⚡TL;DR

Mobility for Africa (MFA) helps African women get around faster via affordable, rugged electric vehicles, empowering the entire community with independence and income.

👣 Women on the move: In rural Africa, the women are expected to manage the household and handle a large amount of field work. Cars are expensive and bicycles don’t work well on unpaved roads. This means a tremendous amount of time and energy walking and carrying heavy loads.

🚜 Navigating the terrain: Mobility for Africa (MFA), founded in 2019, is a Zimbabwe‑based for‑profit social enterprise revolutionizing rural African transport by deploying electric vehicles (“Hambas”) tailored for rough terrain.

🔧 Local + scalable: Affordable lease‑to‑purchase options, driver training, and off‑grid battery swapping make the Hambas extremely easy to use

🙌 Why we say Hell Yeah. By cutting transport costs and time, MFA unlocks access to markets, education, and healthcare for rural African women. Freeing billions of hours of previous walking time and energy back into their communities.

All pics courtesy of www.mobilityforafrica.com

What happens when 450 million people can finally get to work, school, and the market?

I visited Zimbabwe a few years ago and was surprised to see a number of women carrying heavy items on their head. Naively, I thought this was a stereotype of the past or only limited to remote villages (I was on the outskirts of Harare). “Nah,” my friend informed me, “things are far here, and cars are expensive.”

In the vast African countryside, the average distance from home to the market or community service point is 10km and 70% of these roads are unpaved. Transportation is a real challenge, especially for the women who bear disproportionate burdens in such contexts: long treks carrying crops, children, or goods, often ending in crop spoilage, missed school, or lost income.

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“In Africa, approximately 450 million people (more than 70% of its rural population) lack access to mobility options due to a lack of infrastructure and transport systems. In Zimbabwe, the lack of transport infrastructure has a significant impact on the agricultural sector, which provides livelihoods for about 70% of the population and 15-20% of the country’s GDP.”

Climate Chance

Mobilizing opportunity: MFA flips the script

Instead of waiting for large-scale infrastructural improvements, Mobility for Africa is solving the problem now by renovating electric tricycles (“Hambas”) originally built for Chinese agriculture to be suited for rural African women. This includes making the wheels more rugged and using a sofa style seat that is more comfortable (and discrete) for skirt-wearing women.

These Hambas are beasts. We want one.

The price of a Hamba is about 1/3 of the cost of a small second-hand car, and the operating costs are about half that of cars or motorcycles.

The Hambas are cool, the ecosystem + model makes them valuable

Customer leaving a battery station

What’s particularly awesome is that Hambas are being brought to market by a local social enterprise that is also setting up the other service components to make the vehicles valuable for drivers.

Battery swap stations: MFA sets up solar-powered stations in rural areas where professional technicians will replace depleted batteries in 5 minutes for $5. These technicians also provide driver training and after-sale services such as maintenance.
Lease to purchase model: $45/week, with the ability for users to own the vehicles in time. After paying these leasing and operating costs, users can still anticipate earning over $100/week - which is meaningful income in many rural areas.
Fleet services: For small-scale farmers, service delivery, agriculture businesses, and taxis. Includes a trained mechanical team and an online supply, customer, and inventory management system for fleets as small as 3 units.

As MFA is expanding outside Zimbabwe, they are catalyzing a model ripe for replication across rural Sub-Saharan Africa.

⚡Why we said hell yeah!

Here’s the truth: when women move, entire communities move. For many rural women, not only do they manage the household, they also do 60% of the agricultural work. According to UN Women, collectively, women from Africa spend about 40B hours a year fetching water!

Imagine if we could have this time back. Studies show that women reinvest up to 90% of their income back into their families and communities (World Bank). So unlocking mobility doesn’t just create opportunity, it opens up markets, dignity, and independence.

I am not going to minimize transportation challenges for many here in the US, but it’s just different in rural Africa. Local mobility is the difference between a farmer carrying 50 pounds of cassava on her head for miles in the heat, versus riding it to market in time to sell before it spoils. It’s a mother being able to get her child to a clinic in 20 minutes instead of walking for several hours. It’s the gateway to education, healthcare, and financial independence. I will never complain again when my Uber takes an extra 5 minutes.

Mobility for Africa has zeroed in on that critical choke point. By giving women affordable access to rugged, electric tricycles (and providing the ecosystem with training and technical resources) they are moving the needle on the entire economy.

Hell yeah.