The Short

• The Crisis: OX Delivers MD Natalie Dowsett has issued a 72-hour ultimatum: find a strategic partner or enter liquidation.
• The Paradox: The threat comes just over a year after the company announced a massive $163m contract to expand its “Transport-as-a-Service” (TaaS) model across East Africa.
• The Survival Plan: While the UK entity is embattled, OX Rwanda — its primary operational hub — plans to continue serving its 5,000-strong customer base, though expansion will be crippled without new vehicle production.
• The Market Context: The news follows the 2025 rescue of Kenyan peer Mobius Motors, highlighting the brutal capital requirements of African automotive hardware.

For years, OX Delivers was the poster child for “Global Britain” engineering. Its mission was as ambitious as it was logical: ship electric trucks as flat-packs to Rwanda, assemble them locally, and provide an “Uber for potatoes” service to rural farmers.

The strategy seemed to be working. The company won a spot on TIME’s Best Inventions list, secured millions in UK government grants, and reported $920,000 in revenue for the first ten months of 2024. In late 2024, it signed a landmark $163m franchise deal with OX East Africa to move into Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and Burundi.

But today, the wheels have come off the UK parent company. In a candid call to action, Founder and Managing Director Natalie Dowsett revealed that the business is three days away from insolvency.

“That sentence sits painfully at odds with what this team has built,” Dowsett said. “Losing that effort, talent, and learning would be a devastating loss.

The “Hardware Gap”

OX Delivers isn’t just a truck maker; it’s a logistics operator. By charging farmers per kilogram-kilometer, they lowered the barrier to trade in regions where transport costs can be 14 times higher than in the US. Their Gordon Murray-designed electric truck was touted as being 10 times cheaper to operate than diesel alternatives.

However, building hardware is notoriously capital-intensive. Even with 80% repeat customers and a growing fleet in Rwanda, the gap between “revenue-generating pilot” and “scaled manufacturer” requires a deep-pocketed institutional backing that has proven elusive in a tightening VC market.

A familiar story in Nairobi

OX’s struggles mirror those of Mobius Motors, the Kenyan automaker that nearly collapsed last year. Founded by British entrepreneur Joel Jackson, Mobius faced similar liquidity dry-spells despite a decade of building rugged SUVs for African terrain.

Mobius was ultimately saved in March 2025 by Silver Box, a Middle Eastern investment firm, which cleared short-term debts and pledged to resume production by July 2025. Silver Box saw value in the “tangible assets” — the Nairobi production facility and the R&D — rather than just the immediate cash flow.

Dowsett is likely hoping for a similar “Silver Box moment.” The company has engaged FRP Advisory to handle expressions of interest, essentially putting the “exceptional” 40-person engineering team and the proprietary tech platform up for sale or partnership.

What happens to the “Uber for Potatoes”?

The immediate impact of a UK liquidation would be felt most acutely in the R&D pipeline. While OX Rwanda intends to keep its tarmac operations running, its ability to reach “off-road” customers depends on the next generation of purpose-built electric trucks. Without the UK engineering hub, the $163m expansion plan effectively hits a dead end.

For the 5,000 farmers in Rwanda who currently use the app to move goods in hours rather than days, the stakes are more than just financial — it’s a question of whether the “self-reinforcing cycle of economic growth” OX promised can survive the realities of venture capital.