Dr Jürgen Perschon from AfricroozE in the HEY/HAMBURG Interview

Dr Jürgen Perschon is the founder of AfricroozE. On stage at HEY/HAMBURG 2023, AfricroozE was represented by Project Manager Anka Obergfell who spoke about “AfricroozE – The solar-powered e-bike that accelerates mobility on the African continent”.

Jürgen answered our questions about future mobility:

How do you define mobility? What does mobility mean to you or your company?

Mobility means access to transport, so that people can move around at any time in any place. Mobility goes hand in hand with equitable access to the free movement of people and goods, the emphasis here is on equitable access. The non-governmental organization European Institute for Sustainable Transport (EURIST) and the company AfricroozE GmbH deals with sustainable mobility, which refers to social and environmental impacts. Unfortunately, there is still a lack of affordable last mile solutions, especially on the African continent where our main focus is on. Our e-bike AFRICROOZE could therefore be a solution.

With our e-bike, we would like to offer people a new mobility alternative with which they can get around cheaply and at any time, regardless of their geographical location.

How do you define the future of mobility? What are the biggest challenges for your company and your industry?

Global humanity is increasingly confronted with mobility issues, one example being the ever-increasing number of natural disasters and climate change, that demonstrate the vulnerability of existing global infrastructures. For these reasons, sustainable mobility alternatives are increasingly coming to the fore and contributing to the global mobility transformation. In creating sustainable mobility alternatives, the available resources are used wisely by cooperating/interacting with the natural resource and not further exploiting it.

We are actively involved in this transformation and specialize in the countries where solar energy is most available. The challenge is to establish the necessary structural basis, which turns out to be fundamental for implementation. It is a transnational cooperation in which a lot of agreements and arrangements are necessary so that the economic procurement of the bikes and the implementation in the African countries can be made possible.

What do you see as the greatest challenge of the mobility and energy transition? How can it be solved? What is the contribution of your company for solving these challenges?

Although sustainability is receiving more and more attention in many areas and the urgency of a sustainable mobility transformation is getting in the focus, it is still increasingly neglected. The relevance of introducing sustainable means of transport and implementing e-bikes in the infrastructures of African countries is thus a challenge. The African continent is undergoing a major socio-economic expansion and is therefore currently not well positioned in many countries in africa. For these reasons, the necessary resources for restructuring are lacking in many places.

Another major challenge is the cost-effective production of e-bikes, so that the bicycle is affordable but still remains within the scope of sustainability. It is therefore the combination of sustainability and financial issues that needs to be balanced. In addition, the ever-increasing competition on the market is a challenging situation where we feel a time as well as financial pressure.

AfricroozE sees the socio-economic challenges as an opportunity for improvement and is addressing them to further advance and develop a just and sustainable mobility transition.

Which role models in mobility (companies, personalities, best practice) impress you and why?
Our inspiration are Scandinavian cities (e.g. Copenhagen), they are further ahead of Germany in the field of sustainable mobility. This includes bicycle-friendly urban planning. Another actor is "Jobrad", whose model makes bicycle leasing possible, which reduces the cost of purchasing an e-bike in a professional context. Through our years of work on the African continent, we have found that the price to use transport should be fairly based on income. AfricroozE is trying to implement these opportunities with a microfinance-structure.

Where is your company now in terms of mobility and where to do see your company’s development in five years from now?

Over the last few years, we have been able to design an e-bike which is suitable for the local surroundings. We could implement some pilot bikes on the african continent e.g. Uganda and could increase our network as well as the range of our e-bikes, so that we have been able to provide some women, men, children and businesses with better transport and mobility with our e-bikes.

In order to be able to expand this, we are currently founding our company “AfricroozE GmbH”. With the company, we are able to extend the range of our bikes through a micro-financing system. This way we can enable more people to buy a bike and hope to increase the use of our bikes in the entire infrastructure. At the moment we are in the process of compiling the microfinance-based franchise system.

In the next few years, we are aiming for cities with many e-bikes, e-bike centers and e-bike sharing stations.

Hamburg is Europe’s capital of mobility and combines mobility on land (road and rail), on water and in the air like no other city. What are you especially looking forward to at HEY/HAMBURG?

At HEY/HAMBURG, we are particularly looking forward to seeing the many new faces in the e-mobility sector. We hope to have interesting conversations, finding new partners for EURIST and AfricroozE, that either act as social entrepreneurs or join our business, promote our e-bike and be inspired by further innovations.

What is your first memory or experience of mobility? What shaped you sustainably?

I got my first contact and impressions during my geography studies, where I crossed the east African countries by bicycle for research purposes. I realised how relevant a far-reaching development of infrastructure is and what consequences a lack of it can have. In African countries, this can mean that people do not receive daily needs (water, food and firewood), medical care and the access to education. The limited use of solar energy was surprising. Solar energy on the African continent (with higher solar radiation) was not detectable or feasible until recently, which gives now the opportunity to develop the e-mobility sector.

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Watch the speech of Anka Obergfell from AfricroozE at HEY/HAMBURG 2023 here in the media library.