E-mobility solutions in African countries like Uganda are driven not only by Chinese EV technology but also by local innovations, which are creating solutions for everyday mobility challenges.
It is often rare that you hear a product buyer designing it with their manufacturer or seller, but this is what is happening at the Spiro offices in Uganda, which are abuzz with activities regarding their electric bikes.
The company started operations in Uganda in May last year and they have not only managed to sell bikes but also set up 150 charging stations to ensure that their customers have one within their operational radius.
While this sounds like it has all been smooth sailing, the road ahead is far from smooth. Challenges persist in sourcing and manufacturing locally, as well as in securing financing options for would-be buyers.
Robert Kayimbye, the Global Head of Marketing – Africa at Spiro, joins Njenga Hakeenah in this episode, where he highlights not only the obstacles but also the need for tailored, localized solutions, which are critical to meeting the unique demands of African consumers and unlocking the broader potential of e-mobility across the region.
Show Notes:
- China Global South Project: U.S. Company to Recycle Spiro’s E-Motorcycle Batteries by Njenga Hakeenah
- The China-Global South Project (CGSP): Customer Feedback Shaping Spiro’s E-bike Design in Uganda by Njenga Hakeenah
- Electrive: ACE battery recycling strategically partners with Spiro in Africa by Carrie Hampel
About Robert Kayimbye:
Robert Kayimbye serves as the Global Head of Marketing – Africa at Spiro, Africa’s leading electric mobility company. In this role, he highlights the transformative benefits of Spiro’s electronic systems—emphasizing improvements in safety, emissions reduction, fuel cost savings, and rider security. He is also a branding and marketing professional, creative director, entrepreneur, and advocate for growth within high-impact industries. Kayimbye has also served B2C, B2B, and B2G audiences in various industries, including print production, advertising agencies, telecommunications, renewable energy, biotech, private equity/venture capital, and molecular diagnostics.
Transcript:
Hello guys and welcome again to The Africa EV show. My name is Njenga Hakeenah and I happen to be in Kampala at the Spiro offices in Uganda where e-mobility is beginning to take root and for companies like Spiro, success has hinged on listening closely to customers.
Just over a year after entering the market, Spiro has installed more than 150 charging stations nationwide underscoring the demand for affordable mobility solutions.
Central to its approach is a feedback-driven model of product development. Instead of relying solely on boardroom strategies or design studio concepts, the company incorporates input from riders at every stage. That process has already produced four iterations of its electric motorcycles each shaped by consumer experience.
Still, the road ahead is far from smooth. Challenges persist in sourcing and manufacturing locally as well as in securing financing options for would-be buyers. Robert Kayimbye, the global head of marketing Africa at Spiro joins me in this episode where he shares some insights on the company’s plans for the next five years.
Let’s speak to Robert and see and hear some of the milestones they have been able to hit and what they are thinking of hitting in the next five years.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: Hello guys and welcome again to the Africa EV show. My name is Njenga Hakeenah and I happen to be in Kampala and I am now at the Spiro offices in Uganda. Look at those bikes.
I hope you can see how much these guys are doing. We will be discussing these bikes with Robert Kayimbye and he will be telling us about, you know, what is happening, the iterations and how the shift to e-mobility in Uganda is happening. They have like 150 charging stations across Uganda.
Let’s speak to Robert and see and hear some of the milestones they have been able to hit and what they are thinking of hitting in the next five years.
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: We actually started commercial operations in May of last year. So zero to 150 in, I’d say, under a couple of months, over a year. So that has been quite some bit of work, but yeah, quite a while.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: You’ve had four iterations of the bike.
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: Yes.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: What are the improvements that you’ve had on these bikes from the first to the fourth?
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: Spiro is one of those, if not the only EV company that behaves like a mobile smartphone company. Why do I say that? Between May of last year to date, we have four iterations and all these are improvements of the former.
How do we get to that point? We focus a lot on the insights we get from, you know, customer feedback. So we will have a version one in the market and then actively listen to the feedback customers give us to inform the improvements we have in the next version that comes out.
