News from Africa

Local Deliveries in SA

The EFSA is setting up a working party to explore how best to provide guidance to local delivery services. This follows concerns expressed by some government officials that motorbike delivery has increased road accidents and that non-South African drivers are dominating the space. We note that the hustle and bustle of the last 2 years are calming down with more strategic alliances being agreed upon – Pick n Pay and MrD as an example, or Massmart’s recent acquisitions of OneCart and WumDrop. But EFSA’s members feel that it is important to have a proactive strategy in place. As this Newsletter has noted, the “Buda-Buda chaos” in Kenya and the bans on local delivery in some of Nigeria’s CBCs due to over-enthusiastic motorbike delivery behavior need to be avoided at all costs in SA’s cities.

Meanwhile, don’t you often wonder why Africa imports nearly all its motorbikes? Here’s some great news – M auto is based in Togo and Benin. The company wants to revolutionize the urban transport sector with its electric vehicles (in Cotonou, Benin’s capital, alone there are more than 250,000 motorcycle delivery and taxi drivers). The startup is taking on the challenge of reducing poverty, by implementing a more flexible sales strategy to allow drivers to make more savings in the maintenance and use of its electric vehicles. Today M auto prides itself by owning the largest fleet of electric motorcycles on the continent and aims to become the largest electric vehicle platform in Africa.