Spiro Raises $50 Million As Demand For Its Battery Swapping Infrastructure & EVs Surges Throughout Africa

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Bikes are a very huge deal in quite a lot of African nations, with most of them deployed as taxis. Near 30 million bikes on the continent are used on this bike taxi {industry}. With virtually 99% of them nonetheless being inner combustion engine bikes, there’s a enormous alternative and a big addressable marketplace for electrification. The transfer in direction of electrical autos in Africa, particularly on this electrical bike sector, has primarily been pushed by the non-public sector by small startup firms, and this requires an infinite quantity of capital. 

Let’s have a look at Kenya for instance and see simply how speedy the rise of electrical bikes has been and the impact on the general ecosystem, ensuing within the want for frequent capital injection to mitigate challenges related to progress spurts. Registrations of electrical bikes surged once more in 2025 following a breakthrough 12 months in 2024. In 2023, there have been 70,691 bikes bought in Kenya within the general market, and a couple of,557 of those have been electrical. Meaning 3.6% of bikes bought in 2023 in Kenya have been electrical. That’s virtually 4%. So, we didn’t anticipate it to be lengthy earlier than the market share reached the essential 5%, which is usually considered because the tipping level indicating the beginning of mass adoption. The share of electrical bikes had risen to three.6% in 2023 from 2.8% in 2022 and 0.5% in 2021. 2024 was even higher because the market share surged to 7.1%. The KNBS Financial Survey Report (2025) exhibits that 68,804 new bikes have been registered in Kenya in 2024. Of those, 4,862 bikes have been electrical, in keeping with information offered by the Electrical Mobility Affiliation of Kenya (EMAK). That’s the place the 7.1% market share comes from.

2025 was even higher because the market share of electrical bikes reached a whopping 15.3%. That is actually superior, particularly given the truth that nearly 8 years in the past solely 44 electrical bikes have been registered in the entire nation! The general bike market was up 145% from 68,804 bikes in 2024 to 168,286 in 2025. With 25,277 of bikes registered in Kenya in 2025 being electrical, it means 15.3% of all new bike restorations in Kenya in 2025 have been electrical. How cool is that! With over 2 million inner combustion engine bikes registered in Kenya, the chance to affect the sector is huge. Of the 25,277 electrical bikes bought in Kenya in 2025, over 15,000 of them have been from Spiro. Meaning Spiro had a 60% share of the brand new electrical bike gross sales market in Kenya in 2025! Spiro now additionally has a community of over 400 battery swap stations in Kenya.

Let’s have a look at the speedy rise of electrical bike gross sales in Kenya once more utilizing the chart under for instance:

This speedy ramp-up can result in distinctive challenges within the ecosystem. Considered one of them that has emerged is a speedy rise in demand for batteries at swap facilities because the variety of bikes in the marketplace grows. That is to be anticipated in such a scaled-up atmosphere. Tom Courtright summarizes this difficulty fairly effectively. Tom says merely put, this may very well be resulting from a mismatch between provide of batteries and demand from drivers at a given time. Drivers solely discover this in a provide shortfall; if there’s extra batteries on the community, it’s extra capital wanted by the battery community, however that’s a boon for drivers. So how does a battery shortfall occur? Generally, there may very well be a number of potentialities:

1. Some batteries might run down quicker than anticipated, taking batteries off community or decreasing their capability. This may occur particularly in early stage pilots as firms put merchandise in actual life use circumstances and iterate from there. This may usually be ironed progressively out as firms establish points and clear up them as they iterate and scale. 
2. Too many bikes deployed forward of battery deployment, knocking the businesses’ ratio off
3. Battery import delays — mostly throughout delivery or receiving customs. This can be a widespread difficulty in Kenya.

Tom provides that typically, these are rising pains. Bigger networks shall be extra steady; logistics kinks labored out; and (hopefully) extra financially steady. 

Firms can even work this out utilizing actual swap station information, figuring out which areas are the areas seeing rising demand in actual time, after which allocating property accordingly.

