Keeling Curve

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BasiGo was founded in April 2021 with the mission to create the future of clean, electric public transport in Africa.

Buses are the heart of the mobility ecosystem in Africa, accounting for over 40% of all passenger trips. But diesel buses also present a major challenge. The cost of diesel fuel in most African countries has doubled in the past 2 years.  And unfiltered tailpipe emissions from diesel buses are one of the largest sources of PM2.5 emissions poisoning the air in African cities.

Meanwhile, East Africa generates over 70% of its electricity
from renewables, and countries like Kenya had over 300 GWh of surplus renewable energy on its grid in 2022. Because of East Africa's high renewable energy percentage, replacing a single diesel bus with electric would mitigate 30-50 Tonnes of CO2 emissions, more than almost anywhere else in the world.

BasiGo's mission is to realize this environmental impact through a model that removes the primary barriers to E-bus adoption in East Africa:
1) BasiGo sources state-of-the-art, cost-efficient electric buses from leading OEMs in Asia and then locally assembles these buses to reduce import duties. 
2) BasiGo provides guaranteed nightly recharging and servicing on all e-buses at our DC Fast Charging depots located directly along operator routes.
3) BasiGo offers electric buses through a unique, mileage-based leasing model called Pay-As-You-Drive. This model eliminates the high upfront cost barrier while offering dramatically higher ROI for operators who adopt E-Buses.

BasiGo has 19 Electric Buses in operation in Nairobi Kenya representing the largest fleet of Electric Buses in all of sub-Saharan Africa. Each month, the fleet travels 120,000km, carries 200,000 passengers, and mitigates 50 Tonnes of CO2e.  Due to the performance of these buses, BasiGo has received over 270 deposits in just 2 months from bus operators eager to get on the waiting list for an electric bus.

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BasiGo enables adoption of electric buses in Africa's informal bus sector, through a novel pay-per-mile battery financing model.

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Climate change is an issue of environmental justice. The history of the climate change is that wealthy, industrialized countries created the crisis, while the poorest countries in the global south have paid the price. For example,t he United States has emitted over a quarter of all greenhouse gases since the 1750s, while the entire continent of Africa has emitted only about 3%. That discrepancy remains decades away from convergence. Meanwhile, the most drastic effects of climate change are a daily reality for the people of equatorial Africa. 

In the race to mitigate the worst impact the worst effects of climate change, a new inequality has arisen. With Africa today representing only a small percentage of net emissions, the continent stands to receive only a fraction of the trillions of dollars in global investment being activated to achieve a net zero future. This is even the case in technology areas where an investment in technology transfer to Africa stands to more immediate and significant marginal impact on emissions than a similar technology in the developed world. Public transport is a great example of this.

BasiGo is looking to create a future where clean, electric buses and trucks are the majority of commercial vehicles on the roads of East Africa. By leveraging the fact that over 70% of the electricity in the region comes from renewables, BasiGo seeks nothing less than to make East Africa a global leader in inclusive, sustainable transit. In a climate movement that typically views African projects as charity and thus underinvests in climate mitigation in Africa, we argue that electrification of transit has more immediate and consequential impact in this region compared to transit electrification projects in developed countries where the grid has achieved nothing close to East Africa's renewable generation percentage.

Our team is over 90% African and our project directly impacts the quality of life of people in African cities. Through our business model, we aim to empower the people in this region through significant climate funding in a scalable project that the region is eager to see succeed.

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