funds can take days to arrive, or never arrive at all.

African fintechs are fixing this by building direct connections between local mobile money wallets, banks, and global systems. Instead of a payment bouncing through three or four intermediary banks in New York or London – each taking a cut – these companies create shortcuts.

M-PESA, Kenya’s mobile money giant, moves more than USD 1 B daily across Africa. MTN’s MoMo processed over USD 500 bB in transactions last year alone. Onafriq links one billion mobile wallets across the continent.

A new shortcut

More quietly, a new tool, stablecoins, is changing everything. These are digital dollars that live on a phone. As it requires no bank account and no middlemen, a Nigerian freelancer paid by a US company can receive stablecoins instantly and convert them to local cash within minutes.

Sub-Saharan Africa recorded roughly USD 205 B in stablecoin-linked on-chain value from July 2024 to June 2025, a 52% year-over-year surge. In Nigeria, 95% of survey respondents said they would prefer to receive payments in stablecoins rather than in naira.

Big companies are notices. Deel, the global payroll giant, launched stablecoin salary payouts in May after processing USD 250 M in crypto payouts last year. Earlier this year, Onafriq integrated Conduit’s stablecoin infrastructure, using USDC for treasury settlement to bypass the USD 5 B annual friction of correspondent banking.

Africa’s diaspora sends home more than USD 100 B every year, more than all foreign aid combined. Yet much of that money still travels through slow, expensive channels.

The continent’s cross‑border payment market could more than triple to USD 1 T by 2035, according to projections. That is why global players like Binance, Tether and Visa are also on the FXC list, scrambling for a slice.

For ordinary Africans, the competition cannot come soon enough. Cheaper, faster money transfers mean more cash in pockets, more business done, and fewer sleepless nights waiting for a transfer to clear.

Feature Image Credits: Openway Group

For a heady few years, agritech crowdfunding was pitched as the answer to Africa’s agricultural financing gap, offering retail investors a chance to bankroll smallholder farmers while pocketing double-digit returns. After a cascade of high-profile collapses and a final liquidation order against South Africa’s once-popular agro-crowdfunding, Livestock Wealth, the model is now being written off as fundamentally unworkable.

The Gauteng High Court recently placed Livestock Wealth under final liquidation, ending an 18‑month‑long rescue bid and drawing a line under a platform that had once managed over ZAR 100 M (~USD 6 M) in assets. The ruling followed months of investor complaints over delayed withdrawals, with one stokvel claiming it was owed nearly ZAR 140 K despite receiving written repayment promises.

A two‑year Financial Sector Conduct Authority investigation concluded that the company had not broken financial services laws, noting that agricultural assets are not classified as “financial products” under South African law, but imposed administrative penalties for misleading conduct.

Livestock Wealth’s downfall mirrors a graveyard of similar ventures across the continent. In Nigeria, Farmcrowdy, once the poster child of digital agriculture, ran into trouble and pivoted away from crowdfunding in 2021 after regulatory pressures and market instability forced it to reinvent itself as a B2B agricultural service provider.

ThriveAgric, another Nigerian pioneer, survived a near‑fatal crisis in 2020 after hundreds of unpaid retail investors took their grievances online; the company restructured its operations, dropped public crowdfunding and now focuses on institutional partnerships and its Agricultural Operating System. Agropartnerships, reQuid and Farmsponsor have also folded or exited the crowdfunding business.

Regulatory ambiguity has compounded the problem. In Nigeria, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s belated foray into crowdfunding regulation failed to weed out unsustainable operators, while the Investment and Securities Act 2025 now imposes fines of NGN 20 M and up to 10 years’ imprisonment for promoting Ponzi schemes. The NFIU has warned of a surge in unregulated crowdfunding scams between 2022 and 2025, noting that fraudsters often masquerade as agricultural investment platforms.

The underlying economics are equally unforgiving. Agriculture in Africa faces a USD 65‑80 B annual financing gap, but venture capital expects fintech‑like returns that farming cycles cannot deliver. “Capital always follows the path of least resistance,” Lola Masha, partner at Antler, told TechCabal earlier this year. “Agritech is hard. It’s a very different reality from fintech”. That mismatch, compounded by a 90% failure rate for Nigerian agritech startups within five years, has pushed investors toward infrastructure and energy.

The few survivors have abandoned the public‑facing crowdfunding playbook entirely. ThriveAgric now supports over 200,000 farmers through its digital operating system, working with institutional capital rather than retail investors. Farmcrowdy has repositioned itself as a food value‑chain and logistics partner. But for thousands of retail investors across Africa, it’s been a painful lesson discovering that crowdfunding agritech was an idea whose roots haven’t quite taken to the ground.