But still, we’ll also listen to the same thing and the process continues. What you’re seeing here today in the showroom might not be the model that we’ll have in showroom a couple of months from now. Why?
It’s because, you know, customers deserve better. Customers aspire for, you know, for the next good thing.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: And you’ve mentioned something about customer feedback and it sounds like you’re building with your customers, which is very rare in, you know, top-down approach whereby somebody decides this is what the people need or this is what the customers need. And so this sounds like you are localizing your solutions. Is that so?
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: Yes. We grow with the customers, right? We want to be sure that the problem we say we are actually solving is a real problem that the customer can also define.
Everything you will see us do is informed by the customer. We will be in the field, on the ground, looking at how the products are being used, you know, listening to those unspoken messages from the customers, you know, what is their day-to-day life like? What are they trying to solve?
How do we meet them at the point of need? And here we are.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: In Kenya, where I am from, most of the technology that we are using is from China. Reason being, we have not gotten to a point whereby we can produce components to the level that we need so that we can localize these solutions that we are building for our communities. Is it the same with you guys?
Do you source any of these components from China and why?
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: Yeah. So it’s a journey, right? One of the main goals for the e-mobility strategy in Uganda is to make Uganda the next source of e-mobility solutions.
And one of the strategic pillars in this strategy is to have ideally 80% local content for manufacturing and then maybe 20% imported. But as we get there, as we perfect, right now we source, okay? And at the same time, we’ve set up manufacturing and assembly plants in a place called Namadwe.
More than happy to take you there when you have time. And with that, we’ve been able to scale and deploy the number of bikes that we’ve deployed in a very short period of time. Because right now, when you perfectly define pain point and then craft a solution, your demand is going to blow through the roof.
And so we thought it better that, okay, to meet this kind of demand, we need to start assembling here. We need to get to a point where we’re manufacturing here. And when that happens, you’re going to be creating more jobs, more empowerment, that kind of thing.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: Which are the most important that you get from China? Because I know in Kenya, some of the people that I’ve spoken with, the ECUs, things like that. Others, it’s the battery tech.
Others, it’s even the cushions, the seats, things like that. So what do you import most from China for this?
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: So that’s an interesting question. One thing I want to say is, see, when one solution crops up, you’ll have a lot of ambient industries that come up around it.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: Yeah.
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: When I say ambient industries, I’m talking about parts manufacturers, parts suppliers, that kind of thing. So for the first iterations that we had, you would see it would be a unique bike that its replacement parts or serviceable parts are only found in Spiro. So as we iterate, because we’re saying convenience is part of our value proposition, the bikes that you see here today have got parts that are interchangeable with the bikes locally available on the market.
Okay. So that means if you bought a Spiro bike today because it’s got a 17-inch wheel and got a puncture in the middle of nowhere and the nearest repair shop has petrol bike parts, you can easily get a tire, a replacement tire, without having to come back to us. For the parts, like for the complex parts that we use in these bikes, things like the ECU, this is a smart bike.
So most of the computerized parts, IoT-related parts, we do import and then put together. But we’re very optimistic that we’re getting to a point where this will be battery manufacturing, which is the biggest component of this e-mobility initiative, is going to be locally made. Nice.
So if you visit our assembly and manufacturing plant, you’ll see that we have dedicated battery line.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: Okay.
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: And then of course, you know, these bikes have about 200 parts and we’re looking to get to a point, and I said 80% local content, we’re looking to get to a point where those 200 parts, most of them are locally manufactured.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: Yes. Nice. So in terms of percentage, is it 50% imported, 70%, 60%, 40%, 30%?
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: Right now, I’d say it’s more than 50%.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: More than 50%.
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: Now.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: Okay.
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: But that’s not going to be like that for long. For a long time. Yes.
Because at the end of the day, what your primary target is, is to avail the product that everyone can afford. And how do you get to that point, is where you have locally sourced raw materials, locally sourced parts, all locally made parts, so that, you know, the cost of acquiring one of these is low.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: We can talk about buying. How do you partner with financials for say a Ugandan who comes, they want a bike, but they don’t have the cash upfront?
