East Africa Tech

Most coverage of East African tech gravitates toward the same handful of names, the companies that have raised the biggest rounds, hit the highest valuations, or expanded into the most countries. That coverage is useful, but it also means a lot of genuinely inventive, small-scale companies solving real problems never make it into the conversation at all. These four aren't unicorns, and most people outside their specific sector have never heard of them. That's exactly why they're worth a closer look. ARC Ride: Solving Boda Boda Range Anxiety One Battery Swap at a Time Kenya's boda boda motorcycle taxis are everywhere, and most of them still run on petrol, an expense that eats directly into the daily earnings of gig-economy riders navigating volatile fuel prices. ARC Ride , founded in Nairobi in 2019 by British entrepreneur Joseph Hurst-Croft, built a Battery-as-a-Service model specifically for this problem: riders swap a depleted battery for a fully charged one at a ...