- Chinese Electric Vehicle manufacturer Chery has partnered with Kenyan company Afrigreen Automobile to invest $20 million in the country’s Electric Vehicle (EV) sector.
- With this investment, the company will build an assembly plant in Nairobi to produce EVs, creating 3,000 direct and indirect jobs in the country.
- Nishant Mishra, Global Head of Future Mobility at Afrigreen Automobile, has confirmed that assembly will commence in a month. The company anticipates producing approximately 5,000 to 6,000 vehicles annually over the next few years. The production will focus on the Kenyan market and the broader COMESA region.
The Kenyan government advocates for adopting electric vehicles to cut carbon emissions, improve energy security, and boost economic growth. In April 2024, it introduced its Electric Mobility Policy draft, designed to guide the transition from conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles to electric mobility across all transportation modes—road, rail, air, and maritime.
Abubakar Hassan Abubakar, Principal Secretary of the Ministry of Investments, Trade, and Industry, stated that the assembly plant will help the transport sector become greener. He highlighted that the country currently has about 4,000 electric vehicles compared to around 1.7 million cars on the roads.
Per 6Wresearch, Kenya's electric vehicle market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 57.9% from 2024 to 2030 and is expected to exceed $800 billion by 2027.
In June 2024, another Chinese EV manufacturer Neta entered the market by investing in a Kenyan company called Moja EV Kenya, which is expected to assemble 250 electric vehicles monthly.
The manufacturer joined other industry players, including China’s EV company, Build Your Dreams (BYD), Kenyan startup, EeMobi, which offers affordable and eco-friendly mobility solutions to people in urban areas and Bollore Logistics, a French firm, which has been partnering with the Kenyan government to set up infrastructure for electric vehicles.
However, a report identifies several challenges in the EV sector, such as the higher cost of electric vehicles compared to petrol-powered ones, limited charging infrastructure—especially in rural areas with less access to reliable and affordable electricity—and the need for skills development.
Since EV technology is still new to Kenya, there is a pressing need to train more mechanics and technicians to manage the maintenance and repair of these vehicles.