A unique USD 100 M philanthropic fund, backed by some of Africa’s most consequential tech founders, is betting that the continent’s startup economy has missed the trick chasing funding rounds instead of factory floors.

The Africa Jobs Fund (AJF), launched today by Wasoko founder Daniel Yu and counting Andela and Flutterwave co-founder Iyin Aboyeji among its senior advisors, is targeting large-scale formal job creation, a problem that venture capital has largely sidestepped.

“Persistent poverty is at its core a jobs problem,” Yu said. “Those same people, in the right job at home or abroad, could earn significant multiples of their income. AJF exists to back the companies that create those jobs and opportunities.”

Sub-Saharan Africa adds 15.4 million people to its labour force every year but creates only about 3 million formal jobs. By 2040, approximately 600 million of the world’s extreme poor are expected to reside on the continent. Meanwhile, nearly 9 in 10 workers remain in informal employment, such as street vending, gig work, and subsistence farming, with little income growth or social protection.

AJF’s thesis is deliberately targeting export manufacturing and international labour mobility, two sectors that have historically lifted countries out of poverty.

The logic is that a worker moving from subsistence agriculture to a factory job can increase productivity fivefold. The same worker securing a care or logistics role in a high-income country can see their annual income jump from roughly USD 2 K to USD 40 K or more. Yet these pathways remain blocked by high setup costs for pioneer manufacturers and predatory recruitment fees for migrant workers.

AJF aims to mobilise USD 100 M over five years to de-risk early-stage companies in both sectors with the goal of generating USD 50 B in cumulative income gains for African workers and doubling the lifetime earnings of at least 250,000 low-income individuals.

Unlike a traditional VC fund, AJF is a program of Renaissance Philanthropy, the nonprofit founded by former White House science advisors Tom Kalil and Kumar Garg, and includes former USAID Administrator Samantha Power as a senior advisor. With a focus on venture-style execution for social good, the fund aims to “bet early and activate the founders who can act on that thesis,” as Garg put it.

Yu, who built Wasoko into a B2B e-commerce platform serving over 150,000 informal retailers, said his experience taught him that “traditional businesses can be just as impactful — maybe even more so — than glitzy tech startups”.

This new chapter was signalled eight months ago when Yu announced he was stepping back from daily operations at Wasoko after the company’s merger with MaxAB. At the time, Yu said he was moving to India to focus on personal projects, including his role as board chair of Malengo, a nonprofit that facilitates international educational migration. His experience at Malengo, which helps low-income students move to Germany for university and work, directly influenced AJF’s labour mobility pillar.

Yu is not going it alone. The fund has recruited Ben Hyman, founder of the African recruitment firm Talent Safari, as Operating Partner.

Aboyeji, who has since pivoted to his own job-focused venture called Learn2Earn, a tuition-free, stipend-supported, 24-month programme that guarantees jobs for elite software engineers, struck a similar note having been tapped as an advisor. “African founders have shown they can build category-defining companies. The next decade is about building the ones that put millions of people to work,” he said.

A decade of venture capital has produced nine African unicorns and attracted billions in funding. But those companies, for all their innovation, have not moved the needle on mass employment. AJF represents a recognition that solving poverty may require less disruption and more manufacturing.

For over a decade, venture capital has been welcomed into African markets with open arms as the missing ingredient for a tech revolution. This year, a cascade of new laws across the continent is sending mixed signals.

Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda have all advanced or enacted measures in recent weeks that tighten scrutiny on foreign capital, from ownership restrictions in strategic sectors to exit taxes and stringent disclosure rules. The cumulative effect is rattling investors and founders at a precarious moment for the continent’s startup ecosystem.

In Accra, a contradictory picture is taking shape. Last month, parliament passed the Ghana Investment Promotion Authority Bill, 2026, scrapping the notorious USD 500 K minimum capital requirement for wholly foreign-owned enterprises; a move hailed as a game-changer for tech founders.

But tucked into Section 37 of a draft National Information Technology Authority bill, not yet before parliament, lies a rule stipulating that licenses for cloud hosting, SaaS, data centres, or government digital partnerships would be reserved for entities “wholly owned by a citizen.”

“This directly threatens the foreign capital, partnerships, and expertise that fuel Ghanaian success stories,” says MacJordan Degadjor, a Ghanaian technology policy commentator, citing homegrown firms Hubtel and mPharma as examples of what is at stake.

Communications Minister Samuel Nartey George has defended the draft, saying there is “no intent to exclude ‘big tech'” and that the government aims to “proactively protect Ghanaian technology firms” to build local capacity. But concerns remain rife. Technology blogger Alfred warned the bill could “undo years of digital sector progress.”

Meanwhile, Kenya is widening its tax net. The Finance Bill 2026, tabled on May 25, proposes a 15% capital gains tax on offshore sales where shares “derive their value from Kenya”—a direct assault on the holding-company structures that foreign venture capital and private equity investors have used for years to exit without local tax liability.

