Paddy Partridge: Building Sustainable Solutions for Africa’s Mobility Sector through Bolt

Since the introduction of ride-hailing in Africa, the mobility sector has seen tremendous growth, primarily due to technological innovations by players in the industry. Bolt has since become the e-hailing market leader and has established its presence in seven African countries and over 70 cities. In this interview, Bolt’s Regional Director for Africa and the Middle East, Paddy Partridge, speaks on the company’s expansion plans, sustainable and innovative solutions the platform is looking to develop on the continent. Chiemelie Ezeobi brings excerpts

Since the launch of Bolt in Africa, you have established your presence in seven countries, driving the sector and economy towards growth. What are the potential market expansion plans for Bolt?

In the African markets we operate, we see an opportunity for growth, especially in enhancing our quality of services and providing quicker access for riders, leveraging the continent’s growing infrastructure and increased internet access. For example, in Nigeria, we presently operate in over 30 cities with plans to expand to other cities.

We also actively research new markets and have put plans to announce two to three new countries before the end of the year. Our goal is to improve the convenience and affordability of transport across the region. We continue to focus our efforts on providing the best value proposition for our drivers and riders. We further constantly prioritise investing in initiatives that can foster socio-economic benefits to the markets we serve.

What new products and solutions are you looking to develop within the continent to enhance the company’s growth further?

We recently launched Bolt Food in several African markets, including South Africa, Kenya and Ghana, with plans to begin operations in Nigeria soon. Bolt Food SA currently enlists 700 active restaurant partners and 2,500 courier partners in Cape Town to expand to Johannesburg. Our focus with Bolt food is on improving the range of restaurants we work with and the cities we are present in to provide customer satisfaction continuously.

Drivers are also a significant part of our business operations, and we constantly look for ways to improve their overall experience. In Nigeria, we launched an early withdrawal option for drivers to withdraw cash on card trips to enhance their liquidity and welfare.

Furthermore, earlier this year, we launched a #Drive4WITech, a programme for young women to foster diversity and participation in the Technology industry. The aim was to bridge the gap and create more opportunities for gender inclusion in the sector by offering internship opportunities in Operations, Engineering, and Product Design.

Africa experiences a myriad of challenges from its industries to the larger society, affecting economic growth. How is Bolt looking to create an impact across the mobility and transport sectors?

One of our goals is to make urban transport safer, more convenient, and more responsible. We are set on becoming the most significant micro-mobility player in Europe, investing over 100M Euros in electric scooters and bikes. In some African cities, we also see an opportunity to roll out other forms of micro-mobility and hope to have them cropping up over the next 6-12 months.

We also have many exciting product enhancements in the pipeline to further improve the quality of service to drivers and riders.

We are also looking to impact by providing accessible ways to earn money in economies where unemployment rates are remarkably high. We have over 700,000 drivers earning via our platform in Africa, with plans to grow this in the next few months.

Africa’s population continues to skyrocket. As much as this provides more market for ride-hailing, it can also translate to higher levels of gas emission. What are Bolt’s plans for eco-friendly transportation on the continent? Do you foresee the introduction of electric vehicles soon, and do you think the continent is ready?

Bolt has a Green Plan on how we make mobility more environmentally sustainable. This consists of offsetting our rides, accelerating the transition to electric mobility and reducing the ecological footprint of our offices. Bolt is still early in this journey in Africa, but we believe we have a significant role in accelerating the transition to electric vehicles.

We recently launched our first green category in Africa in Nairobi using electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid cars. We have also recently launched electric bikes and bicycles as a core part of our food delivery service in Kenya and South Africa, with e-bicycles integrated into the courier modes of transport.

We also understand that some African markets are more ready than others in terms of costing infrastructure, financing partners for EVs, import costs of EVs and cost of electricity. In general, we are increasingly seeing a solid business case for our drivers, especially those using motorbikes, to transition over to electric vehicles.

We are establishing partnerships for better financing solutions for our drivers so that they can afford electric cars. We are also engaging government on better incentivising the import and adoption of EVs versus petroleum-based vehicles.

Although Africa’s economy has recently been among the fastest-growing, the continent still has a high percentage of unemployed people. Are there plans to increase earning potentials for drivers in Africa?

Growing driver earnings is a priority for us as we intend to add and retain more drivers on our platform. We aim to do this in a few ways – we are actively driving up utilisation (the rides a driver can do per hour) by aggressively investing in rider growth and ensuring our value proposition to riders is the best in the market. We also try to make sure our commission levels are competitive in the market and find new ways to reduce the main costs for drivers.

For example, the weekly rental fee for drivers is something we are establishing partnerships for to enable more affordable schemes where drivers can own vehicles. Another example is the Vehicle financing scheme introduced in Nigeria, where our driver-partners get to pay in instalments at a reduced rate while they own the cars.