Project Team: Rose Mutiso, Hamna Tariq, Daniel Johansson, June Lukuyu, Audrey Zenner

Project Advisors: Murefu Barasa, Michael Dioha, June Lukuyu, Joel Nana

The Issue

While the US, Europe, and China prepare for rapid Electric Vehicle (EV) adoption, Africa risks being left behind. The drivers of the EV transition in Africa will differ significantly, requiring tailored policies and infrastructure. Mainstream research, including major global EV outlooks, often overlook Africa, focusing narrowly on countries like South Africa. This lack of comprehensive data hampers smart policy and investment decisions across the continent.

Relevance

Comprehensive data and insights are crucial to empower investors with market clarity, enable companies to scale, and equip policymakers to tailor and champion EV agendas effectively. We must close this evidence gap to move beyond anecdotal narratives and provide the data-based foundation Africa needs to fully participate in and benefit from the global electric vehicle revolution.

Our Approach

The Hub leveraged public data sources and innovative analysis to create the first-ever, Africa-wide EV Readiness and EV Impact Indices. This effort addresses the critical data gaps in African EV markets and offers actionable insights to guide policymakers, attract investors, and foster collaboration to drive the adoption and benefits of EVs across Africa. It also demonstrates that, while data scarcity presents challenges to advancing Africa’s EV sector, that scarcity is not insurmountable.

Interactive maps showing continent-wide EV readiness and impact performance are embedded below. A brief summary of key takeaways from our analysis is available here. An article providing additional context into the African EV data gap and how this project tackles these challenges is published in the journal Science here.

Readiness Map

 

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Impact Map

 

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For desktop-optimized versions of these maps, click here.

Footnotes

• Visualization: Created using Tableau Desktop Public Edition, version 2024.1.2.
• Methodology: Full methodologies and data sources are available here.
• Excluded countries: 6 countries are excluded from the EV Readiness Index due to data limitations (Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Libya, Somalia, and South Sudan) and shaded gray. The EV Impact Index covers all 54 African countries.
• How to Use this Map: A few pointers on how to navigate the EV Readiness and EV Impact maps on this page. Note that these are beta versions, and usability will improve in future iterations.
  • Hover over a specific country to see its indicator-level data.
  • When you select a specific indicator to display on the map, the color of the map reflects the overall readiness or impact score, not the score of the indicator you have selected.
  • A blank map means that there is no data in the category you have selected for the specific indicator.
  • If ‘All’ is deselected from any indicator, the map will disappear.
  • The mobile version displays a tableau error code when an indicator category is selected. Once the error code is cleared, the map should display as normal. We are working to remove the error pop-up.
  • When exploring individual indicators, please note that countries missing data for a specific indicator will be displayed with countries in the “low” category for that indicator.
  • Grid reliability data for Algeria, Angola, Cabo Verde, Eswatini, Gabon, and Libya use SAIDI values instead of the standard outage hours from World Bank surveys. See the methodology document for details.
• Acknowledgments: We would like to acknowledge Jake Kincer, a former project team member, and Ben Hinchliffe, our project intern, for their invaluable contributions to this project.
• Questions: To submit questions or edits to this data, please contact info@energyforgrowth.org.