The room is always the same
Whether it is a panel at the European Economic Congress or a Polish–Kenyan business forum, the audience is European capital trying to understand an African operating model. The questions are good ones. These are the five I hear most, and how I answer them.
1. "Is there enough electricity?"
Not from the grid, not everywhere — and that is the point. Our swap hubs are solar-first with LFP storage and a generator failsafe. A hub cycles about 24 packs a day from its own roof, sells the surplus through a 230 V socket and keeps running when the grid does not. Electricity is not the constraint; where you put the hub is.
2. "Who pays for the battery?"
Nobody buys it. The battery stays with the operator and the rider pays per swap — Battery-as-a-Service, about 425 KES per bike per day in our Kenyan model. The rider's bike costs less than a petrol one, the operator earns an annuity on the pack, and the battery risk sits with the people who have the data to manage it.
3. "How do you collect from a rider with no bank account?"
Through the thing he cannot work without. Every vehicle carries IoT integrated with the controller: GPS, state of charge, tamper events, remote speed-limit and disable. Repayment runs on M-Pesa or Airtel Money, reconciled through bank APIs. Portfolios secured this way report collection rates around 90%. The vehicle is the credit file.
4. "What about duties and customs?"
Assemble inside a special economic zone. The Polish SEZ in Kenya — the only one in the country dedicated to one nation's investors — lets components enter duty-free and finished vehicles leave for Tanzania and DR Congo without Kenyan duty or VAT. For a fleet buyer that is roughly a quarter off the landed cost, and for a Polish exporter it is the structure BGK and KUKE recognise.
5. "Who runs it after you leave?"
The people who were always going to: SACCOs, cooperatives, local technicians we train. MargTor's contracts are long-term engagements — equity or retainer over three years or more — precisely because a fleet that only works while the foreign engineer is on site is not a fleet, it is a demo.
The question I wish they asked
"What does a rider save?" In our model about 38% of daily operating cost, roughly 500 KES a day at 150 km and 180 KES per litre. Everything above — the hub, the battery, the telematics, the zone — exists to protect that number. If it holds, the lender gets paid, the operator scales and the investor gets a return. If it does not, no structure saves the project.
Gregory Radek is Co-Founder & CTO of MargTor Ltd. and East Africa's leading industry expert on electric two- and three-wheelers. Run your own numbers with the TCO calculator on margtor.africa.