Solar E-Cycles: Empowering People

Hawkers within Nairobi have been severely affected by the current COVID-19 pandemic. With populations in lock down, hawkers have experienced huge decreases in revenue due to reduced footfall. Their businesses are completely informal and thus have no access to credit or other benefits that formal employment would provide. Following explicit goodwill from the government - both Central and the Nairobi Metropolitan Area administration, we are exploring providing hawkers with safe and secure environments where they can sell their wares. Solar E-Cycles Kenya will provide 50 solar-powered tricycles that will serve as mobile shops and provide hawkers with mobility from their homes to the designated areas of trading. Solar E-Cycles Kenya will track the maintenance and operational cost of running a fleet of this scale. We will use this data to improve the tricycles components and organisation's customer support practice. We are also keen to track the impact that providing hawkers with access to mobility as a well as a safe and secure trading environment will provide. Lastly, we will use this information to inform our go-to market strategy to serve the 90,000 members of the National Hawkers' Association.