Skip to main content
Growth Gateway

Supported East African e-mobility service provider to expand service offering

2025

Ampersand is expanding its electric bike offer in East Africa

The East African E2W1 market presents a £6B opportunity, with 5M+ drivers expected to adopt electric bikes by 2033, many benefiting from up to 45% higher incomes.

Ampersand is a pioneer in the sector, assembling and selling electric motorbikes and batteries to commercial drivers across the region.2

The company also operates a growing network of battery-swap stations and provides ongoing servicing to its vehicles.

It is now evolving their business model to become a service provider by expanding their charging service offering and network.

But it has faced challenges raising investment

  • Investor hesitation towards asset-heavy renewable industries in Africa, following earlier loss-making investments
  • Rising profitability expectations from equity investors because of lower returns in recent years and higher interest rates
  • New investment narrative required to support transition to service-led model

We explicitly wanted to work with Growth Gateway, because they possess the market expertise needed to convince investors of the opportunity in East Africa

Josh Whale
Founder and CEO, Ampersand

Helped secure £11M in financing with an additional £14M to close in 2025

Growth Gateway supported with targeted analysis and lead generation support

  • Sized the market opportunity by building a detailed market model by country across East Africa until 2033 for charging and adjacent services
  • Defined their right-to-win in this market by performing a market study
  • Developed an exit strategy proving to investors the liquidity of their stake
  • Secured interest from regional and international investors on the opportunity

This helped Ampersand reach their investment goals and accelerate their growth plans

£11M

Financing
secured

45%

Income increase for 35,000 drivers (expected)

1,100

New jobs
(expected)

~70kt

Annual CO2 mitigated
(expected)

  • Helped secure £11M in debt and equity financing with £14M more expected in 2025
  • Enabling 35,000 drivers switch from petrol to electric by expanding the charging network

The material developed by Growth Gateway has helped us to truly value the opportunity in charging services and how Ampersand is uniquely positioned

Fund manager,
Regional investment fund

  1. E2W: Electric 2-wheeler ↩︎
  2. ​Ampersand was supported through Growth Gateway’s Africa Green Services Deal Accelerator (GSDA) ↩︎

In this section