Chinese-manufactured buses boosting green urban mobility in Kenya

Warren Ondanje, the vice president of Corporate Relations at the Association for Electric Mobility and Development in Africa (AEMDA), said that Kenya is experiencing a huge transition from fossil fuels-based transport to green transportation.

Ondanje opined that the pump price for fuel might increase even further in the future which will hurt the local public transport sector. "We have relied quite a lot on fuel imports. Yet we have lots of geothermal power, solar and wind resources, which we could actively tap into to power electric vehicles," said Ondanje.

According to Ondanje, Kenya currently has four electric buses being used as public service vehicles, all of which were imported from China in the last four months.

BasiGo, a Kenyan startup, is looking to transform the transport industry in the country by introducing electric buses as public service vehicles. Samuel Kamunya Waweru, head of Business Development at BasiGo, said the firm has so far imported two electric buses from Chinese manufacturer BYD to facilitate Kenya to transition from its fossil fuel-based public transport system to a greener alternative.

BasiGo plans to import 20 more units this year and 100 units by the end of 2023.

Waweru said that one of the biggest challenges in switching from internal combustion engines to electric mobility is the huge upfront costs but buses from China offer a solution.

"The buses from China are between 20 and 30 percent cheaper in operating costs for the proprietors and the technology is improving constantly," he said during an interview with Xinhua Wednesday in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya.

Alfonse Olukwo, a Nairobi resident, said that he prefers to use the electric buses for his daily commute from home to work. The 43-year-old father of two told Xinhua that the electric buses are more comfortable compared to diesel-powered ones because they have less noise. "The (electric) buses also have a port for charging my mobile phone while onboard."

Moses Nderitu, the chief revenue officer at BasiGo, said that over the last year, the interest in electric buses for public transport has grown exponentially in Kenya. A public transport bus that is powered by diesel uses approximately 6,000 shillings (about 51 U.S. dollars) of diesel per day while the electric bus uses 8.5 dollars of electricity for the same period.

Nderitu observed that China was a global leader in electric mobility, inspiring African countries like Kenya in their quest for a dramatic shift to less carbon-intensive modes of transport, saying that China as a leading global manufacturing hub has actually allowed countries like Kenya to be able to afford good quality products at a reasonable price.

Since 2020, the Kenyan government has rolled out a series of policies aimed at encouraging the use and production of EVs. In September that year, it launched the Kenya National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy, which first mooted the idea of mainstreaming EVs on Kenyan roads. This was followed by a tender issued by the transport ministry in November 2021, which sought a consultant to develop a national electric mobility policy.