With 460,000 kilometres covered and 580,000 passengers already transported in Kenya, electric buses from the start-up BasiGo will soon be plying the roads of Kigali thanks to a partnership recently signed with the Rwandan company AC Group.
BasiGo’s electric buses will soon be plying the roads of Kigali in Rwanda. The Kenyan mobility start-up has just signed a partnership with AC Group, a technology company that provides intelligent transport solutions. Together, the two partners intend to capitalise on the Pay-As-You-Drive financing model to facilitate the acquisition of these environmentally-friendly vehicles.
“We are delighted to provide public transport operators with clean electric buses that are more cost-effective, affordable and reliable than diesel. We will be working with the main transport providers in Kigali,” says BasiGo, which has announced the first delivery for October 2023. This is good news for drivers in Rwanda, who are often faced with rising prices for petroleum products.
The East African country has one of the most diversified electricity mixes in the region, with 58% of electricity generated from renewable sources. What’s more, it was ranked in 2018 as the fifth most attractive country in the world for investment in green energy by Bloomberg’s Climatescope report. This has since reinforced the positive rhetoric in favour of electric mobility.
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BasiGo’s initiative comes at just the right time, as the Rwandan government is abolishing customs duties on imports of electric vehicles. The June 2023 measure, which applies exclusively to “two-wheelers, tricycles and all cars that do not run on fossil fuels”, should encourage the mass adoption of low-pollution modes of transport in the former Belgian colony.
Benoit-Ivan Wansi
