African electric mobility companies are facing a challenging funding landscape where traditional venture capital (VC) firms are largely absent, leaving the field dominated by patient, state-backed development banks and climate funds. The money trail for these hardware-heavy startups leads away from global VC hubs and directly to development finance institutions (DFIs), suggesting that the e-mobility sector in Africa is fundamentally an infrastructure play rather than a rapid technology venture.
In 2025, African e-mobility companies collectively raised over $158 million from more than 25 distinct sources, including debt, equity, and grants. However, a close examination of the capital structure reveals a critical dependency: DFIs account for roughly 70% of all disclosed investment, with climate funds stepping in heavily via debt instruments. This concentration of patient capital raises serious questions about the sector’s long-term sustainability and its heavy reliance on non-commercial capital sources.
The overall funding figure is heavily skewed by one single transaction. Spiro, a UAE-headquartered pan-African operator, secured a massive $100 million from The Fund for Export Development in Africa (FEDA) and strategic partners. This single round exceeds all other African e-mobility funding combined. Excluding Spiro, the remaining eleven companies raised only about $58 million, primarily from development banks and climate funds, with the average round size dropping sharply to approximately $5 million. The data confirms that e-mobility is a development-finance story, characterized by unit economics and long payback periods that fall outside the typical high-risk, high-reward timelines required by traditional VCs.
DFIs lead every category of investment, often participating in deals to de-risk the environment by ensuring policy alignment and regulatory certainty. Dominant DFIs like British International Investment (BII) appear in multiple deals, backing companies like Kenya’s Arc Ride ($5M) and Rwanda’s Ampersand (part of a $7M debt facility). FEDA’s $100M commitment to Spiro suggests a strategic focus on supporting pan-African, cross-border infrastructure deployment. Climate debt, exemplified by French asset manager Mirova, which deployed up to $10 million in debt facilities for Arc Ride, targets companies with predictable subscription revenues (like battery-swapping fees) that can reliably service interest payments. Deals are often complex blended finance structures, mixing DFI capital, corporate investment (like TotalEnergies and Shell Foundation), and grant capital to cover R&D, infrastructure, and scaling needs.
Major VCs prominent in African fintech (such as Y Combinator, TLcom Capital, and Partech) are conspicuously absent from the e-mobility space. The sector’s capital intensity, operational complexity, and long payback periods deter investors seeking rapid returns. This absence creates a dangerous funding gap where companies raising $1–$3 million seeds struggle to secure the necessary $10–$20 million Series A rounds required for scale, risking failure or down rounds.
Seven of the twelve e-mobility companies analyzed focus on battery-swapping infrastructure, a model that directly addresses several African infrastructure challenges: limited grid capacity, high upfront battery cost for riders, and the need for a fast 5-minute swap time for commercial operators. This model, generating reliable subscription revenue and providing asset collateral (the batteries), is highly attractive to debt investors. The challenge remains standardization; the company that achieves sufficient network density first (like Spiro, with its $100M backing) is positioned to win regional markets.
The sector is currently concentrated in East Africa (Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda) due to large commercial motorcycle markets and proactive government policies, with Ghana emerging as the leading hub in West Africa. In summary, African e-mobility is poised for growth, but its destiny hinges on whether DFI-backed scaling can eventually prove commercially sound enough to attract the traditional growth equity required to transition the sector from a developmental project to a self-sustaining commercial industry.
