Ethiopian electric mobility startup Dodai has raised $13 million in Series A financing, split between $8 million in equity and $5 million in debt, in a round led by British International Investment and a group of Japanese backers.
The company has spent the past three years building in Addis Ababa, a market many investors have long viewed as difficult, and that choice is now starting to attract larger attention.
Dodai’s model is built around local assembly and battery swapping. The company puts together electric motorcycles at its Addis Ababa facility, then feeds them into a network where riders can exchange depleted batteries for charged ones in minutes instead of waiting through long charging cycles.
Dodai says more than 2,000 bikes have already been deployed and that around 100 people work for the company, with 97% of the team Ethiopian.
The startup is targeting commercial riders first, especially delivery workers and motorcycle taxi operators who depend on uptime to earn.
Dodai says switching from fuel-powered bikes can cut fuel and maintenance costs by 80% to 90%, while its bikes are priced around 150,000 Ethiopian birr, or about $1,170, with monthly financing options starting at 8,000 birr through Vision Fund.
That combination matters in a market where affordability and operating downtime often decide whether a rider adopts EVs at all.
The competitive picture is getting busier. Spiro has raised large sums and built a broad regional footprint, while Ampersand and ARC Ride have also drawn development finance support for battery-swapping networks in East Africa.
Dodai is trying to stand apart through density, with a three-year target of 1,000 swap stations in Addis Ababa alone, a scale that would make its network one of the most concentrated on the continent if it gets there.
Dodai is showing how Africa’s e-mobility story is shifting from pilot projects to infrastructure bets. The company is pairing vehicles, financing, registration support, and battery logistics into one system, which gives it more control over adoption than a simple bike seller would have.
That approach can work in markets like Ethiopia, but the hard part will be execution, especially as the company expands into cities such as Abidjan, Kinshasa, and Accra, where it will have to prove the model can travel without losing its local advantage.
-Launch Base Africa