Mutare, Zimbabwe – Daires Mutamangira was ferrying a buyer and groceries on her electrical tricycle alongside a dusty and unpaved footpath when site visitors police arrested her in japanese Zimbabwe final month.
The officers demanded to see the e-tricycle’s registration and her driver’s licence, which she couldn’t produce. She tried to barter, however they fined her $15 on the spot.
“It was scary,” she advised Al Jazeera.
“I by no means thought they’d be that merciless contemplating I used to be driving on the outskirts of the buying centre and much away from the freeway.”
Her expertise displays a rising police crackdown on e-tricycles in rural areas, comparable to Hauna and Chipinge in Manicaland Province.
Annual registration and licensing prices quantity to almost $500, far past the attain of the 300 rural girls with e-tricycles, most of whom are single moms and widows attempting to make a dwelling.
Powered by lithium batteries and reaching a most velocity of 25km per hour, the e-tricycles have been launched throughout the nation to empower girls in rural areas.
Supply of revenue
Mutamangira is amongst 40 girls who acquired an e-tricycle, often known as Hamba, a Shona phrase that loosely interprets to “go”, in Could 2024 to run a small transport enterprise in Hauna. The e-tricycle can carry items weighing as much as 450kg.
That’s notably useful in Hauna, a farming group about 55 kilometres from Zimbabwe’s third-largest metropolis, Mutare. Farmers want to maneuver contemporary produce, comparable to bananas, tomatoes and onions, from their farms to the freeway for loading onto vehicles sure for Mutare or the capital Harare. Additionally they depend on e-tricycles to move groceries and farm items.
Mutamangira stated she transports items for a payment.
“In a superb month, I made a revenue of about $250. My husband is unemployed, so I’m the breadwinner,” she stated smiling.
She pays all of the family payments and feeds and garments the couple’s 4 kids.
In emergencies, the group makes use of e-tricycles as makeshift ambulances to move girls in labour and the sick to the close by hospital. Zimbabwe faces a continual scarcity of ambulances and in rural areas like Hauna there’s typically just one ambulance, which is regularly out of service.
Supported by Mobility for Africa, a neighborhood startup, the ladies pay a small payment to swap batteries on the Hauna charging centre and one other payment for the tricycle over a set interval till it turns into theirs.
To Mutamangira, the e-tricycle isn’t just a supply of revenue however an emblem of financial empowerment and independence.
“It feels good as a girl to contribute financially to my marriage. I earn respect from my husband as a result of I’m bringing one thing to the desk and never only a stay-at-home mother or father,” she stated.
Police crackdown crippling girls’s companies
Every part modified in February 2025. The police, who had beforehand allowed the ladies to function freely in Hauna and Chipinge, immediately began impounding e-tricycles. They demanded registration and driving licences.
Zimbabwe nonetheless depends on Rhodesian-era legal guidelines to control site visitors. The authorities classify e-tricycles below the motorbike class, requiring drivers to have licences, registration and permits to function on each city and rural roads. However the legal guidelines make no distinction between inner combustion engine tricycles and the slow-speed e-tricycles operated by girls in rural areas.
Sikhangezile Dube, Mobility for Africa’s Hauna website coordinator, stated that after police impounded a number of of their e-tricycles, they engaged with the authorities however have been advised to adjust to the regulation.
“We needed to cease operations,” she stated.
“In June 2025, we submitted our papers to the Zimbabwe Income Authority and the Central Automobile Registry to register a few of our e-tricycles. However there was no progress.”
Dube stated that when police impound tricycles, they’ll solely launch them after cost of a $90 advantageous.
Mutamangira stated the police pressured her to cease working, leaving her struggling to make ends meet.
“It was robust. I grappled with paying college charges. We needed to alter our existence. As an alternative of three meals a day, we have been having one,” she stated.
Rejoice Mandipedza, one other e-tricycle operator from Hauna, stated the police crackdown left her with huge debt.
“Money owed collected from college and leases. This was my solely supply of revenue,” she stated.
After a three-month shutdown in 2025, the ladies have been courageous sufficient to renew operations. However since then, the police have intensified their crackdown on e-tricycles.
Mandipedza stated police typically observe them into their neighbourhoods and raid buying centres the place they function and demand to see licences and registrations.
“We have now resorted to parking our e-tricycles in a hidden place and solely bringing them to the buying centre when there’s a buyer,” she stated.
This cat-and-mouse recreation with the police has resulted in dwindling incomes. Each Mutamangira and Mandipedza stated they’re fortunate in the event that they pocket $70 revenue a month nowadays.
“I’m surviving on a hand-to-mouth foundation. I can not even save sufficient for the licences,” she stated.
The ladies want practically $500 for a driver’s licence, e-tricycle registration charges, car licence and insurance coverage.
“That is simply an excessive amount of. I can not afford it,” stated Mandipedza.
Bureaucracies complicate girls’s lobbying efforts
Mutamangira and her colleagues have been lobbying the federal government to introduce a brand new regulation that recognises how their slow-speed, clear tricycles enhance mobility in rural areas. They’ve proposed lowering the price of buying licences and permits.
However it’s not that easy. The Ministry of Transport regulates highways, whereas Rural District Councils regulate tertiary roads that result in faculties and clinics in rural areas. The Ministry of Finance units the licence and car charges. The police implement solely the regulation.
Between 2024 and 2025, Mobility for Africa wrote a number of letters to the Finance Ministry proposing a discount in charges, and to the Ministry of Transport requesting regulatory adjustments.
In a letter seen by Al Jazeera addressed to Mobility for Africa in January 2025, Transport Ministry Secretary Pleasure Makumbe stated the startup’s request for diminished licence and registration charges was into account. In one other letter addressed to the police, Makumbe requested a licence waiver for ladies utilizing e-tricycles on rural roads linking households, clinics and faculties.
However the police in Hauna and Chipinge have continued arresting girls driving on rural roads.
For a rural lady to be anticipated to journey to a serious city to register a low-speed e-tricycle, qualify for a motorbike licence, and pay a whole bunch of {dollars} in charges and transport prices makes it unattainable, stated Shantha Bloemen, founding father of Mobility for Africa.
“It creates limitations to entry for the supposed market—rural communities—who’re already going through enormous challenges to maneuver their produce and entry companies,” she advised Al Jazeera.
Bloemen stated that with the world shifting to inexperienced transport, present transport insurance policies and rules require assessment.
“We have to transfer past lots of the historic guidelines that have been supposed to limit the motion of individuals in Zimbabwe and rethink transport so it could profit the bulk and assist allow financial improvement, particularly for small-scale farmers,” she stated.
Minister of State for Manicaland Province, Misheck Mugadza, stated he visited one in every of Mobility for Africa’s websites with Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube in 2025 and promised to deal with the difficulty.
“I’m not conscious that that is nonetheless taking place. I assumed they sorted it out,” he stated.
Again in Hauna, Mutamangira is interesting to the federal government to fast-track adjustments to the regulation to allow them to function freely.
“For us to conform, the charges have to be inexpensive. My household depends upon this job,” she stated.
