Mutare, Zimbabwe – Daires Mutamangira was ferrying a buyer and groceries on her electrical tricycle alongside a dusty and unpaved footpath when visitors police arrested her in jap 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 informed Al Jazeera.
“I by no means thought they might be that merciless contemplating I used to be driving on the outskirts of the purchasing centre and much away from the freeway.”
Her expertise displays a rising police crackdown on e-tricycles in rural areas, equivalent 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 residing.
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 earnings
Mutamangira is amongst 40 girls who obtained an e-tricycle, often called 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 recent produce, equivalent to bananas, tomatoes and onions, from their farms to the freeway for loading onto vans sure for Mutare or the capital Harare. Additionally they depend on e-tricycles to move groceries and farm items.
Mutamangira mentioned she transports items for a payment.
“In a great month, I made a revenue of about $250. My husband is unemployed, so I’m the breadwinner,” she mentioned 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 persistent scarcity of ambulances and in rural areas like Hauna there’s usually just one ambulance, which is steadily out of service.
Supported by Mobility for Africa, an area 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 is not only a supply of earnings however a logo of financial empowerment and independence.
“It feels good as a lady 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 mentioned.
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, all of a sudden began impounding e-tricycles. They demanded registration and driving licences.
Zimbabwe nonetheless depends on Rhodesian-era legal guidelines to control visitors. The authorities classify e-tricycles beneath 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 inside combustion engine tricycles and the slow-speed e-tricycles operated by girls in rural areas.
Sikhangezile Dube, Mobility for Africa’s Hauna web site coordinator, mentioned that after police impounded a number of of their e-tricycles, they engaged with the authorities however have been informed to adjust to the regulation.
“We needed to cease operations,” she mentioned.
“In June 2025, we submitted our papers to the Zimbabwe Income Authority and the Central Car Registry to register a few of our e-tricycles. However there was no progress.”
Dube mentioned that when police impound tricycles, they’ll solely launch them after fee of a $90 tremendous.
Mutamangira mentioned the police pressured her to cease working, leaving her struggling to make ends meet.
“It was robust. I grappled with paying faculty charges. We needed to alter our existence. As a substitute of three meals a day, we have been having one,” she mentioned.
Rejoice Mandipedza, one other e-tricycle operator from Hauna, mentioned the police crackdown left her with huge debt.
“Money owed collected from faculty and leases. This was my solely supply of earnings,” she mentioned.
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 mentioned police usually observe them into their neighbourhoods and raid purchasing 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 purchasing centre when there’s a buyer,” she mentioned.
This cat-and-mouse recreation with the police has resulted in dwindling incomes. Each Mutamangira and Mandipedza mentioned they’re fortunate in the event that they pocket $70 revenue a month today.
“I’m surviving on a hand-to-mouth foundation. I can not even save sufficient for the licences,” she mentioned.
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,” mentioned 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 colleges 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 modifications.
In a letter seen by Al Jazeera addressed to Mobility for Africa in January 2025, Transport Ministry Secretary Pleasure Makumbe mentioned the startup’s request for lowered licence and registration charges was into account. In one other letter addressed to the police, Makumbe requested a licence waiver for girls utilizing e-tricycles on rural roads linking households, clinics and colleges.
However the police in Hauna and Chipinge have continued arresting girls driving on rural roads.
For a rural girl to be anticipated to journey to a serious city to register a low-speed e-tricycle, qualify for a motorbike licence, and pay tons of of {dollars} in charges and transport prices makes it not possible, mentioned Shantha Bloemen, founding father of Mobility for Africa.
“It creates boundaries to entry for the meant market—rural communities—who’re already dealing with enormous challenges to maneuver their produce and entry providers,” she informed Al Jazeera.
Bloemen mentioned that with the world shifting to inexperienced transport, present transport insurance policies and laws require evaluate.
“We have to transfer past most of the historic guidelines that have been meant to limit the motion of individuals in Zimbabwe and rethink transport so it might probably profit the bulk and assist allow financial improvement, particularly for small-scale farmers,” she mentioned.
Minister of State for Manicaland Province, Misheck Mugadza, mentioned he visited certainly one 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 mentioned.
Again in Hauna, Mutamangira is interesting to the federal government to fast-track modifications to the regulation to allow them to function freely.
“For us to conform, the charges should be reasonably priced. My household relies on this job,” she mentioned.
