$50 million to go the extra mile

Spiro, the electric mobility company with an operational hub in Kenya, has raised $50 million in debt financing, taking a leaf from the playbook of asset-heavy businesses with logistics operations. Flush with capital, including its $100 million raise in October 2025, the company plans to expand across the continent.

Since 2020, Spiro has announced several fundraises totalling $330 million in debt and equity financing. For the kind of business the e-mobility startup runs, Spiro deploys debt for operational expenses tied to predictable, revenue-linked assets, such as warehousing and dealership lots, allowing it to pay back loans when there's a break-even. 

Equity capital allows the company to absorb marginal losses on its production capacity (patient capital), fund research and development (R&D), and hire more talent—costs that do not guarantee immediate revenue but bring long-term scale. A debt-only funding shows Spiro's business maturity and capacity for immediate revenue generation.

Since its founding in 2019, Spiro has expanded to multiple African countries, including Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Nigeria, Benin, and Togo, and now controls 40 dealerships on the continent. The company deploys over 80,000 e-bikes across Africa, after scaling its manufacturing capacity to support this. Its Kenyan facility alone is capable of producing 50,000 units annually.

This is a major comeuppance from Spiro's early days. In January 2024, Spiro had deployed only 10,000 e-bikes in far fewer African markets. Today, the company, one of the most visible e-bike producers on the continent, now has the production scale and infrastructure to match; Spiro operates at least 2,500 battery-swapping stations in Africa, giving riders proximity to access.

While debt financing will power further growth for Spiro's expansion plans, some of the capital could trickle to manufacturing. Much of its kit is still being manufactured in China and shipped to Africa as completely-knocked-down (CKD) units, and partially, semi-knocked-down (SKD) assembly. 

With deeper capital, is Spiro finally ready to build Africa's e-mobility future from the ground up, where it can control its production line, supply, and cost margins? The answer is likely not, but more money coming into the ecosystem is always a great signal for posturing.

The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) has signalled that it may be preparing a massive regulatory reset in Kenya’s financial sector. The regulator has invited consultants to review the Central Bank Act and the Banking Act, the two laws that define the bank's powers, including what it can regulate and how it can do that.

Why is the CBK doing this? Kenya's fintech ecosystem has outgrown the law. Digital lenders were only brought formally under supervision in 2022 after public outrage, and payments and remittance startups often operate under patchwork approvals. This review seems like an attempt to close those grey areas fintechs operate in before they widen further.

What grey areas? CBK regulates banks and digital lenders. But fintechs that don’t quite fit into those buckets of direct transfers or withdrawals, like remittance startups, are on a collision course. The consequences are evident in delays in licencing firms like Chipper Cash, frozen accounts by agencies such as the Financial Reporting Centre and Asset Recovery Authority, and, in 2022, a directive ordering banks and mobile money operators to cut links with certain fintechs operating without authorisation.

Is this the same as the payment licence move? In 2024, Kenya opened up more clearly to fintech payment licences under existing frameworks. That was a step, but this new review goes deeper. If implemented, updated laws could expand CBK’s mandate over fintech supervision and may introduce clearer licencing pathways and compliance requirements tailored specifically to fintech business models.

Fines in Kenya’s banking sector are not routine, at least not at scale. In 2024, the Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) fined 11 commercial lenders for breaches tied to lending, capital adequacy and governance, collecting KES 191 million ($1.48 million) in penalties; before that, the last major public sweep was in 2018, when five big banks were hit with KES 392.5 million ($3 million) in fines over the National Youth Service scandal.

Guaranty Trust Bank Kenya (GTBank Kenya), the subsidiary of the Nigerian tier-1 lender, has found itself in regulatory crosshairs.

On Tuesday, the Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK), the country's competition watchdog, fined GTBank Kenya KES 33.18 million ($257,000) and ordered the bank to refund KES 13.21 million ($102,000) to ASL, its corporate client since 2001.

The regulator is sending banks a blunt memo: how you treat a locked‑in corporate borrower is now a competition issue, not just a contractual spat.

Between the lines: The case began as a routine renewal of 2021 facilities: overdrafts, letters of credit, guarantees, working‑capital lines. Instead, ASL was met with months of silence, a three‑month stopgap extension, reduced limits (one trading line cut from $5.5 million to $3.5 million and later slashed by another $3 million), and fresh security demands. 

When ASL decided to move to I&M Bank, another Kenyan lender, GTBank issued a default notice, backdated default interest to August 2023, and levied KES 13.2 million ($102,000) in charges as the client scrambled to clear overdrafts of KES 417.8 million ($3.2 million) and $197,802 to avoid disruption. 

In its ruling, CAK’s language is damning: “false and misleading representations,” “unconscionable conduct,” and abuse of “superior bargaining power” by presenting materially-altered terms as standard renewals. 

GT Bank insists everything sat within its offer letters and risk appetite. CAK’s response is the real story: in a market where the CBK usually polices capital and prudential risk, competition law is now being weaponised to police process, leverage, and opacity in corporate lending. 

If this precedent holds, banks’ once‑discreet restructuring tactics may start reading like case studies for regulators and rival lenders.

Source:

* Data as of 06.00 AM WAT, February 25, 2026.

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