Frontier Tech playbook

We are excited to publish the Electric Mobility Pilot playbook, the culmination of a three-year pilot funded by UK International Development through the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. The pilot brought together a consortium including MATT (Colombia), NeoMotion (India) and Kounkuey Design Initiative (Kenya), Ebikes Africa (Kenya) with Jionee Self Help Group as community partner in Nairobi and builds on evidence from the AT2030 programme.

The research, which was largely undertaken In Korogocho, one of Nairobi's largest informal settlements, wheelchair users gave a nickname to the electric third-wheel attachments they had been testing: ndege, the Swahili word for aeroplane. Not because of speed alone, but because of what movement made possible.

The pilot set out to explore whether electric third-wheel attachments, powered devices that convert a manual wheelchair into a three-wheel electric trike, could work in Kenya's informal urban settlements. The technology had been proven in India and Colombia. Whether it could transfer to Nairobi was an open question, and the questions that followed were technical. Could the technology transfer? Would the terrain allow it? Would people adopt it?

The playbook documents the following: what was built, what was learned, and what it takes to do it again. It shows that community-owned hubs are able to provide daily access to powered mobility devices, which can then generate real income for wheelchair users in the community. It shows that local manufacturing and assembly can reduce costs substantially and strengthen the local economy. And it shows that when mobility is unlocked, the economic, social and civic changes that follow are measurable and sustainable. 

Kenya's unmet wheelchair need exceeds 95,000 units annually. Globally, more than 80 million people need a wheelchair they cannot access (WHO, 2023), and in low- and middle-income countries access to assistive technology can be as low as 3 to 5 per cent (WHO and UNICEF, 2022). The playbook makes the case that this is a large, underserved market with a working model, not only a humanitarian gap.