Ethiopian electric mobility startup Dodai has raised $13 million in Series A financing, comprising $8 million in equity and $5 million in debt. The round was backed by British International Investment and a consortium of Japanese investors, underscoring growing international appetite for Africa’s nascent e-mobility infrastructure.
Three years ago, when electric mobility was still an experimental idea in much of Africa, Japanese entrepreneur Yuma Sasaki made an unconventional choice. While competitors piled into Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, Sasaki set up Dodai in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — a market most international investors considered too difficult.
Today, that bet is drawing significant backing. The $13 million round, announced this week, includes participation from Value Chain Innovation Fund, UTokyo Innovation Platform Co., Ltd., Nagase & Co., Ltd., Persistent ACV Fund, For Seasons, CBC Co., Ltd., and Inclusion Japan, alongside British International Investment (BII), the UK’s development finance institution.
The capital injection signals a shift in how international investors view Ethiopia’s clean mobility opportunity. Three years after Dodai assembled its first electric motorbike, the company has deployed more than 2,000 units, built a workforce of approximately 100 employees — 97% of whom are Ethiopian — and is now preparing to scale its battery-swapping infrastructure.
The Dodai Model
At its core, Dodai is an infrastructure company that sells vehicles. The startup assembles electric motorcycles locally at its Addis Ababa facility and feeds them into a proprietary battery-swapping network. Instead of waiting hours for a battery to charge, riders pull up to a station and exchange a depleted battery for a fully charged one in minutes.
This model directly targets the commercial rider segment that dominates African urban transport: delivery drivers and motorcycle taxi operators who rely on maximum uptime to earn a living. According to the company, drivers who switch from fuel-powered motorcycles to Dodai e-bikes reduce fuel and maintenance costs by between 80–90%.
“Many e-mobility solutions imported from developed markets are poorly suited to these conditions, and remain unaffordable or impractical for most users,” Yuma Sasaki, Dodai’s founder and CEO, said.
The company’s electric motorcycles are priced at around 150,000 Ethiopian birr (approximately $1,170), with financing partnerships through microfinance institution Vision Fund enabling monthly payment plans starting at 8,000 birr ($62.50).
Why Ethiopia
Ethiopia is emerging as one of the world’s most aggressive adopters of electric vehicle policy. In January 2024, the government became the first country to ban the import of internal combustion engine vehicles — a move driven less by climate idealism than by hard economic arithmetic.
The country spends over $4.5 billion annually on fuel imports. With a default on sovereign bonds in 2023 and a $3.4 billion IMF support package in 2024, reducing foreign currency drain became an urgent fiscal priority. Electrification offered a path to energy sovereignty, since Ethiopia’s electricity is overwhelmingly renewable — approximately 90% from hydroelectric generation.
The government accompanied the import ban with steep tariff incentives. Fully assembled EVs face a 15% import tax, semi-assembled vehicles and parts are taxed at 5%, and completely knocked-down kits assembled in Ethiopia are exempt. Ethiopia aims to increase EV numbers from approximately 100,000 today to 500,000 within the next decade.
This policy landscape created the structural tailwinds behind Dodai’s growth. Sasaki described Ethiopia as a “blue ocean” with limited competition, noting that while Nigeria and Kenya are attractive, they are also crowded.
A Competitive Landscape
Dodai is not alone in pursuing Africa’s electric two-wheeler opportunity. The market has drawn significant capital and competitors in recent years.
Spiro, a pan-African operator, raised $150 million across two rounds in 2025 and early 2026. The Kenya-based company has deployed more than 80,000 electric motorcycles, circulated over 300,000 batteries, and completed over 30 million battery swaps across six countries.
Ampersand, focused on Rwanda and East Africa, secured a $7 million facility from BII in 2025 and aims to double its battery fleet by early 2026. ARC Ride, headquartered in Kenya, received $5 million from BII for its Nairobi-based battery-swapping network.
What distinguishes Dodai, beyond its Ethiopia focus, is the density of its planned infrastructure. The company’s three-year target of 1,000 battery-swapping stations in Addis Ababa alone would make it one of the most concentrated e-mobility networks in Africa. By comparison, Spiro’s 2,500 stations serve eight countries.
Dodai also competes on price. At $1,170–$1,800 per unit, its motorcycles are priced competitively with Chinese entrants such as Yadea and Transsion, though slightly above some rivals on a pure sticker-price basis. Sasaki’s argument is that the integrated package — reliable lithium-ion batteries, registration support through a partnership with GPS provider Beatrix, and battery-swapping access — justifies the premium.
The BII Bet
British International Investment’s participation represents a notable vote of confidence. The UK development finance institution, which recently launched a £9 billion five-year Africa strategy, has made clean mobility a priority within its climate finance allocation.
