Certifying the batteries behind Ethiopia's electric future.
RISIQ EV Solutions is building the independent trust layer Ethiopia's EV market doesn't have yet — starting with a battery-health certificate every institution can rely on.
A nation went electric — almost overnight.
In January 2024, Ethiopia became the first country on earth to ban the import of petrol and diesel cars — a ban since extended to knock-down kits and trucks. Here, EVs aren't a trend, they're the law: roughly 115,000 are on the road already, on the way to a 500,000-vehicle import target by 2030, powered by the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam's low-cost hydropower.
Sources: IEA policy database · UNECA — Ethiopia National E-Mobility Strategy 2025–2030 · press reporting, 2024–2026.
The opening
Zero independent, multi-brand battery certifiers operate in East Africa today. The socket-measurement method needs no manufacturer's permission, so it works on the exact locked, imported EVs flooding Addis — and every certificate deepens a proprietary Ethiopian dataset (models, climate, duty cycles, degradation curves) that no foreign entrant can copy.
An operator at the crossroads of energy, engineering & Ethiopia.
Abdulfetah Khalid
Founder & CEO
Electrical Engineering, Aalto University · Executive MBA, Antwerp Management School.
Built automotive and juice-manufacturing companies from the ground up in Addis Ababa. A deep energy background — from solar to energy-SaaS — now aimed at EV battery intelligence.
The rare mix of deep-tech engineering, hard-won Ethiopian operating experience, and a live network across banks, importers and fleets.
"This is a market that rewards people who can build hard things locally. That is exactly the job I have done before."
Prototype-stage — with a clear road to a national standard.
RISIQ is currently assembling the first certification rig and forming founding pilot partnerships. The backend certification platform ships with the pilot. Here's the delivery plan.
Rig & first measurements
Certification rig assembled — precision meter, edge compute, charge control — and controlled charge data flowing from a first Addis site.
Ground-truth SoH
Measured capacity and State-of-Health from full-window reference tests, with quality gates — the accuracy benchmark everything else is validated against.
The 15-minute fast test
Partial-window fast testing and a per-model catalogue of the vehicles actually on Ethiopian roads.
AI on the Ethiopian dataset
Machine-learning models trained on our own reference tests, with per-model accuracy validated before certificates tighten their confidence bands.
Scale & moat
Deployment to local workshops and importer yards, a bank-grade certificate in circulation, and a proprietary dataset competitors can't replicate.
90-day Addis pilot
Founding partners and early investors join on preferential terms while the first Ethiopian battery dataset is still being written.
Request the investor deckTogether.
Talk to us about a 90-day certification pilot in Addis Ababa.