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: If you sold a nice product that people cannot buy, that would be wasted effort, right? So what we do is we offer varieties of means for which someone can purchase this product. One would be cash, but not everyone has cash up front, right?
So we don’t tell you, hey, you don’t have cash up front, go home. No. There’s always a solution beyond cash.
So we also have an installment arrangement, a lease-to-own. And for lease-to-own, we basically partner with a number of asset financiers. We have Mogul, we have Asak, you know, we have the border union, we partner with banks like Centenary, and more banks, more asset financiers are coming on board.
Why? It’s because this lowers the barrier to entry. So most of the border riders that you see cannot afford a cash price, or maybe they will not be able to afford the entry rate for one asset financier, because maybe for one reason they’ve credit scored in a certain way, because different businesses have different business rules.
So we’ll move them to another one, right? So essentially, we don’t tell you go home. No.
There’s always a solution for you. There is. And that’s how, you know, that’s how you build society.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: Is it a single battery, double battery? It’s a single battery. It’s a single battery.
What’s the range?
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: So the range is variable. But what we tell our customers when you come here is you will comfortably get 80 kilometers, 80, 90. We do have riders that have gotten 100, 120.
Why do I say variable? Because people have different riding styles, different riding environments, different loads, and those differences will give you a different result. We have riders that are fast on the throttle.
We have riders that spend the whole day carrying a 300 kilogram load of potatoes. We have riders that spend their day ferrying customers that live up on a hill. All this plays into how much you get out of your battery.
And then also, you know, things like servicing the bike. We are strong on customer education, because how you service your bike will also determine how much you get from your battery. If your tire pressure is low, you’re going to have a lot of rolling resistance.
And then you’ll wonder why you’re not crossing the 70 kilometer range mark. So it’s a cocktail of things.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: When it comes to the payments, I know you have said you have four iterations, and all of them are still in the market, right?
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: So at any one point when you walk into our showrooms, you’ll find the latest model. So we phase out the model that came before the current one.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: Okay.
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: Yeah. All right. But we still offer after-sales support for all the models we have.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: For the old ones.
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: Yes.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: I can see you have M2. I think I saw an M. Was it an M3?
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: So we do have four models. We started with the Vio. That’s been phased out.
But we still provide after-sales. Then we have the Spiro Econ 450 M1. The difference between that and the latest is one has spokes and the other one has an alloy wheel.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: Okay.
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: The 450 M1 has a disc brake at the front. So that’s the second gen. Okay.
And the third one is what we have in the showroom today. That’s the Spiro Econ 400 M2.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: Okay.
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: And then the latest that we have that we’re running in the market is the Spiro Econ 450 M3. M means mid-drive. So there’s two types.
There is one where you have the motor mounted in the rear wheel hub. And then that’s what we started out with. Yes.
And then we moved on to mid. The mid-drive. The mid-drive.
So you find that the mid-drive has a lot of unsprung weight so it’s heavy. Yeah. So the hub drive.
The hub motor.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: Yes.
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: So it’s the one that has a big black round thing in the rear wheel. Yes. So we moved that to the middle of the vehicle.
And then you get a lot of mechanical advantage for moving it there. Your bike becomes lighter and you know more powerful. You get more torque to the rear wheel.
That kind of thing.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: Now I understand. Because when you talk about middle, because even in your, if you’re driving and you put all the weight at the back.
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: Yes.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: Or all the weight at the front.
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: Yes.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: There’s going to be some kind of confusion. Exactly. For the system.
Ah, now I understand. So maybe the other one question that I would ask is when you’re dealing with your customers, you said there are those who pay up front. There are those who will pay in installments.
How long are your payment periods for those who are paying in installments?
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: Well different asset financiers have different loan tenures. We have those that will keep it open for the customers. One person might wish to have his loan paid out in six months.
You know the weekly payment would be different. There are those that will opt for a year, a year and a half, two years. So it’s not one fixed tenure.
All right.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: Is there a difference between me paying in cash and in installments? Like will the price change?
