Kenya wants to build 150,000 electric vehicles a year — and just signed the first big piece of paper

Kenya's government and Endelevu Enterprise Corporation have signed a memorandum to build two electric-vehicle assembly plants with a combined capacity of 150,000 vehicles a year — 50,000 cars and 100,000 two-wheelers and light vehicles — plus 1,000 solar-powered charging hubs and a digital platform for up to 100,000 EVs. The government projects about 2,000 direct jobs, more than 20,000 indirect ones, and up to 80,000 fleet-management opportunities, with President William Ruto pitching Kenya as East Africa's EV manufacturing hub. A candid note: this is a memorandum of understanding, not a signed contract — financing, factory locations, and timelines are not yet public, and the headline KSh390 billion (about $3 billion) figure is the proposed scale, not money deployed. Still, Kenya already had 235 charging stations last year, second in Africa only to Egypt.