By the end of 2025, electric mobility company Spiro had deployed about 22,000 electric motorcycles and more than 600 battery-swapping stations in Rwanda, according to its inaugural Sustainability Report. In Nigeria—Africa’s most populous country and one of its largest motorcycle markets—the company had deployed about 5,000 electric motorcycles.
The disparity is striking. Rwanda, with about 13 million people, hosts more than four times as many Spiro motorcycles as Nigeria, whose population exceeds 200 million. It is also the company’s largest operation across its six African markets, ahead of Uganda’s 16,000 bikes, Kenya’s 14,000, and Togo and Benin, which each have about 8,000.
The figures offer a rare look at how one of Africa’s biggest electric motorcycle companies is deciding where to invest. While investors often assume the continent’s largest motorcycle markets will attract the biggest electric vehicle (EV) fleets first, Spiro’s footprint suggests a different calculation, one that weighs government policy, infrastructure, manufacturing and the economics of battery swapping alongside demand.
In an interview with TechCabal on Tuesday, group chief executive Anant Badjatya said Rwanda’s lead reflects a combination of earlier market entry, supportive government policy and years of infrastructure investment.
A tale of two markets
Rwanda became one of Spiro’s earliest African markets, where it launched operations in 2023. Nigeria followed a year later. In a business that depends on batteries, swap stations and assembly plants, a year’s head start can make a significant difference.
“Rwanda has also benefited from one of Africa’s most supportive policy environments for electric mobility, particularly in Kigali, where government measures have accelerated EV adoption,” Badjatya told TechCabal. “Combined with the country’s size, this allowed us to scale infrastructure rapidly.”
Rwanda’s government has leaned into electric mobility more decisively than most African peers, backing EV adoption with import duty relief and coordinated urban policy in Kigali. That alignment, Badjatya argued, is what let Spiro compress years of infrastructure build-out into a comparatively short runway.
Nigeria has required a different approach. Rather than trying to match the pace of its Rwanda expansion, Spiro has focused on building the industrial backbone needed to support a much larger market.
“Nigeria is a different opportunity,” Badjatya said. “It is a much larger and more complex market, so our strategy has been to build progressively, not only deploying motorcycles and infrastructure, but also investing in local assembly, battery recycling and industrial capabilities that will support long-term growth.”
The sustainability report also offers a glimpse into how Spiro is allocating resources across markets.
In Nigeria, about 574 staff support a fleet of 5,000 motorcycles, approximately one employee for every nine motorcycles. Rwanda, by comparison, has close to 1,200 employees and workers supporting 22,000 motorcycles, or about one for every 18 bikes.
The ratio reflects the different stages of Spiro’s operations. While Rwanda has reached a more mature phase of deployment, the company says Nigeria has required heavier investment in local assembly, battery recycling and other industrial capabilities alongside the rollout of motorcycles and battery swap stations.
Policy, not population
Badjatya was careful to frame Rwanda’s advantage as a lesson in market conditions rather than a universally applicable model.
“I wouldn’t describe it as what works or doesn’t work,” he said. “The fundamentals remain the same: reliable infrastructure, strong rider economics and a great customer experience. What Rwanda taught us is that when policy, infrastructure and economics align, adoption accelerates very quickly.”
Nigeria has pushed Spiro to take a different approach. The company says differences in customer behaviour, riding patterns and market dynamics have made it impractical to transplant the model it developed in Rwanda.
“Rather than exporting a Rwandan model, we are building a Nigerian one,” Badjatya said. That has meant investing in local assembly, battery recycling, and second-life battery applications alongside motorcycles and battery swap stations, with the goal of building industrial capacity before accelerating deployment.
Scaling what comes next
Rwanda, for now, remains Spiro’s most mature market, and the company’s next moves there suggest it is shifting from expanding coverage to expanding capacity. Spiro has introduced what it calls Mega Stations in the country, high-throughput swap stations capable of serving more than 2,000 riders a day.
“As adoption grows, the focus is no longer just on adding stations, it’s about increasing network capacity,” Badjatya said.
Nigeria’s next phase, he suggested, will follow a similar arc once its foundational work matures.
“Nigeria already has the fundamentals to become one of Spiro’s largest markets,” Badjatya said. “As we have done in Rwanda with our Mega Stations, we will continue investing in higher-capacity infrastructure alongside manufacturing and strategic partnerships.”
Asked whether structural barriers were holding Nigeria back, he was direct: “I don’t see structural barriers preventing Nigeria from reaching Rwanda’s scale. Rather, it is following its own development path.”
Spiro’s ambitions extend well beyond its current six markets. Badjatya said Cameroon and Tanzania are already scaling, and the company is preparing to enter Ethiopia, Malawi, Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo, part of a plan to eventually operate in around 20 African markets.
Site selection, he said, comes down to where “mobility demand, supportive policy, rider economics and infrastructure opportunities come together,” alongside industrial potential and the ability to build a dense battery-swapping network.
Rwanda has demonstrated that market size alone does not determine where electric mobility scales fastest. Policy, infrastructure, rider economics and long-term industrial investment may matter just as much.
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