Taking stock of Kenya’s e-bus boom

• Kenya is a trailblazer in E-mobility Africa 2026 push with over 35,000 EVs, but buses struggle to access reliable charge. We investigate the East Africa country’s grid readiness, charging bottlenecks and whether infrastructure can sustain the revolution.

On a weekday morning along Nairobi’s Outer Ring Road, humming fleets of electric buses crisscross the city estates, picking and dropping commuter to various destinations in East Africa’s largest urban centre.

Unlike their diesel predecessors, these e-buses are clean, quiet buses of choice by most passengers, but they’re mostly idle between runs. Drivers wait. Technicians check screens. Power cables lie coiled on concrete that was poured for a different era of transport, one that assumed refueling would take minutes rather than hours.

This image captures the central paradox of Kenya’s electric vehicle revolution. By any metric, the country has become a trailblazer of e-mobility Africa 2026 revolution. The numbers are striking with statistics showing registered EVs have skyrocketed from just 796 in 2022 to 35,000 by December 2025. This surge is attributable to the purchase and adoption of electric-powered two wheelers and e-buses targeting the public transport sector.

Ride-hailing giant Bolt reports that nearly a quarter of all EVs in the country now operate on its platform, with electric two-wheelers accounting for 40 percent of its motorcycle fleet.

Yet beneath the triumphant headlines lie a more complex reality. The very success of Kenya’s EV adoption has exposed a critical vulnerability: infrastructure is struggling to keep pace with ambition. The question now confronting policymakers, investors, and transport operators is whether the grid, the charging network, and the regulatory framework can scale fast enough to support a transport revolution that is already underway.

E-mobility Africa 2026: The Vertical Integration Question

When e-mobility bus company, BasiGo, began assembling electric buses in Kenya, its founders recognised an uncomfortable truth: you cannot sell an electric bus without also selling the ecosystem that powers it. Unlike diesel vehicles that can refuel in pump stations spread everywhere, an increasing number of EVs in Kenya depend on charging infrastructure that barely exists in the public domain.

The company’s response was a lease model that effectively makes BasiGo the operator of last resort. “Technically, we own the bus and the operator pays per kilometre. We’re the ones who handle charging, service, and maintenance,” explains Moses Nderitu, BasiGo’s managing director. This vertical integration reduces risk for matatu owners while tying fleet deployment directly to the assembler’s charging footprint.

Roam, another local assembler of electric motorbikes, has adopted a similar approach, installing charging facilities within sacco yards to support deployment of two wheelers. “Our focus is on giving operators flexibility. They can resell, repurpose, or fully own their vehicles, while we provide the charging infrastructure and after-sales support,” notes Habib Lukaya, Roam Kenya Country Manager.

For stakeholders in Kenya’s e-mobility Africa 2026 push, the logic is impeccable. The execution, however, has revealed the limits of private-sector solutions to public infrastructure problems.

Counting the Plugs: The Infrastructure Reality

Kenya’s e-mobility industry data paints an uneven picture. According to Warren Ondanje, managing director at Africa E-Mobility Alliance, the East African country currently has approximately 60 charging stations for four-wheelers and roughly 300 battery swap stations. The Electric Mobility Association of Kenya (EMAK) reports that total registered EVs reached 14,570 by the close of 2024, a figure that is on the rise daily.

The disparity between vehicle numbers and charging points is stark. For commercial operators, this gap translates directly into operational constraints. The Outer Ring Matatu Association (OMA Services), one of the first saccos to go fully electric, reserved 68 electric buses at BasiGo’s assembly plant but has received fewer than half.

“I was not expecting to have fewer than 30 vehicles by now,” admits George Githinji, OMA chief executive. The bottleneck is not bus production; it is the pace at which supporting charging infrastructure can be built and commissioned.

Githinji observes: “The battery is the bus. Everything else is just a shell”. Without reliable charging, the most sophisticated electric vehicle is merely an expensive stationary asset.

Kenya’s Charging Station Grid Readiness Challenge

For operators running commuter services between Nairobi and its outskirts, the constraints are sharper still. E-Moti, which runs electric buses between Nairobi and Kitengela in the outskirts of the city, finds itself limited by charging cycles.

“With current capacity, we can only manage about four trips a day before recharging,” says co-founder Billy Mwangi. The limitation affects scheduling reliability on high-frequency routes and missed trips quickly push passengers back to diesel alternatives.

The availability of charging access compounds these operational challenges. At the moment, existing charging stations are concentrated in malls, office parks, select pump stations and controlled urban locations, precisely the places least relevant to matatu operators working from informal residence zones and high-density commuter corridors.

