Mbay Mobility Is Launching An All-Electric Taxi Financing Platform In Senegal

Mbay has helped curate a comprehensive e-mobility focused insurance package and received a 75,000 euro grant from the Netherlands to execute a maintenance training programme for technicians, which they carried out in collaboration with the Senegalese Ministry of Education and SolarTaxi Ghana. Mbay is also working with the government and other partners to explore ways of incentivising the adoption of electric mobility, namely by replacing the very high 70% import tax with taxes that only kick in after the EVs are on Senegalese roads and generating savings for their users.Two of the main problems Mbay is tackling are increasing air pollution and carbon emissions, caused by a large number of aging internal combustion vehicles in congested cities. These EVs are also adapted for the local context, with higher ground clearance to cater to non-paved roads and domestic-plug charging to avoid infrastructure constraints. Mbay says if incentives such as reducing the import taxes and duties were introduced, this would lower the costs of the cars to the taxi owners and accelerate the clean transport revolution they are trying to trigger. However, in countries such as Senegal where motorcycle taxis are restricted in large cities such as Dakar, ICE cars are a major segment in the transport sector.