Africa has the lowest per capita car ownership in the world, due to limited access to finance for vehicle purchases. This is a problem that Ladi Delano and Jide Odunsi hope to solve with their start-up Moove Africa.

Ladi Delano (photo, right) and Jide Odunsi (photo, left), are two UK-based Nigerian entrepreneurs who want to democratize mobility in Africa through new technologies. They founded Moove Africa, a start-up offering a digital platform where users and entrepreneurs in the transport sector have access to loan options for the purchase of vehicles. From the London School of Economics to Oxford University to MIT, the entrepreneurial duo has a remarkable academic background.

Ladi Delano, a serial entrepreneur, and Jide Odunsi, a former investment banker at Goldman Sachs and a former management consultant at McKinsey, have a combined 8 years of entrepreneurial experience, with three start-ups launched including Moove Africa. Sharing a passion for African development, they decided to dedicate their experience to this goal.

They officially launched Moove Africa in July 2020 after realizing that the demand for vehicles in Africa far exceeds local production, leaving millions of individuals and businesses to depend on imports of used cars, cars that are mostly not in a good condition. Also, some countries, like Nigeria, have put in place measures that limit car imports to boost local manufacturing. These measures make it even more difficult for Africans to get cars.

Moove Africa was therefore born to help people get access to quality vehicles. The start-up has an app where users can secure loans to buy a car. The loans can be repaid over 30, 36, or 48 months, in weekly installments. To date, Moove-financed cars have made over 2.6 million trips and traveled over 30 million kilometers in six markets, namely Lagos, Accra, Johannesburg, Cape Town, Nairobi, and Ibadan.

In less than two years since they launched the start-up, Ladi Delano and Jide Odunsi have successfully raised $78 million from investors, including $10 million in their latest round. The funds were secured on February 1, from NBK Capital Partners.

"The investment…will fuel our continued growth trajectory as we expand our regional operations to empower more mobility entrepreneurs," said Ladi Delano, co-founder, and CEO of Moove Africa.

On February 10, Moove Africa's founders announced a partnership with CFAO Motors, a division of CFAO Automotive, which operates in 36 countries. "We’re especially proud to be working alongside the largest automotive distribution network in Africa and as a result of this, we’re now in an even stronger position to empower a new generation of successful and productive mobility entrepreneurs,” said Ladi Delano.

Aïsha Moyouzame