Ghanian Entrepreneur Set to Revolutionize African Transportation with Electric Vehicles
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Delivery riders in pose with their bikes
Valerie Labi, founder of Wahu!, Ghana’s only native electric vehicle manufacturer, is set to revolutionize transportation across Africa. She started with electric bicycles, of which she has sold over 300, and now she has her sights on launching Africa’s first native four-wheeled electric vehicle.
Wahu! started selling the bikes to delivery drivers on a pay-per-week basis, starting with 100 bikes, and expanded to another 200 units. The bikes were priced at $23 per month over 18-24 months under the company’s interest-free payment plan. Meanwhile, these bikes only cost $13.50 per month to charge, compared to the petrol-powered model at a $250 per month gasoline expenditure. This significant saving is impressive for one but transformed the lives of the riders, coupled with opportunities to get instant working chances by collaborations with Glovo and Bolt, among other companies.
Labi was brought up in England but is of Ghanaian descent. He is motivated to want to see the transformation of the transportation infrastructure of Africa. “The average age of a vehicle in Ghana is 14 years,” Labi told The Guardian. She sees a rush to offer cleaner, more efficient yet dirt-paved and smog-covered alternatives to all that. With the growth of e-commerce and last-mile distribution across the continent, dirt-paved but smog-covered cities like Accra, where dust, smog and car emissions typify unhealthy air.
Electrics imports from Asia have failed to navigate Africa’s potholed surfaces, breaking down and causing Wahu compared with. designs its bikes specifically for African conditions, ensuring durability and reliability. The company’s early models continue to perform well: with around 300 units sold, there has been just one reported theft—GPS tracking soon saw that one restored. In addition, Wahu! can remotely disable bikes is operatorse are distressed, contributing to surprisingly low insurance costs for their vehicles.
Just recently, Wahu! raised $8 million in financing to scale production from its factory in Accra, located on the Spintex Road. The company is on the verge of launching a four-wheeler electric vehicle in the coming months and scaling up to operations in Lusaka, Zambia, and Lagos, Nigeria. For Labi, this vision goes beyond improvement in transport in Ghana, envisaging heading a general shift on a continent-wide scale with electric vehicles that transcend other African roads economically, efficiently, and sustainably.
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