1. Motorcycle taxis in transition? Review of digitalization and electrification trends in selected East African capital cities
- Author
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Martin, Emilie, Courtright, Thomas, Nkurunziza, Alphonse, and Lah, Oliver
- Abstract
•Two recent trends around motorcycle taxis services in East Africa are identified: digitalization and electrification.•Electrification is mostly associated with positive impacts covering a spectrum of environment, economics, health, and social-related benefits. The benefits of digitalization with regard to road safety, personal security, and economic benefits are more uncertain or contested.•Both trends are marked by limitations, in the form of high volatility for digitalization, and of very small fleets still for electrification. These limitations impact their capacity to address sustainability challenges with motorcycle taxis in East Africa.•The study identifies interlinkages between digitalization, electrification, and regulation with regard to data. It indicates conditions under which data-sharing requirements could partially help address the dearth of data on motorcycle taxi services in these three cities.•The study calls for longitudinal analysis of the impacts of digitalization and electrification, refining the diversity of impacts, interlinkages, policy answers and using complementary methods, and identifies four further research gaps.
- Published
- 2023
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