Kenya Is Surprisingly One Of The Slowest Markets In Africa When It Comes To Adoption Of Electrical Automobiles

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Electrical vehicles gross sales are gaining important traction globally, as coated often right here on CleanTechnica. We’re beginning to see important motion in a number of African nations as properly.

The Ethiopian story is now extensively identified world wide after CleanTechnica coated that intimately over the previous couple of years. In 2024, Ethiopia shocked the world and have become the primary nation on this planet to limit the importation of ICE automobiles. Ethiopia has progressively added measures and incentives for EVs together with what is basically a complete ban on the importation of ICE automobiles. This has resulted in a surge of electrical car imports in Ethiopia, largely from China. Based on Ethiopia’s Transport Ministry, imports of electrical vehicles jumped from 7,000 in 2022 to 115,000 in 2025. Unbelievable progress!

One other nation that’s now seeing fast adoption of electrical vehicles is Egypt. 11,500 electrical vehicles had been bought in 2025. Projections for 2026 gross sales will double in line with a number of experiences.

Here’s a snapshot of the variety of electrical vehicles in choose African nations.

A whole lot of these EVs are coming from China. Knowledge from China’s Commerce Ministry exhibits exports of electrical vehicles from China into Africa are rising. Simply over 19,000 electrical vehicles had been imported from China by African nations in 2024, with this quantity surging to over 44,000 EVs in 2025.

The quantity is anticipated to leap once more this yr in mild of rising gasoline costs ensuing from the battle within the Center East.

An fascinating one on that chart is Djibouti. May it’s a few of these are destined for Ethiopia? Or the transition can also be properly underway in Djibouti? We are going to look into this in additional element. In any case, it’s good progress both approach. What’s stunning in all of that is how far Kenya has fallen behind. Kenya is often a pacesetter in innovation and driving adoption of recent tech in Africa, however on the subject of electrical vehicles, Kenya is the laggard. I’m positive you could have heard plenty of thrilling information round electrical automobiles in Kenya, led particularly by protection from us right here at CleanTechnica. However you’ll quickly discover that each one the motion in Kenya is revolving round electrical bikes, whose penetration is now over 15% of recent motorbike gross sales. There may be additionally some motion round electrical buses. Discover that historically smaller automobile markets now have far more electrical vehicles than Kenya. There are nonetheless fewer than 1,000 electrical vehicles in Kenya, while there are over 5,500 totally electrical vehicles in Rwanda.

The distinction is because of contrasting insurance policies. Whereas Kenya has put in place quite a few incentives to catalyse the adoption of electrical bikes, the identical has not been utilized to electrical automobile imports. Because of this, electrical vehicles in Kenya are nonetheless topic to excessive import duties and taxes, to the impact that whenever you usher in a automobile from abroad, by the point you get it registered in Kenya and drive away, you would be paying virtually double the unique value from the place the car got here from. This has made electrical vehicles costly in a market the place over 90% of auto registrations are used car imports. Should you have a look at the nations seeing rising adoption of electrical vehicles like Rwanda, they’ve carried out progressive pro-EV insurance policies. These included:

Fiscal Incentives:

• Electrical energy tariffs for charging stations to be capped on the industrial tariff. Which means that cost level operators will probably be billed at near USD 10 cents/kWh as an alternative of over 20 cents/kWh.
• Electrical automobiles can even profit from diminished tariffs throughout off-peak intervals.
• Electrical automobiles, spare elements, batteries, and charging station tools will all be exempted from import and excise duties. All of those would even be handled as zero-rated VAT merchandise and also will be exempt from withholding tax.

Non-Fiscal Incentives:

• Lease-free land for charging stations on land owned by the federal government.
• Provisions for EV charging stations within the constructing code and metropolis planning guidelines.
• Present choice to electrical automobiles for government-hired automobiles.
• Regulate the importation of used automobiles by imposing an age restrict.
• Set up restricted zones the place solely inexperienced automobiles can have entry.
• Enforcement of current emission requirements to discourage the acquisition of polluting automobiles.

The federal government of Rwanda just lately introduced that not less than 30% of all automobiles sourced by authorities departments should be electrical. This can speed up adoption of EVs in Rwanda. Kenya has made some bulletins just lately. There was an announcement about plans to waive import duties for 100,000 electrical automobiles. No additional particulars got and there’s no phrase but on when or if this will probably be carried out and enacted into legislation. EMAK says this proposed duty-free EV import quota would be the largest fiscal dedication to e-mobility in Kenya’s historical past. If carried out, the decision is to make sure that it ought to embody all car sorts, notably passenger vehicles, vehicles, and tuk-tuks to catalyse adoption in these segments which have lagged behind the electrical motorbike and bus sector up to now by way of progress.

The Electrical Mobility Affiliation of Kenya (EMAK) is a various and dynamic neighborhood that features business specialists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, lecturers, innovators, and enthusiastic people who consider within the potential of electrical mobility to form a sustainable future. EMAK assumes the function of a robust advocate for electrical mobility in any respect ranges, from native communities to nationwide insurance policies. By means of engagements with authorities our bodies, regulatory authorities, and related stakeholders, EMAK works to create an enabling surroundings for the expansion of electrical mobility in Kenya.

Kenya actually must meet up with the brand new wave of electrical car adoption that’s transferring throughout a number of African nations. For instance, Rwanda is a market the place about 1,700 model new automobiles are bought annually, and in Kenya, over 13,500 model new automobiles had been bought final yr. Which means the Kenya market is 8 occasions bigger for model new car gross sales and even bigger for used car imports with over 90,000 used automobiles imported per yr. So how is it that Kenya has 5× fewer electrical vehicles on its roads than Rwanda, and 100× fewer than Ethiopia?