Electric mobility brings Africa’s energy transition into the wild

MAASAI MARA, Kenya (AP) — Joshua Kijape eases his motorcycle through the tall grass, listening for movement in the bush. There is no engine rumble, no exhaust and little warning for anything ahead.

That is exactly how the Mara-Siana ranger, attached to Entumoto Safari Camp in Kenya’s Maasai Mara game reserve, wants it.

For the past year, Kijape has patrolled the Mara on an electric motorcycle, using its near-silent motor to approach wildlife and, when necessary, poachers.

“With this bike, I can get closer to the animals without disturbing them,” he said. “And when you are following poachers, they cannot hear you coming.”

The electric motorcycle is part of a growing effort to bring Africa’s energy transition into wildlife reserves, replacing petrol-powered transport with vehicles charged by the sun. In the Maasai Mara, conservation operators are testing whether electric mobility can reduce fuel use and maintenance costs while limiting noise in one of Africa’s most important ecosystems.

The move comes during one of the Mara’s busiest periods, when the annual wildebeest migration draws huge numbers of animals, tourists and conservation teams onto the grasslands.

Jason Knauf, CEO of the BBC program The Earthshot Prize, said the development shows how the energy transition is reaching places far beyond conventional urban transport.

“Seeing electric vehicles reach the Maasai Mara during the Great Migration is powerful proof that the energy transition extends far beyond cities,” Knauf said. “The Mara is one of the world’s most demanding environments, and if clean technology can prove reliable, affordable and effective there, it strengthens the case for scaling it across other conservation landscapes and remote communities,” Knauf said.

For ROAM, the Nairobi-based electric motorcycle company behind Kijape’s bike, the Mara is an engineering test of whether an e-bike built in Kenya can handle rough tracks, long patrols and remote conditions.

“Nature is worth protecting, so we think it’s important to put our motorcycles and products out there,” said ROAM CEO Filip Lovstrom. “By eliminating noise associated with petrol bikes, it creates a serene, quiet environment that is beneficial to both the animals and tourists.”

Lovstrom said economics could ultimately drive wider adoption of this approach.

“Instead of shipping petrol all the way from the port of Mombasa out into nature to fuel a bunch of petrol motorcycles, you’re now able to charge them using solar, right where you are contributing positively to the environment,” he said.

ROAM’s e-bike can travel about 160 kilometers (100 miles) between charges, but longer patrols will require charging stations along the route. Because the bikes can plug into a standard 10-amp socket, Lovstrom said, stations can be built around relatively small solar and battery systems.

“Just as you need access to petrol, which is really difficult today in an area like the Maasai Mara, you now need access to electricity,” he said.

The market also extends beyond conservation. Communities near wildlife areas often rely on motorcycles for transport, especially where roads are poor and alternatives are limited.

Emboo River Camp in the Maasai Mara has been using electric safari vehicles since 2019. The camp’s co-founder and co-director, Loic Amado, said the vehicles are charged exclusively with solar power.

“It’s an extremely good use case for electric vehicles,” Amado said. “They’re silent, sustainable, environmentally friendly and most importantly economical.”

What began as an experiment has grown, through his other firm EERA LAB, into a broader sustainability operation. Amado said it now supports 25 lodges across East Africa with solar power, wastewater treatment, and electric-vehicle conversions.

“Emboo was really a proof of concept and a test case,” he said. “It was almost like our laboratory. We tried to prove the model there.”

Emboo camp has expanded its EV fleet and more than tripled its solar energy system to meet demand.

Kenya has only a small number of electric safari vehicles in operation, concentrated in the Mara, and a handful of other conservation areas, and the concept is attracting larger safari operators. Amado said Asilia, which runs about 20 lodges across East Africa, now operates its electric fleet.

EERA LAB has developed a dashboard that tracks energy generation and consumption, water levels, recycling and the solar power used to charge vehicles.

“It removes the black box and uncertainty that safari operators have had over the past couple of years,” Amado said.

Converting conventional safari vehicles costs between $35,000 and $45,000, Amado said, but the investment can pay for itself in about two and a half to three years through fuel and maintenance savings.

“It’s all running on sunshine, and we have plenty of it,” he said.

For Amado, the goal is bigger than replacing individual petrol vehicles.

“Our goal is to make the Maasai Mara net zero by 2035,” he said.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

In this photo taken with a smartphone, Mara Siena ranger Joshua Kijape stands beside his electric motorcycle, which he uses while patrolling the Maasai Mara, Kenya, Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Allan Olingo)

In this photo taken with a smartphone, Loic Amado, founder of Emboo Camp and Era Lab, checks the battery charge of an electric safari van with a colleague at Emboo Camp in the Maasai Mara, Kenya, Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Allan Olingo)

In this photo taken with a smartphone, an electric safari van operated by Emboo Camp is parked in the Maasai Mara, Kenya, Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Allan Olingo)

In this photo taken with a smartphone, Loic Amado, founder of Emboo Camp and Era Lab, speaks with The Associated Press during an interview in the Maasai Mara, Kenya, Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Allan Olingo)

In this photo taken with a smartphone, an electric safari van operated by Emboo Camp drives through the Maasai Mara, Kenya, Saturday, Aug. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Allan Olingo)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats have won control of both chambers of Congress, delivering a decisive rebuke of Republican governance in Washington and ushering in a new era of congressional resistance to President Donald Trump.

The midterm elections that came to a close Tuesday channeled voters' deep frustrations over high prices, the Iran war and concerns over government corruption. Democrats routed their rivals across the map, flipping states that have voted Republican for decades and that Trump won by double digits just two years ago.