Unlike fuel stations that can run from marginalised quarters, EV chargers require stable grid connections, land approvals and significant upfront capital for investors, issues that continue to complicate the deployment in precisely the areas where vehicles operate most intensively.

Technical standards add another layer of friction. Chargers vary by platform. Interoperability is limited. Operators cannot easily switch providers if a site goes offline or the terms of service change. Currently the trend is that assemblers build private networks tailored to their own fleets, creating fragmentation that reinforces dependence on supplier-specific infrastructure.

Kenya Power’s Role in driving country’s E-Bus boom

Against this backdrop, utility Kenya Power has emerged as an unexpected protagonist. The utility’s latest data reveals the scale of the opportunity, and the challenge. In 2025, e-mobility consumed 8.4 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, reflecting a 188 percent increase from the 2.9 million units consumed in 2024. Revenue from this segment grew to KSh190.8 million, up from KSh64.8 million the previous year.

“E-mobility is one of the key areas the company is focused on under our green agenda, which seeks to power livelihoods and support our communities with solutions that reduce carbon emissions,” says Kenya Power Managing Director and CEO Joseph Siror.

Kenya Power has installed five EV chargers across its Nairobi offices and is setting up additional stations in Voi, Mombasa, Nyeri, Nakuru, and Eldoret. These chargers serve a dual purpose of powering the company’s own fleet of 11 electric vehicles and 30 electric bikes, while also collecting critical data for planning adequate electricity supply and infrastructure investments.

Kenya Power successfully lobbied for an e-mobility electricity tariff, gazetted in March 2023, which charges users Sh16 per unit during peak periods and Sh8 per unit off-peak. To date, 205 customers have been onboarded. Yet the utility acknowledges that much more is needed.

“We will continue to support this transition by strengthening grid readiness and expanding charging infrastructure in line with the sector’s growth … The Government of Kenya is looking to deploy 10,000 EV charging stations in the country by 2030,” Eng. Siror states.

Electric Mobility Policy Breakthrough

On February 3, 2026, the government launched the National Electric Mobility Policy, providing what industry players have long demanded: an enabling framework for faster EV adoption through supportive regulations and targeted fiscal incentives.

The Finance Bill 2025 had already paved the way, zero-rating VAT on electric buses, bicycles, motorcycles, and lithium-ion batteries, while reducing excise duty to zero on the same items. Electric vehicle assemblers benefit from exemption from the 35 percent import duty and pay a reduced excise duty of 10 percent, improving price competitiveness.

Yet the policy framework reveals an uncomfortable truth. Incentives have focused primarily on vehicle assembly and import taxation, with less emphasis placed on accelerating charging infrastructure rollout. Charging equipment, grid upgrades, and land acquisition costs remain largely unsupported by direct fiscal incentives.

According to Warren Ondanje, “The national e-mobility policy, which is in draft, is the biggest impediment factor because it will be a signal for the government’s commitment to promote growth and drive foreign and domestic investment, especially around charging infrastructure”. Now that the policy is finally launched, the question is whether implementation will match ambition.

The Capital Influx to Power E-mobility Africa 2026

If policy has been slow, private capital has not waited. Fresh institutional funding is pouring into Kenya’s electric mobility sector, signalling growing confidence that EVs are becoming commercially viable assets.

Climate finance firm Nithio has extended a US$7 million senior debt facility to Spiro Mobility, while the International Finance Corporation (IFC) plans to acquire a US$5 million equity stake in Nairobi-based ARC Ride. These investments underscore a transition in investor perception: electric mobility firms are increasingly viewed as infrastructure operators capable of supporting institutional-grade financing.

Spiro, founded in 2022, has deployed more than 80,000 electric motorcycles supported by over 2,500 battery-swapping stations across seven African markets, including Kenya. ARC Ride’s business model centers on automated battery swap stations that allow riders to exchange depleted batteries in under a minute, eliminating downtime and reducing upfront vehicle costs.

The economics are compelling. Riders can reduce daily fuel and maintenance costs by as much as 40 percent, addressing one of the most persistent financial constraints in Africa’s informal transport sector. New entrants continue to arrive: Skoot Technology recently introduced its e3W electric tuk-tuk after two years of pilot testing, partnering with India-based battery-swapping firm SUN Mobility and tapping Car & General as its distributor.

Tuk-tuk operators in the pilot programme travelled roughly 150 kilometres daily, with battery-swap costs estimated at about KSh650 a day compared with about Sh850 for diesel.

The Manufacturing Leap

Perhaps the most significant development is the shift from assembly to manufacturing. In a US$2.46 million deal, Chinese-backed Rideence Africa has partnered with Mombasa-based Associated Vehicle Assemblers (AVA) to begin local assembly of electric taxis and minibuses from kits supplied by China’s Jiangsu Joylong Automobile and Beijing Henrey Automobile Technology.

