East Africa’s first commercial electric tuk-tuks launched

An innovative East African e-commerce platform has announced the groundbreaking launch of electric tuk-tuks to its delivery fleet in Uganda.

This makes the vehicles the first to be used commercially in East Africa.

Built by Gayam Motor Works, the new fleet of vehicles take just three hours to charge and last for approximately 2-3 days.

The electric tuk-tuks also deliver to an estimated 35 shops per day within 2 hours of orders being placed  and can carry 500kg in goods for the retailers.

Built and assembled by the SokoWatch team, the new tuk-tuks mark a company-wide push at Sokowatch to build cleaner and more sustainable environments in its operating markets. 

“In Kampala, air quality is 6x worse than global standards and as a company built around improving the livelihoods of local communities, we took the direct approach to address the issue," Country Manager for Uganda, Peter Muzoora said.

"We launched in Kampala last year and when we arrived, we made a commitment to be a business that would add and not take away from our local communities and the launch of our electric tuk-tuks shows this wasn’t just lip-service."

In Africa’s cities alone, there are more than 10 million informal shops selling over $180 billion worth of goods every year.

Despite their importance to local economies, these shops routinely stock out of products, have limited access to financial services, and lack proper business management tools.

However, Sokowatch enables informal retailers to order products at any time via SMS or mobile app and receive free same-day delivery to their store. Using historic purchasing data, the platform also evaluates retailers to provide them with access to credit and other financial services typically not available to informal businesses.