⁍ The trading arm of the Toyota Group has invested $4 million in Ugandan start-up Tugende.

---

⁍ Launched in 2012, Tugende began by offering motorcycle loans to riders.

---

⁍ It has since expanded to offer loans for everything from fishing boats and minibus taxis to sewing machines and refrigerators for small shops.

---

– Mark Yaweh, a 25-year-old motorcycle taxi driver in Uganda, scraped by riding someone else’s bike for three years, but put a downpayment on a new one and hoped to own his own after 18 months. “I’m excited, I yearned for this,” he tells Reuters. Yaweh is one of about 800,000 small-business owners in Uganda who have received loans from Tugende, a startup Toyota has invested $4 million in, the AP reports. Launched in 2012, Tugende has since expanded to offer loans for everything from fishing boats and minibus taxis to sewing machines and refrigerators for small shops. It opened a branch in Kenya last November. The financing gap for micro, small, and medium enterprises in sub-Saharan Africa is estimated at $331 billion, according to a 2017 report by the International Finance Corporation, the private investment arm of the World Bank. Development organizations say the kind of microlending Tugende is providing is key to closing that gap. With an asset base of $30 million, the start-up has handed out about 35,000 bike ‘mortgages’ so far in Uganda, which Tugende estimates has about 800,000 riders. More than three-quarters of the borrowers pay off the two-year loans off early using mobile money service or other digital platforms, says Michael Wilkerson, Tugende’s chief executive. Watanabe says the group aimed to invest $45 million in transportation and asset-financing start-ups like Tugende in Africa next year.