Zimbabwean women's e-tricycle businesses crippled by police crackdown

Mutare, Zimbabwe – Daires Mutamangira was ferrying a customer and groceries on her electric tricycle along a dusty and unpaved footpath when traffic police arrested her in eastern Zimbabwe last month.

The officers demanded to see the e-tricycle’s registration and her driver’s licence, which she could not produce. She tried to negotiate, but they fined her $15 on the spot.

“It was scary,” she told Al Jazeera.

“I never thought they would be that cruel considering I was riding on the outskirts of the shopping centre and far away from the highway.”

Her experience reflects a growing police crackdown on e-tricycles in rural areas, such as Hauna and Chipinge in Manicaland Province.

Annual registration and licensing costs amount to nearly $500, far beyond the reach of the 300 rural women with e-tricycles, most of whom are single mothers and widows trying to make a living.

Powered by lithium batteries and reaching a maximum speed of 25km per hour, the e-tricycles were introduced across the country to empower women in rural areas.

Source of income

Mutamangira is among 40 women who received an e-tricycle, known as Hamba, a Shona word that loosely translates to “go”, in May 2024 to run a small transport business in Hauna. The e-tricycle can carry goods weighing up to 450kg.

That is particularly helpful in Hauna, a farming community about 55 kilometres from Zimbabwe’s third-largest city, Mutare. Farmers need to move fresh produce, such as bananas, tomatoes and onions, from their farms to the highway for loading onto trucks bound for Mutare or the capital Harare. They also rely on e-tricycles to transport groceries and farm goods.

Mutamangira said she transports goods for a fee.

“In a good month, I made a profit of about $250. My husband is unemployed, so I am the breadwinner,” she said smiling.

She pays all the household bills and feeds and clothes the couple’s four children.

In emergencies, the community uses e-tricycles as makeshift ambulances to transport women in labour and the sick to the nearby hospital. Zimbabwe faces a chronic shortage of ambulances and in rural areas like Hauna there is often only one ambulance, which is frequently out of service.

Supported by Mobility for Africa, a local startup, the women pay a small fee to swap batteries at the Hauna charging centre and another fee for the tricycle over a set period until it becomes theirs.

To Mutamangira, the e-tricycle is not just a source of income but a symbol of economic empowerment and independence.

“It feels good as a woman to contribute financially to my marriage. I earn respect from my husband because I am bringing something to the table and not just a stay-at-home parent,” she said.

Police crackdown crippling women’s businesses

Everything changed in February 2025. The police, who had previously allowed the women to operate freely in Hauna and Chipinge, suddenly started impounding e-tricycles. They demanded registration and driving licences.

Zimbabwe still relies on Rhodesian-era laws to regulate traffic. The authorities classify e-tricycles under the motorcycle category, requiring drivers to have licences, registration and permits to operate on both urban and rural roads. But the laws make no distinction between internal combustion engine tricycles and the slow-speed e-tricycles operated by women in rural areas.

Sikhangezile Dube, Mobility for Africa’s Hauna site coordinator, said that after police impounded several of their e-tricycles, they engaged with the authorities but were told to comply with the law.

“We had to stop operations,” she said.

“In June 2025, we submitted our papers to the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority and the Central Vehicle Registry to register some of our e-tricycles. But there has been no progress.”

Dube said that when police impound tricycles, they can only release them after payment of a $90 fine.

Mutamangira said the police forced her to stop working, leaving her struggling to make ends meet.

“It was tough. I grappled with paying school fees. We had to adjust our lifestyles. Instead of three meals a day, we were having one,” she said.

Rejoice Mandipedza, another e-tricycle operator from Hauna, said the police crackdown left her with enormous debt.

“Debts accumulated from school and rentals. This was my only source of income,” she said.

After a three-month shutdown in 2025, the women were brave enough to resume operations. But since then, the police have intensified their crackdown on e-tricycles.

Mandipedza said police often follow them into their neighbourhoods and raid shopping centres where they operate and demand to see licences and registrations.

“We have resorted to parking our e-tricycles in a hidden place and only bringing them to the shopping centre when there is a customer,” she said.

This cat-and-mouse game with the police has resulted in dwindling incomes. Both Mutamangira and Mandipedza said they are lucky if they pocket $70 profit a month these days.

“I am surviving on a hand-to-mouth basis. I cannot even save enough for the licences,” she said.

The women need nearly $500 for a driver’s licence, e-tricycle registration fees, vehicle licence and insurance.

“This is just too much. I cannot afford it,” said Mandipedza.

Bureaucracies complicate women’s lobbying efforts

Mutamangira and her colleagues have been lobbying the government to introduce a new law that recognises how their slow-speed, clean tricycles improve mobility in rural areas. They have proposed reducing the cost of acquiring licences and permits.

But it is not that simple. The Ministry of Transport regulates highways, while Rural District Councils regulate tertiary roads that lead to schools and clinics in rural areas. The Ministry of Finance sets the licence and vehicle fees. The police enforce only the law.

Between 2024 and 2025, Mobility for Africa wrote several letters to the Finance Ministry proposing a reduction in fees, and to the Ministry of Transport requesting regulatory changes.

In a letter seen by Al Jazeera addressed to Mobility for Africa in January 2025, Transport Ministry Secretary Joy Makumbe said the startup’s request for reduced licence and registration fees was under consideration. In another letter addressed to the police, Makumbe requested a licence waiver for women using e-tricycles on rural roads linking households, clinics and schools.

But the police in Hauna and Chipinge have continued arresting women driving on rural roads.

For a rural woman to be expected to travel to a major town to register a low-speed e-tricycle, qualify for a motorcycle licence, and pay hundreds of dollars in fees and transport costs makes it impossible, said Shantha Bloemen, founder of Mobility for Africa.

“It creates barriers to entry for the intended market—rural communities—who are already facing huge challenges to move their produce and access services,” she told Al Jazeera.

Bloemen said that with the world shifting to green transport, current transport policies and regulations require review.

“We need to move beyond many of the historical rules that were intended to restrict the movement of people in Zimbabwe and rethink transport so it can benefit the majority and help enable economic development, especially for small-scale farmers,” she said.

Minister of State for Manicaland Province, Misheck Mugadza, said he visited one of Mobility for Africa’s sites with Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube in 2025 and promised to address the issue.

“I am not aware that this is still happening. I thought they sorted it out,” he said.

Back in Hauna, Mutamangira is appealing to the government to fast-track changes to the law so they can operate freely.

“For us to comply, the fees must be affordable. My family depends on this job,” she said.