Kofa has built a battery-swapping network across Ghana that provides portable electricity for homes, business and electric motorcycles.
The Ghana-based startup raised $3.25 million in equity, in a round co-led by early-stage clean energy investor E3 Capital and Injaro Investment Advisors to expand across Ghana and Kenya. Kofa secured $4.3 million in debt and $590,000 in grants from the Shell Foundation and the UK Government’s Transforming Energy Access, or TEA, platform. Richard Thwaites, founder of energy-storage developer Penso Power, also participated.
Battery power
Batteries are distributing energy access in parts of Africa where grid power is unreliable or nonexistent. Kofa teamed up with British clean energy-focused impact investor PASH Global last year in a £6.2 million ($8.1 million) effort to deploy 6,000 batteries and 100 swap stations, as well as e-bike financing, in Ghana. Shell Foundation and TEA provided a combined £3.8 million ($4.9 million).
Kofa says it handles over 200 battery swaps daily, at an average two minutes per swap. The company has a “unique ability to build not just a product but an entire ecosystem to drive capital efficiency” and “the adoption of clean energy at scale,” said E3 Capital’s Andrew Darge.
Another early player in battery swapping in West Africa, MOPO, raised $10 million in 2023 from CrossBoundary.