As the most important participant out there, and on the African continent, Spiro is consistently mobilizing capital to speed up their rollout whereas concurrently working to mitigate any related demand pushed ecosystem challenges alongside different contributing elements comparable to electrical connection wait occasions for battery swap websites resulting from lead occasions for electrical energy meters from the utility firm or from discovering applicable areas to host swap facilities, and in lots of circumstances, workflows facilitating essential upgrades to the popular websites’ capability. 

As a part of Spiro’s continued push to scale electrical mobility adoption throughout the continent, it simply introduced the elevating of $50 million in debt funding from Afreximbank and two new traders, Nithio and Africa Go Inexperienced Fund, managed by Cygnum Capital. The brand new funding follows Spiro’s landmark $100 million funding in October 2025, which turned Africa’s largest-ever electrical mobility funding. Meaning Spiro has raised $150 million lately and effectively over $200 million together with earlier rounds. Spiro says the brand new capital will help the continued enlargement of its battery-swapping community throughout current and new markets, whereas additional advancing the corporate’s proprietary expertise platform, together with automated battery swaps, quick charging, and renewable power integration.

Spiro at the moment has 80,000 electrical bikes, over 2500 battery swapping stations, circulated over 300,000 batteries, and has accomplished greater than 30 million battery swaps to this point, Spiro has achieved over one billion kilometers of low-carbon emissions journey, reworking mobility and economies via substituting costly imported fossil fuel-based transportation. Spiro is operational in six nations — Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Nigeria, Benin, and Togo — with pilots underway in Cameroon and Tanzania.

“Demand for Spiro’s revolutionary, industry-leading battery swapping infrastructure continues to develop and is reshaping mobility in Africa by offering dependable, clear transportation choices throughout the continent,” mentioned Kaushik Burman, CEO of Spiro. “With sturdy monetary backing and cutting-edge expertise, Spiro is main Africa’s transition to sustainable mobility. This new funding reinforces our imaginative and prescient of constructing a sturdy, scalable power community tailor-made for Africa by Africans.”

“Spiro’s progress exemplifies the facility of Made-in-Africa, for-Africa options,” mentioned Gagan Gupta, Founding father of Spiro. “By combining native insights with international finest practices, we’re making a resilient, inexperienced power ecosystem that helps financial growth and local weather targets. This funding empowers us to carry reasonably priced clear power and mobility to tens of millions of Africans whereas deploying an {industry} main power infrastructure that may contribute meaningfully to a greener future in Africa.”

“Spiro has constructed a powerful platform that’s delivering tangible affect throughout a number of African markets; we’re happy to help the subsequent part of its progress because it scales essential clear mobility infrastructure,’’ mentioned Laurène Aigrain, Managing Director of Africa Go Inexperienced Fund. “This transaction displays our dedication to backing commercially strong companies that mix innovation with measurable environmental and social affect.”

“Spiro is likely one of the largest and fastest-growing gamers within the pan-African e-mobility market,” mentioned Raghav Sachdeva, CIO of Nithio. “They’ve demonstrated that electrical mobility can scale quickly whereas delivering actual financial worth to riders and significant emissions reductions. We’re proud to help Spiro’s continued progress and see e-mobility as a essential pillar of Africa’s clear power transition.”

“Driving Africa’s transition to electrical mobility is central to how we view sustainable financial growth throughout the continent,” mentioned Oluranti Doherty, MD, Export Growth at Afreximbank. “By supporting Spiro, Afreximbank is dedicated to financing the way forward for sustainable African commerce; we’re selling a inexperienced industrial worth chain that retains innovation on the forefront of a simply power transition.”

As mentioned earlier than, the uptake of electrical autos in a number of nations, particularly within the electrical bike sector, is rising at a a lot quicker fee than most individuals had thought. With these sorts of investments, 2026 guarantees to be an excellent greater 12 months for electrical autos, particularly electrical bikes in quite a lot of African nations. 

Photos by Remeredzai