As Chair of Hon­da in Kenya, I host­ed Honda’s glob­al lead­ers this week, Mr. Fujimu­ra, Glob­al CFO, and Mr. Kawaguchi, Glob­al Head of Accounts. Hon­da has sold 20 mil­lion prod­ucts world­wide and earned over KSh 1.2 tril­lion. I asked myself: what if Kenya unlocked even a frac­tion of that scale?

Today, we need to dis­cuss data. After engag­ing Honda’s glob­al team, I par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Auto­mo­tive Mul­ti-Stake­hold­er Forum con­vened by KAM CEO Tobias Alan­do, where for the first time, Trea­sury, KRA, NTSA, KEBS, Roads, Engi­neers, investors, and assem­blers sat togeth­er. PS Abubakar Has­san Abubakar brought fresh ener­gy. Hope is real, but action must follow.

Accord­ing to KNBS, Kenya record­ed 68,804 new motor­cy­cles in 2024. For the first time, elec­tric mod­els made up 7.1 per­cent of that mar­ket, or 4,862 units, mak­ing Kenya a rare bright spot in two-wheel­er elec­tri­fi­ca­tion. Roam has expand­ed its Nairo­bi plant to pro­duce up to 50,000 elec­tric motor­cy­cles each year, while Amper­sand, Spiro, Autopax, and oth­ers are rapid­ly build­ing bat­tery-swap net­works across coun­ties, sig­nal­ing the growth of a nation­al e‑mobility ecosys­tem. Kenya Pow­er has intro­duced a spe­cial e‑mobility tar­iff and plans for 45 pub­lic charg­ers in six coun­ties. How­ev­er, motor­cy­cle users still make up about a third of Kenya’s road deaths.

From my Green Book, we under­stand this sec­tor sup­ports the nation. More than 1.2 mil­lion rid­ers assist approx­i­mate­ly 7.2 mil­lion Kenyans. In a mar­ket of 250,000 units, 20,000 new rid­ers join each month, pro­vid­ing liveli­hoods for 120,000 peo­ple. Few sec­tors main­tain such scale consistently.

Safe­ty through clear reg­u­la­tions must be the foun­da­tion. Enforc­ing this dur­ing deal­er license renew­al and pub­lish­ing a deal­er whitelist would show that safe­ty is manda­to­ry. At the same time, Zero-Deaths Cor­ri­dors, which include train­ing, light­ing, enforce­ment, and trau­ma care, would demon­strate that lives are val­ued as much as liveli­hoods. With­out safe­ty, scale is meaningless.

Finance is the next lever. A boda rid­er is not just a trans­porter but a bread­win­ner. Yet preda­to­ry loans and harsh repos­ses­sion cycles have trapped many. A Motor­cy­cle Asset-Finance Code should require plain-lan­guage con­tracts, full cost dis­clo­sure, cool­ing-off peri­ods, and bun­dled train­ing and insur­ance. The Trea­sury and the Cen­tral Bank can pilot a par­tial cred­it guar­an­tee for elec­tric motor­cy­cles, low­er­ing rates and reduc­ing lender risk. This would turn rid­ers from debt pris­on­ers into part­ners, restor­ing dig­ni­ty and stability.

Indus­tri­al­iza­tion must also be cred­i­ble. Kenya should main­tain the East African duty remis­sion that allows approved assem­blers to import CKD kits at 10 per­cent and estab­lish a tiered local-con­tent lad­der by 2027. KEBS should care­ful­ly review and imple­ment stan­dards that prac­ti­cal­ly sup­port sec­tor growth. EPRA and KPLC must ensure tar­iff access for swap oper­a­tors and map hubs around the 45 planned charg­ers, includ­ing pub­lic uptime dash­boards. Region­al­ly, Kenya should match Rwanda’s EV tax hol­i­days through 2028, ensur­ing Kenya becomes the pre­ferred hub for assem­bly and export in East Africa.

This is not ICE ver­sus EV. Stud­ies indi­cate that a 250,000-unit mar­ket sus­tains both, with 12,000 ICE and 8,000 EV units sold each month, mod­ern­ized by clean­er fuels and accel­er­at­ed by bat­tery swaps. The real obsta­cle is not tech­nol­o­gy but frag­men­ta­tion. Gov­ern­ment agen­cies are work­ing hard, but in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. The KAM forum showed a new spir­it of team­work. Now we must for­mal­ize it with a well-thought-out Motor­cy­cle Trans­for­ma­tion Deliv­ery Unit in the Pres­i­den­cy, report­ing to the pub­lic with a detailed KPI dashboard.

The deci­sions that mat­ter are with­in nine­ty days. The gov­ern­ment can gazette the Nation­al E‑Mobility Pol­i­cy with a two- and three-wheel­er annex, enforce prac­ti­cal safe­ty reg­u­la­tions, pub­lish a list of com­pli­ant deal­ers, and launch the Asset-Finance Code with an elec­tric motor­cy­cle guar­an­tee scheme involv­ing var­i­ous play­ers for a pilot. These steps are straight­for­ward, but their impact will be mea­sured in jobs, safer roads, and clean­er cities.

Kenya can become Africa’s lead­ing motor­cy­cle hub by 2030 if we pri­or­i­tize action over delay. The data backs this up. Sup­port­ing liveli­hoods is our duty. Turn­ing plans into pay­checks isn’t just a slo­gan; it’s a time­line. Think green, act green!