Keeping Tomatoes Cold Without a Grid
A solar-powered cold room in a Kisumu market stops a third of the tomatoes from rotting. Achieng visits, meets the traders who rent space by the crate, and runs the numbers.
The Boda Boda Goes Electric
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Show notes
Electric motorbike taxis in Nairobi
Kenya has more than a million motorbike taxis, and a handful of companies are trying to make them electric. Achieng spends a day with driver Kevin Odhiambo, follows him through three battery swaps, and sits with the startup's operations lead to work through the numbers.
- What a driver actually saves per day compared with petrol
- How the battery swap network is laid out across the city
- Who owns the battery and what happens when it ages
- The grid question: where the electricity really comes from
- Achieng's verdict on whether this scales beyond Nairobi
Next episode: cold storage for tomatoes.
Transcript
Habari, and welcome to Sun, Soil and Silicon. I am Achieng Otieno, and this is the show about climate technology that is actually being built, not just announced. Today we are on the back of a motorbike. Kenya has well over a million boda boda taxis, nearly all of them petrol, and a few companies are betting they can make them electric. I spent a day with a driver called Kevin, rode along for three battery swaps, and then sat down with the company to ask the question everyone skips: does Kevin make more money, or does the startup? We also look at where the electricity comes from and what happens to the batteries when they get old. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts. Helmets on, let's ride.
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