Six years after Moove put 76 automobiles on Lagos roads and requested Uber drivers to pay for them out of their earnings, the mobility firm is leaving Nigeria, its founding market, and handing a lot of these drivers their automobiles.
In a press release on Thursday, Moove mentioned it will hand over eligible autos price about ₦35 billion ($26.3 million) to the drivers, with no additional fee due from October 1. Every Moove worker can even get a free automotive. The announcement got here 5 weeks after Uber, Moove’s investor and its solely ride-hailing associate in Nigeria, exited the country.
“Nigeria will always be where Moove started,” the firm mentioned in its assertion, describing the handover as its manner of thanking the clients and workers who built the enterprise.
Moove’s exit is a knock-on impact of Uber leaving Nigeria. If you consider Moove’s Nigerian enterprise as a lending enterprise, then it relied on Uber earnings knowledge to resolve who obtained a automotive and guarantee they saved paying. When Uber left Nigeria, that knowledge went with it, and Moove misplaced its strategy to worth and acquire these loans.
With Moove’s future in robotaxi depots in the United States, its Nigerian enterprise, which confronted many challenges, not represents a strong enterprise alternative.
How we obtained right here
When the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private-sector lender, invested in Moove in 2021, it described a product that financed as much as 95% of a automotive over two to 4 years, with drivers repaying a share of their weekly platform earnings. Uber was picked as the platform.
That similar yr, Ladi Delano, Moove’s co-founder and co-CEO, told Bloomberg that the firm used ride-hailing earnings and efficiency knowledge to make its credit score choices. Moove shared workplaces with Uber in Lagos, Johannesburg and Accra and mentioned it had no plans to work with any of Uber’s rivals, together with Bolt.
The exclusivity was important to the enterprise mannequin. Moove saved its Nigerian drivers on Uber Go, Uber’s funds class, and in 2022 mentioned it couldn’t generate the knowledge it wanted to underwrite loans if drivers used a number of ride-hailing apps.
The mannequin relied on two issues Moove didn’t management: Uber’s demand and the naira.
Moove funded a part of its Nigerian fleet with dollar-denominated debt whereas its drivers earned in naira. When the naira fell, it hit Moove’s pricing. In February 2023, TechCabal reported that drivers paid ₦9,400 ($14.57) each day for Suzuki SUVs priced at ₦11.7 million ($18,134). Suzuki’s Nigerian retail worth was ₦9.9 million ($15,344).
By 2025, Moove’s weekly remittance had doubled, going from ₦56,400 ($87) to ₦112,200 ($74). At 2025’s common trade charge, ₦112,200 got here to about $74 every week. That is lower than the roughly $87 that ₦56,400 was price at 2023’s charge.
While the naira was in freefall, drivers noticed a lender squeezing them. They went on strike, and by November the Lagos State chapter of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), the nation’s largest commerce union, was planning a protest at Moove’s workplace.
Demand on UberGo was also thinning. In January 2025, Moove drivers instructed Technext that experience requests had dried up and a few had been lacking their targets. Some drivers mentioned Moove despatched brokers posing as riders to catch them engaged on inDrive. Despite Uber losing market share to Bolt and inDrive, Moove saved its drivers tied to Uber.
Uber and Moove’s deep relationship
Uber known as Moove its preferred fleet partner in sub-Saharan Africa. In March 2024, the ride-hailing large led Moove’s $100 million Series B at a $750 million valuation, its first funding in an African startup, proudly owning more than 10%.
When Nigerian drivers protested unfair working preparations in 2023, Uber kept its distance, saying it had been made conscious of considerations from a small group of drivers.
Hours after Uber’s exit on September 2, Moove dropped the Uber-only rule drivers had demanded for years. That solved the drivers’ downside however ended the single knowledge stream Moove’s lending relied on. By then, Nigeria was already a small a part of Moove.
In December 2024, Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving automotive unit, hired Moove to run fleet operations, depots and charging in Phoenix and Miami. In August, Moove raised $250 million at a $2.1 billion valuation, reporting about 42,000 autos in 29 cities throughout 13 international locations and $420 million in annual recurring income. The new funding will finance self-driving fleets and robot-run depots the firm calls Nests. Nigeria is not a vacation spot for any Nest, as a result of the nation can’t help the self-driving know-how at scale.
Today’s handover seems like Moove’s least expensive manner out. Without Uber’s knowledge, Moove must acquire repayments from drivers now working for Bolt and inDrive, in naira, for an organization that not has Nigeria in its focus.
Giving drivers possession ends a years-long battle and buys goodwill. Whether it is additionally beneficiant is dependent upon a quantity Moove has not shared: how a lot these drivers nonetheless owed on October 1.
Moove began in Lagos by placing automobiles in drivers’ arms on credit score. Delano once said Nigeria taught Moove finance and run a fleet, and plenty of of the drivers who paid for that lesson now hold the automobiles.
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