“I hopped on to an electric motorcycle in Kigali, Rwanda, and I was happy to see that the motorcycle taxi operator was a woman. It’s been a while since I got onto a motorcycle operated by a woman. I was very excited because getting one is like winning the lottery. The rider, Ange Uwingeneye, has an extraordinary story: both her and her husband work as moto-taxi drivers! A very powerful story. She earns 15,000 Rwandan francs per day. She says it’s all thanks to her Spiro motorcycle, which makes it easier for her to do the job.”
This is one of the incredible testimonies Spiro received recently. The lower total cost of ownership means that riders get to take home more than they would using fossil fuel motorcycles for the taxi business. Spiro adds that the company is actively working to empower and grow the number of female riders. The Spiro bike, being electric, is much smoother and easier to maneuver and operate compared to the traditional fossil fuel motorcycles.
Spiro’s CEO Kaushik Burman is very passionate about the social impact companies like Spiro can have in the market where they operate. Before joining Spiro, Kaushik spent five and a half years at Gogoro, the Taiwanese company that is best known for revolutionizing battery swapping networks for 2-wheelers. He also spent over seven and a half years working in the infrastructure space for electric vehicles. He is now driving Spiro’s vision to electrify Africa.
Spiro is now the largest electric vehicle company in Africa by vehicles deployed. Spiro is also the fastest growing battery swapping network operator on the continent. Spiro has deployed over 60,000 LFP batteries on its battery swapping network, which spans across 8 countries. These countries are Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Nigeria, Benin, Togo, and Cameroon. This battery swap network is currently powering Spiro’s ever growing fleet of electric motorcycles, which currently stands at a stunning 35,000 electric motorcycles. This network has done over 20 million battery swaps since inception. This makes Spiro the world’s second largest company in terms of battery swaps done. Riders of Spiro’s motorcycles have helped reduce emissions in their countries by saving 33,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
To support its operations as the company accelerates its growth plans, Spiro now has 4 operational assembly plants on the African continent. These facilities are in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and Nigeria. The largest one is in Kenya and has a production capacity of 50,000 electric motorcycles per year. This plant has already been provisioned to expand production to 100,000 electric motorcycles a year as needed. Spiro is driven by a passion to localize production, initially focusing on retooling of available facilities, upskilling of workers, and maximum possible value addition of local materials and resources. Spiro is also building a network of local component manufacturers on this journey. At the moment, Spiro has already started local assembly of the electric motor and controllers for their motorcycles in the Kenya factory. As demand grows, Spiro plans to add local manufacturing of the motorcycle frames. Spiros says this would need a minimum critical mass of at least 50,000 motorcycles per year. Kaushik says the company has already created over 1,000 direct and indirect jobs from these assembly plants in these four countries, showcasing the impact the transition to electric mobility can have on the African continent.
Kaushik says the company is focusing heavily on local assembly and ultimately local manufacturing because Spiro wants to help kick start a new age of industrialization in Africa. The CEO says electric motorcycles have more electronic components than their ICE motorcycle counterparts and the whole ecosystem, including the batteries and software to manage the battery swap station, as well as the associated telemetry systems, will enable a whole new technology and skills transfer to the African continent from China, South Korea, India, North America, Europe, and other places. He emphasizes the fact that over a sustained period of time, this will create a great ecosystem for component manufacturing, vehicle assembly, wholesalers and retailers of spare parts, as well as dealers and operators of vehicle showrooms, along with innovative asset financing and fintech platforms, customer service and support, call centers, and energy network franchises. Spiro wants to help launch the renaissance of industrialization to support these ecosystems, hence its move to launch the four plants in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Nigeria.
Once it reaches critical mass, this e-mobility ecosystem will be self-sustaining and help anchor the development and growth of other sectors. With Spiro already assembling the motor and controllers locally in Kenya, the next stage will be to manufacture these in Kenya and then add the local manufacturing of the motorcycle frames once the critical mass thresholds have been reached. Adding the local assembly of the battery packs to the assembly process would take the contribution of locally assembled components to over 75% of each motorcycle.
Spiro is now on its third generation motorcycle, called the Ekon model. Spiro says the new Ekon electric motorcycle is already 30% cheaper to purchase on an upfront purchase basis than equivalent ICE motorcycles, which is a game changer as the upfront cost of electric vehicles has historically been higher than ICE vehicles and been a major barrier to adoption. With the total cost of ownership of electric motorcycles already lower than that of equivalent ICE versions, this makes going electric a no-brainer. Motorcycles are a really big deal in a lot of African countries, with most of them deployed as taxis. Close to 30 million motorcycles on the continent are used in this motorcycle taxi industry. With almost 99% of them still being internal combustion engine motorcycles, there is a huge opportunity and a large addressable market for electrification. This is why it’s great to see that there are now electric motorcycle options that are not just approaching parity with ICE equivalents, but are already cheaper than ICE ones.
Having launched operations in Kenya in October 2023, Spiro is now well on the way to scaling its operations. Spiro has introduced over 3,000 electric motorcycles in Kenya over the past 12 months up to June 2025. This is a really big deal as 4,862 electric motorcycles were sold in Kenya in the whole of 2024! Spiro has now quickly spread its presence to over six cities and towns in Kenya, including Nairobi, Mombasa, Eldoret, and Kisumu. To support this growing fleet, Spiro now has over 100 swap stations in Kenya and also over 100 swap stations in Rwanda. It’s great to see that the transition to electric in Africa’s electric motorcycle sector is accelerating.
Images courtesy of Spiro