“Ethiopia is emerging as one of Africa’s most compelling frontier markets for the clean mobility transition, where the right capital can unlock outsized impact and long-term value,” said Leslie Maasdorp, CEO of BII, in a statement included in the funding announcement. “BII’s investment will support Dodai to scale critical e-mobility and battery-swapping infrastructure and accelerate the development of a commercial market for electric motorbikes. By expanding access to affordable transport, Dodai is empowering entrepreneurs, creating jobs, and helping build a stronger, more competitive urban economy in Ethiopia.”
BII has been systematically backing electric two-wheeler platforms across East Africa. Beyond Dodai, the institution has funded ARC Ride’s rollout of 5,000 electric two-wheelers in Kenya and supported Ampersand’s battery fleet expansion, signalling a portfolio approach to building e-mobility infrastructure across the region.
The Japanese Connection
Dodai’s capital structure remains notably Japanese-led, reflecting Sasaki’s background and investor network. After graduating from the University of Tokyo, Sasaki worked at a major Japanese oil and gas company, then moved into solar energy in West Africa before returning to Japan to become a founding member and chief business officer at Luup, a Tokyo-based e-mobility startup valued at between $400 million and $500 million.
This blend of frontier-market operating experience and Japanese venture-building has shaped Dodai’s investor syndicate. UTokyo Innovation Platform, Nagase & Co., and Value Chain Innovation Fund bring patient capital typical of Japanese corporate venture investing — longer time horizons and tolerance for infrastructure-heavy business models.
Sasaki’s conviction that Ethiopia’s difficulty would deter competitors has so far proven sound. “There are markets people avoid,” he said in January. “Nigeria and Kenya are attractive but crowded. Ethiopia and the DRC are large but difficult, with fewer competitors. That means more impact if we succeed”.
Constraints and Execution Risk
Dodai’s growth ambitions face significant headwinds. Ethiopia’s business environment remains challenging: customs officials unfamiliar with electric components can take over three weeks to clear shipments, motorcycle registration processes can extend to six months, and supply chain disruptions are frequent.
The company has navigated these constraints creatively. Its partnership with Beatrix, one of the few authorised GPS providers in Ethiopia, allows Dodai to subsidise number plate costs and reduce registration times from six months to as little as two for delivery companies. Sasaki previously estimated that in a more stable regulatory environment, Dodai could have deployed 5,000 bikes rather than the 2,000 it has achieved to date.
Electricity access also remains uneven. World Bank data places Ethiopia’s electrification rate in the mid-50% range, with reliable grid supply concentrated in urban centres. For a battery-swapping model that depends on consistent power to charge batteries at stations, this represents a structural risk that will require diesel or solar backup at certain locations.
Competition is intensifying. Chinese manufacturers including Yadea and Transsion have entered Ethiopia’s market, competing primarily on price. Dodai’s response — emphasising lithium-ion battery quality over cheaper lead-acid alternatives, and integrating registration and financing support — will be tested as the market matures.
The Road Ahead
With the Series A proceeds, Dodai outlined an aggressive expansion roadmap. Over the next 12 months, the company targets 3,000 active battery-swapping users supported by 30 stations across Addis Ababa. Within three years, it aims to reach 30,000 users and 1,000 battery-swapping stations in the capital, before expanding into other fast-growing urban markets, including Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire), Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo), and Accra (Ghana).
“This investment reflects growing confidence from international investors in our team’s ability to turn real-world challenges into opportunities to solve,” said Hilina Legesse, SVP and Head of Corporate at Dodai. “In just two years, we have deployed over 2,000 electric motorcycles, enabling more than 2,000 riders to earn a living. From overnight assembly to building operations from the ground up, every constraint became something we chose to take on and solve with our team and partners on the ground. We will now accelerate and scale this impact even further.”
The international expansion timeline remains conditional. Each target market — Côte d’Ivoire, DRC, Ghana — presents its own regulatory frameworks, competitive dynamics, and infrastructure challenges. Dodai will need to replicate its Ethiopian playbook in environments where it lacks first-mover advantage and local regulatory relationships.
Dodai’s Series A will be scrutinised as a test case for whether infrastructure-heavy e-mobility models can scale in Africa’s more challenging markets. The company sits at the intersection of several converging trends: governments pushing transport electrification through import bans and tariff incentives, rising fuel costs making electric alternatives increasingly competitive, and development finance institutions allocating record capital to climate-aligned infrastructure.
The question is whether Dodai’s integrated approach — assembling vehicles, financing customers, operating charging infrastructure, and managing battery logistics — can achieve the unit economics required for sustainable growth. Sasaki has been transparent that the company is “prioritising network expansion and utilisation over short-term profitability,” a posture that the Series A capital will sustain for the next phase.
As Ethiopia’s EV market moves from policy experiment to commercial reality, Dodai’s ability to execute on its infrastructure targets — and eventually demonstrate a path to profitability — will determine whether it remains Ethiopia’s fastest-growing EV company or becomes a case study in the limits of first-mover advantage.