The move is partly driven by high-profile disputes, including a KES 21 B (USD 161.7 M) tax demand tied to Tullow Oil’s offshore exit. But the Institute of Certified Public Accountants of Kenya (ICPAK) warns the amendment is dangerously broad. “As drafted, the provision may create Kenyan CGT exposure for offshore investor exits, capital raising transactions, group restructurings and internal reorganisations undertaken at holding company level,” the body told parliament.

“In most developed markets, this kind of tax is meant to stop profit shifting. The way it’s drafted in Kenya, it could tax legitimate internal reorganisations—a nightmare scenario for compliance,” said Robert Waruiru, Managing Partner at Ichiban Tax and Business Advisory.

In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni signed the Protection of Sovereignty Bill into law on May 17, criminalising the promotion of “interests of a foreigner against the interests of Uganda” and requiring government approval for foreign-backed policy work. Rights groups warn the broad language could criminalise political opposition.

Crucially, the final bill amended an earlier provision that would have forced any Ugandan receiving foreign money to register as a foreign agent. The original text, which Bank of Uganda Governor Michael Atingi-Ego warned could trigger “economic disaster,” now applies only to funds received “for political purposes.” Remittances, USD 2.5 B in 2025, or 3.8% of of Uganda’s GDP, were spared, but the episode rattled diaspora and development partners alike.

The timing also brings concern amid a funding slowdown. Data from Africa: The Big Deal shows only 162 unique investors participated in startup deals worth USD 100 K or more between January and April 2026, a five-year low and a 26% drop from the same period in 2025. Total equity funding into African startups fell 13% in the first four months of 2026.

There are concerns that African governments are sending contradictory signals, seeking investments to build a digital future while simultaneously building legal walls to keep investors out.

Some local capital is stepping into the void. The Africa Finance Corporation launched a USD 100 M investment push this month aimed at reducing foreign dominance in startups.

“The challenge is no longer talent or innovation, but the shortage of long-term African institutional capital,” AFC President Samaila Zubairu said. Whether that will be enough to offset the regulatory chill remains an open question.

Frederick Wanyonyi spent six years ferrying passengers through the lakeside city of Kisumu on a petrol-powered motorcycle, watching fuel costs slowly eat away his profits and his ability to support his family. Today, the 34-year-old rides an electric motorcycle supplied by Spiro Kenya, and his math has changed dramatically.

“Previously, I would spend more than KES 500.00 every day on fuel alone. Now I spend about KES 290.00 on battery swapping and I am able to save more money for rent, school fees and food,” Wanyonyi told Kenya News Agency.

Across Kenya, millions of informal transport workers like Wanyonyi are voting with their wallets. And their shift is quietly rewriting the earnings of the country’s state-owned utility.

On Thursday, Kenya Power announced cumulative revenue of KES 382 M (approximately USD 2.9 M) from electric vehicle (EV) charging over the past 34 months, as electricity sales to the e-mobility sector grew more than 113-fold between July 2023 and April 2026. Monthly EV charging revenue rose from KES 874 K (roughly USD 6.7 K) in July 2023 to a peak of KES 35 M (USD 271 K) in February 2026, according to the utility’s E-mobility Sales Growth Analysis Report.

The growth is being driven not by wealthy consumers in Teslas, but by the two-wheeled backbone of Kenya’s economy. Data from the Electric Mobility Association of Kenya shows the country had registered over 35,000 EVs by the end of 2025, up from just 796 units three years earlier, with two- and three-wheelers dominating the market. Riders report lower daily running costs, fewer mechanical breakdowns, and more predictable expenses compared to petrol alternatives.

For Kenya Power, which sources over 90% of its electricity from renewables, the e-mobility boom presents a rare strategic alignment as it grows electricity demand without expanding fossil fuel dependency. Under the utility’s e-mobility tariff, customers pay KES 16.00 per unit during peak hours and KES 8.00 during off-peak hours, incentivising overnight charging that helps balance grid load.

Yet infrastructure remains the sector’s Achilles’ heel. “When electricity goes off, business slows down because batteries cannot be charged,” said John Mark, who manages a battery-swapping station in Kisumu, pointing to a challenge that persists even as Kenya Power rolls out new charging stations from Voi to Nyali.

The utility plans to introduce more EV-friendly tariffs and expand its own electric fleet to 20 vehicles and 100 bikes by the end of 2026. But the real story is unfolding on the roads where hundreds of thousands of boda boda riders are making a calculation that requires no government subsidy.

Wanyonyi already did the math. “With these bikes, servicing is less frequent,” he said. “Maintenance has reduced considerably”.

Feature Image Credits: Ethical Business Africa