The next phase of Africa’s electric mobility push is being financed one swap station at a time. ARC Ride, the Nairobi battery-swap pioneer, has collected $33.3M in a mix of equity and asset-backed debt to expand across the continent.
Novastar Ventures and Norrsken22 led the round. The International Finance Corporation, British International Investment and Proparco participated, with Japanese auto supplier Musashi Seimitsu and impact investor Talanton returning. Founder Jo Hurst Croft will use the money to add 5,000 electric motorcycles, strengthen battery infrastructure and develop automated swapping, smart charging and solar-powered stations.
Beyond deepening Kenya, ARC Ride plans entry into Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda. It has already piloted in South Africa with the ARC Panther motorcycle and built its first batch of bikes at a local assembly plant there.
The company designs and assembles two- and three-wheelers at its Nairobi plant and describes its batteries as open-architecture and interoperable, meaning the network can serve multiple motorcycle brands. Kenya’s registered EVs jumped nearly 30-fold between 2022 and 2025, and rivals are circling the same opportunity, including Spiro, which raised $270M this summer, plus Ampersand, Roam and SUN Mobility.
ARC Ride’s pitch to backers is that the network, not the vehicle, is the moat. Whoever owns reliable swapping infrastructure, the argument goes, becomes the backbone of Africa’s electric transport transition.