“We are now moving decisively from operator to manufacturer,” says Rideence Africa’s managing director, Minnan Yu. “Our aim is to build a Kenya-rooted new-energy mobility company serving Africa”.

AVA Managing Director Matt Lloyd is equally emphatic: “This partnership delivers Kenya’s first dedicated electric vehicle assembly line, demonstrating clearly that Kenya has the capacity and capability to assemble EVs locally at scale”.

The numbers support the optimism. EV charging costs average about US$3 for up to 200 kilometres, compared with more than US$15 in petrol costs for similar distances. “The assembly of electric vans is emerging as a strong market segment,” notes Dennis Wakaba, secretary-general of the Electric Mobility Association of Kenya. “Earlier, the cost of electric vans was high, putting off operators. But as local assembly scales up, these costs have dropped, attracting more orders”.

The Revenue Paradox

Yet success brings its own complications. The government has acknowledged that rising EV adoption will undermine the Road Maintenance Levy, which is currently financed through petrol and diesel consumption. According to the Ministry of Roads and Transport, EV adoption led to a shortfall of about KES2 billion in 2025, a figure projected to explode to KSh89.5 billion in 2043.

Kenya’s Road Maintenance Levy currently stands at KSh25 per litre. Under current growth trends, revenues to the Levy Fund will begin declining from 2037 onward as internal combustion engine vehicle registrations peak and then fall. New EV registrations are expected to match new ICE vehicle registrations by 2042.

Countries with high EV penetration are increasingly implementing alternative mechanisms: annual registration fees, per-mile or road-use charges and modest surcharges on electricity used for charging. The United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Iceland have rolled out mileage-based charges or higher EV registration fees to ensure that electric vehicle owners contribute to infrastructure costs. Kenya has yet to articulate what alternative revenues it will develop.

The Vertical Integration Trap

The reliance on vertically integrated models, where assemblers build and control charging infrastructure, has enabled early adoption but may prove limiting at scale. Unlike fuel stations that serve any vehicle, Kenya’s charging landscape risks fragmentation into incompatible, supplier-specific networks.

“The same constraint is evident among smaller operators piloting electric commuter services,” notes one industry analysis. “With current capacity, we can only manage about four trips a day before recharging.” The limitation affects scheduling reliability, particularly on high-frequency commuter routes.

For private car owners, the constraints are parallel though less acute. Most chargers sit behind gates, inside malls, office parks, or residential developments that assume drivers have time and flexibility. Long-distance travel tests the network quickly. Cross-border trips make for good demonstrations and thin margins.

The Drive Forward on E-mobility Africa 2026

So where does Kenya stand at this critical juncture? The country has achieved something remarkable: it has built Africa’s most dynamic electric mobility market, attracting global capital, fostering local manufacturing and putting thousands of EVs on the road.

The National Electric Mobility Policy provides the regulatory foundation for continued growth. Kenya’s EMAK 2025 E‑Mobility White Paper is the guideline that “lays out a comprehensive fiscal, regulatory, and infrastructure roadmap aimed at rapidly scaling up electric-vehicle (EV) adoption across the country.”

Among the provisions of this legal national guideline is key recommendation is expansion of related e-mobility infrastructure. The document calls for “the development of nationwide charging infrastructure including public charging stations, battery swap networks and support widespread EV use.”

Yet the infrastructure question remains unresolved. Charging stations remain too few, too concentrated, and too fragmented. Grid readiness varies wildly across urban and peri-urban areas. Financing for charging infrastructure lags far behind financing for vehicles. The coordination problem, assemblers, utilities, financiers, and planners all depending on one another’s timing, has no obvious solution.

“Fuel stations spread because they followed clear rules, predictable demand, and fast turnover,” notes one observer. “Chargers ask for patience, capital, and coordination across institutions that rarely share clocks”.

The question posed by Kenya’s e-bus boom is not whether electric vehicles work, they demonstrably do, but whether the infrastructure needed to support them can catch up to the ambition that has brought them this far. For transport operators idling on Nairobi’s Outer Ring Road, watching charge levels creep slowly upward, that question is anything but academic.

However, the authorities are taking note. Ibrahim Auma is the Nairobi County Executive Committee Member, for Mobility and Works. “We are not just talking about charging stations, we are laying the ground work for a cleaner, more efficient transport system, one that puts people first and pollution behind,” he told a UN-Habitat and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) funded stakeholders’ workshop in July 2025.

According to Auma, Kenya’s Electric Vehicle charging infrastructure sets the stage for the development of reliable, accessible and fast charging options across Nairobi. “Fast charging for cars, battery swapping for boda bodas and clear safety standards will be part of the plan.”

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