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: Of course. Because at the end of the day there’s a risk factor. So there will be an increment.
But the whole point here is to make it accessible for a rider who would otherwise love to have the bike but he can’t because, you know, up front cash prices are a little too high for him. Okay.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: So how much is the M500? Is it M500?
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: The 450 M3?
NJENGA HAKEENAH: 450 M3, yeah.
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: It’s 3.8 million. Right now what we have that’s going out, what you have, what you see here is the M2s and maybe this is the last stock.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: Okay.
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: Yes.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: Okay.
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: But this, whether you’re getting this or the other one, you’ll pay 3.8. 3.8 million.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: Okay. Okay.
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: Yeah. If you’re doing installments, different finances have different down payments.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: Yeah.
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: So if you’re going with a SAC, for example, you’ll pay 295,000. If you’re going with Mogul, you’ll do 500,000. Right.
If you’re doing, we have a partnership with the union, you know, that’s about 160,000. But you’d have to be a member of the union. You’d have to do that through the union app, that kind of thing.
Yeah. And then if you’re doing it with the bank, it’s about 800,000. I need to check the most updated rate, but it’s there about.
Yeah.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: Okay. All right. Thank you so much, Robert.
It’s really very enlightening to see and to experience whatever is happening here. I see you’ve got cash loans, you’ve got smartphone financing, you’ve got all these things that happen because you want Ugandans to ride.
ROBERT KAYIMBYE: Yeah. That is of course, you know, when we have the asset finances existing in the same space as we do, they’ll always upsell, cross sell whenever they get the opportunity. So someone comes, wants a bike, interest them in a smartphone.
Someone wants a smartphone, interest them in a bike.
NJENGA HAKEENAH: Nice. Nice. Thank you so much, Robert.
I do appreciate having this conversation. All right, guys, you’ve heard it from Robert. He says that they have payment plans for every customer who goes in through their door and for each bike, depending on your payment plan, the prices will differ because of whatever markup that your financier puts on that bike.
But behind me, as you can see, they have this, he says that the M400 M2s, the Econ 400 M2s, they are facing those out because they have brought in the 450 M3s and these are just the built on iterations that are just building on each other based on customer feedback. Because again, like we said, in Africa and in many African countries, local problems require local solutions and Africans have the solutions that they need. However, on the global platform, our voices never get to be heard and so whatever we need is usually top-down because somebody thought this is what Africans needed and so they just dumped that.
But now what we are seeing with Spiro and across countries where we have been, we’ve been to Malawi, we have been in Kenya where I am from, we’ve been, now we are in Uganda, we’ve been to Nigeria and what we are seeing is that localised solutions are what are working best for local African buyers of e-mobility, be it bikes, be it four wheelers, be it three wheelers. And so this way, what we are seeing with what Spiro is doing is that they are building the solutions with the consumers or with the buyers who are riding or buying their bikes. And so as we continue with this conversation across the continent, how is it then that we are going to shift and ensure that everybody gets to use a means of transport that is affordable, that is economically feasible or it makes economic sense in terms of fuel savings and all, and then in terms of charging infrastructure.
We’ve heard that Spiro already has 150 charging stations and I know these are going to increase because they’ve done this over the past one year and some because they came here in May last year and they’ve already managed to do this. So imagine what would happen if this kind of solutions are scaled in terms of providing charging solutions because that is the biggest fear that people have, that if I cannot find a charging station en route to where I drive or on the road that I use often, then it becomes a problem and a limiting factor to adopting e-mobility. But you see, if it is possible to have these charging stations across towns and across villages even, then it makes it easier for e-mobility adoption for people like me who would want to move from point A to point B but without the hindrances of either my vehicle dying because the charge died and there is no charger anywhere.
My name is Njenga Hakeenah. Again, The Africa EV Show is where it’s at when it comes to African EV conversations. Let’s keep them going.
So remember to like, share and subscribe and always, if there is something good or great happening in your area regarding e-mobility, drop a comment and we will follow up with you because we want to highlight these stories and keep telling our story as it is. You have a nice one.
