Afrigather Motorbike taxis are a well-liked and low cost type of transportation in West Africa. However more and more in Benin and Togo, drivers and prospects are swapping gasoline-powered bikes for electrical fashions which can be extra environmentally pleasant and, above all, inexpensive. Oloufounmi Koucoi, 38, firm is delivering the fashions to Cotonou.
**”We’ve got hundreds of electrical bikes in circulation and we’re additionally in a number of African international locations. Environmentally, as you recognize, electrical bikes don’t pollute the atmosphere. Economically, we’ve been capable of scale back the price of electrical bikes by doing the meeting regionally.”**Oloufounmi JP Koucoï, director of Zed-Motors.
In Lome, capital of neighbouring Togo, Octave de Souza parades proudly by the streets on his brand-new inexperienced electrical motorbike.
“The brand new electrical bike is an excellent bike” he says. “It is vitally economical and there’s no have to do an oil change, there is no such thing as a want to switch the engines and different elements. Simply change the battery.” Souza provides.
In African cities, air pollution prompted particularly by closely clogged street visitors is likely one of the main causes of loss of life and a serious public well being concern. However for a lot of drivers, electrical bikes are extra a query of value than local weather.
**”One of many issues we’re involved about is the charging level concern. In that regard, you’ll be able to have a disturbing drive since you don’t know the place to discover a charging level so that you don’t break down. This generally leads us to trade (batteries) with 10 or 15% of remaining cost in order to not have any dangerous surprises alongside the best way.”**Koffi Abotsi, electrical motobike driver
Native authorities are also encouraging the swap to electrical in a bid to switch previous, extremely polluting bikes. Many taxi drivers are thus lured by versatile credit score or mortgage offers that they repay month-to-month, weekly and even every day.– as an alternative of constructing a hefty one-off buy.
