Bolt, a ride-hailing service, plans to invest $530 million in its African operations over the next two years. This expansion would allow the firm to hire and train over 300,000 new drivers and couriers by 2023.
“During the past seven years, we have created a solid team of 500 individuals in Africa, and we remain committed to investing in local communities for the long term,” said Markus Villig, founder and CEO. We will continue to expand our footprint in Africa through this new investment, which has a huge potential to provide new jobs and income opportunities for drivers and couriers at a time when many nations are facing economic hardships.
While visiting Africa with Bolt’s global leadership team, Markus made the comments. The Bolt leadership is traveling to local Bolt teams in South Africa and Kenya, where they will meet with important members of the government, including Kenya’s Prime Minister, CS Musalia Mudavadi, the Gauteng MEC for Economic Development, the Executive Mayor of Cape Town, and the South African Deputy Minister of Trade, Industry, and Competition.
Ireoluwa Obatoki, the regional manager for West and North Africa, asserts that despite Africa’s complexity, Bolt has demonstrated its ability to operate in this particular ecosystem.
We work in markets that present particular difficulties, and by growing our business, we’ll give more individuals the chance to make a good livelihood as drivers while also giving millions of users a secure, dependable, and reasonably priced method to get around their cities. Added was Ireoluwa Obatoki.
The company says that since beginning operations in South Africa in 2016, it has expanded into Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, and Tunisia, serving more than 47 million customers and employing 900,000 drivers.
The company also revealed that it has provided more than 1 billion trips across Africa in just seven years and projects that there will be more than 1 million drivers using the platform by the end of the next six months.
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