Estonian mobility tech giant, Bolt, has announced that it will be onboarding 200,000 drivers this year as it seeks to expand into many cities across Africa.
This is part of its plan cited in its recent $711 million raise which took its valuation to 7.4 billion euros ($8.38 billion).
In a recent interview of Bolt’s Africa regional director, Paddy Partridge with TechCrunch, he stated that the firm “has experienced a spike in on-demand transportation services, and that the current drivers – especially in Ghana and Nigeria where “there’s a real shortage of cars” – are not enough to meet this growth.”
Founded in 2013, Bolt is an Estonian mobility company that offers vehicle for hire, micromobility, car-sharing, and food delivery services headquartered in Tallinn and operating in over 300 cities in 45 countries in Europe, Africa, Western Asia, and Latin America.
Bolt claims it currently has over 700,000 drivers catering to about 40 million riders across its existing seven markets in Africa.
“One of the challenges we have with our growth at the moment is that on the ride-hailing side, the demand for our services is growing faster than we’re able to onboard drivers, particularly in West and Southern Africa. We’re just not able to continue keeping up with that growth because drivers are not able to access vehicles at an affordable rate,” said Partridge.
“We are having to find ways to really attract as many drivers as we can… like make their earnings potential as good as possible so that we can bring people (drivers) onto our platform…to solve this issue around access to cars.”
The mobility tech company has been coming up with strategies to address this challenge. It recently announced a partnership with Metro Africa Express (MAX) to expand the Bolt vehicle financing program in Nigeria. The program enables ride-hailing drivers to own vehicles with low equity repayment, support and improve earnings for drivers while allowing them to maintain flexibility as vehicle owners. The program involves financing for 10,000 energy-efficient vehicles (both electric and gas-powered).
Bolt also announced that it is also planning to enter at least two new markets within the North and West Africa regions before the end of 2022. Its other current markets are Tunisia, Tanzania and Uganda.
