Hello, movers 👋
This is the question I keep asking operators in this market.
Do you need to build the battery?
Do you need to own the station?
Do you need to buy the land the station sits on?
When every shilling counts, you have to be ruthless about what you actually own.
This is not a question of whether vertical integration works. It does. Spiro has more than 80,000 bikes on African roads and over 2,500 swap stations to feed them.
It is a question of what the next operator has to own to survive.
The Playbook Is Seven Years Old
We have been playing by one rule since about 2019.
Build the bike. Build the battery. Build the station. Own all three, forever.
It made sense when no shared infrastructure existed. If you did not build it, nobody would.
But that rule has a cost, and Kenya is now paying it. Franchisees here spend Sh400,000 to Sh600,000 on civil and electrical works alone — close to Sh1 million per station. Rural expansion has stopped because of it.
There is another way. Last week somebody used it.
What SUN Mobility Actually Did
India's SUN Mobility launched in Kenya with 35 swap stations already live across Nairobi and Mombasa.
It did not build a motorcycle.
It did not acquire a single forecourt.
It partnered with Vivo Energy — which already operates more than 4,200 Shell and Engen service stations across 29 African markets — and put the cabinets where the fuel already is.
Then it opened the network. More than ten manufacturers showed compatible vehicles at launch: Piaggio, VMoto, QJ Motor, BGauss, Motovolt, Odysse, Fika Mobility, Sprocomm, Afrina Neopower and Wylex.
Read that last name again. Wylex was Ampersand's third-party partner when Ampersand opened its own network in December 2025.
The same manufacturer now runs on two open networks.
That is interoperability happening commercially, not by decree.
This Is Not a Kenyan Experiment
The model is already proven at scale, just not here.
Through Indofast Energy a 50:50 joint venture with Indian Oil — it runs over 2,000 swap stations in 25 Indian cities.
Those stations power more than 125,000 vehicles. Over 70 million swaps. More than 2 billion kilometres.
Nine years of in-house development. More than 450 patents, design registrations and trademarks.
The five-year African target: 2,500+ stations and 160,000+ vehicles.
The Reframe
The fastest networks did not start by building a better motorcycle.
They built the layer every motorcycle needs, then charged everyone to use it.
BasiGo saw this first and quietly — its EV charging points already sit inside Shell forecourts in Kenya. Rwanda saw it and legislated it, mandating battery interoperability in June.
Three different actors. One conclusion.
The vehicle is not the asset. The network is the asset.
What I Would Watch, Not Applaud
SUN Mobility has not published a single price.
No swap fee. No subscription. No commercial terms at all. It claims 20% savings against petrol at 100km a day, rising to 35% at 150km — but claims are not tariffs.
Thirty-five stations is also not a network. It is a pilot with a good landlord.
And the hardest part of the open model is the part nobody has solved.
When a shared battery fails in a cabinet, who carries the loss? The manufacturer, the network, or the rider?
Ask that question of anyone selling you interoperability.
The East Africa Line
Tanzania has roughly 10,000 electric two- and three-wheelers and no dominant swap network. That is usually described as being behind.
I would describe it differently. We have not yet built the wrong thing.
Vivo Energy's forecourts are already here. So are Puma's, Oryx's and Total's. The cheapest swap network in this country is the one bolted onto infrastructure somebody else already paid for.
Whoever writes Tanzania's e-mobility strategy should be negotiating with fuel retailers, not planning greenfield stations.
One number before you go: how many service stations does Vivo Energy operate across Africa? (Answer below.)
The CHARGED Read
For seven years we have measured African e-mobility companies by how much they own.
Bikes deployed. Stations built. Batteries in circulation. Capital raised to buy more of all three.
Ownership was the moat. It was also the ceiling.
The question is no longer how much of the stack you can afford to build.
It is how little you can own and still be indispensable.
The answer is more than 4,200, across 29 markets. SUN Mobility did not build them. It just asked.
Written from Dar es Salaam, watching the road north 🇹🇿⚡