That includes James Talarico's stunning Senate victory in Texas, where no Democrat had won statewide office in more than 30 years, and Annie Andrews' upset victory over Sen. Darline Graham in South Carolina. Trump had thrown his full weight behind both losing candidates.

Even Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a battle-tested survivor of difficult elections, lost to Democrat Troy Jackson.

The results from across the country were a major blow to Trump, who spent nearly every day of the last month holding rallies to energize his supporters but was unable to stop a wipeout.

While Trump has proven adept at steamrolling efforts to rein him in, Democratic control will profoundly reshape Trump’s final two years in office and hamstring his legislative agenda.

Party leaders have signaled they'll use their new power to ensure Trump's final two years in office are dominated by a series of investigations of top members of his administration and deeper scrutiny of how he's enriched his family. Impeachment of Trump and his Cabinet officials is not off the table. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and tech titan Elon Musk, a former top Trump adviser, are among possible targets for investigations.

In celebratory events Tuesday night, Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer called the results a “generational remake of the Senate map.” Democratic House Leader Hakeem Jeffries said “the American people are crying out for transformational change.”

Trump immediately sought to shift blame for his party's losses, posting on his social media site before polls even closed on the West Coast that he wasn't on the ballot — even though he spent weeks asking voters to act like he was. He vowed to veto Democrat-controlled legislation, sharing a picture of a red baseball cap with “VETO” stenciled in the style of his trademark “Make America Great Again” campaign swag.

In a late-night phone interview with Fox News, Trump said he didn't consider the elections to be a personal defeat. Voters, he said, “didn't like the candidates.”

Democrats had braced for Trump to again try to undermine the results if they won after he warned that noncitizens would cast ballots en masse and filed lawsuits in Alaska and California. Instead, he said on Fox that he would accept them.

Despite the results, Senate Majority Leader John Thune wrote on X that “Senate Republicans will not stand idly by as the far-left, socialist wing of the Democrat Party attempts to unwind everything we’ve done.” He said they will work with Trump “to stop the worst impulses of Democrat extremism.”

Midterm elections are typically difficult for the president's party, but Republicans had originally expected that their Senate majority was safe. Instead, Democrats marched through some of the most conservative states in the nation.

Josh Turek defeated Rep. Ashley Hinson in Iowa, while Adam Hamilton ousted Sen. Roger Marshall in Kansas to become the state's first Democratic senator since 1932. A cascade of surprising Democratic victories included Talarico defeating Ken Paxton in Texas, Andrews upsetting Graham in South Carolina, Sherrod Brown topping Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio and Roy Cooper taking an open North Carolina seat.

Trump played an outsized role in the Texas, North Carolina and South Carolina races. He endorsed Paxton and helped him defeat incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the Texas primary, even as Republican officials warned his efforts could be costly. He sharply criticized North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, who opted not to seek reelection. He also supported Graham, despite doubts within the party that she was the right candidate to replace her brother, who died unexpectedly earlier this year.

Less of a surprise was Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff winning reelection in Georgia, defeating Rep. Mike Collins. Rep. Chris Pappas also won a Senate race in New Hampshire, defeating former Sen. John Sununu to replace retiring Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen.

In the House, Democrats reached deeply into Trump-won territory to defeat his preferred candidates and win in even some of the most Republican states. There were multiple Democratic pickups in Iowa, Texas, Florida and Pennsylvania and new Democratic seats in Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio and Utah. In Iowa, there was an all-Republican congressional delegation going into the election. Democrats will now represent three of them.

Defeated Republicans included Rep. Tom Kean of New Jersey, who missed four months of votes in Washington this year as he underwent treatment for depression, and Rep. Mike Lawler in New York.

Bracing for a tough night, Republicans had spent the campaign’s final stretch pumping tens of millions of dollars into states and districts that Trump won handily two years ago, as Trump campaigned in heavily red areas. But even Republicans' money advantage didn't stem the Democratic tide.

“I wasn’t on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!” Trump wrote on his social media site.

Voters were sour heading into Tuesday, deeply unhappy with the country’s direction and pessimistic about the future, according to The AP Voter Poll.

Most said they feel frustrated, with about three-quarters saying they feel “angry” or “dissatisfied” with the country’s current trajectory. Dissatisfaction was particularly high in blue states, but even in red states, a majority of voters were at least “dissatisfied.”

The economy was key to Trump's White House comeback two years ago. But the poll found that three-quarters of voters say the economy is “not so good” or “poor." About 8 in 10 say inflation has caused a “severe” or “moderate” financial hardship for their households.

Government corruption was also a big issue with voters. Roughly half cited it and the cost of living as “crucial” to their vote for Congress — higher than immigration enforcement policies, the war in Iran and artificial intelligence data centers. About 6 in 10 voters said Trump prioritizes his own personal interests more than the country’s interests.

Despite their relative advantage on issues, the Democratic Party is not much more popular with voters than the Republicans. Just under half of voters have a “somewhat” or “strongly” favorable view of the Democratic Party, while about 4 in 10 view Republicans positively.

Republicans tried to buck historical midterm precedent with an aggressive redistricting effort aimed at creating a more favorable congressional map. But in Florida and Texas, where Republicans hoped to pick up as many as nine seats, the plan fell short, with Democrats picking up targeted districts.

Outstanding Senate battlegrounds include Alaska, where the Trump administration filed a lawsuit to block certification of Senate results if Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses the race, citing the presence of a second candidate named Dan Sullivan on the ballot.

Republicans also hoped to pick up Michigan, where Mike Rogers faces progressive Abdul El-Sayed — one of a crop of left-wing candidates who prevailed in Democratic primaries. El-Sayed's former primary opponent, Haley Stevens, upended the race by endorsing Rogers, renewing focus on tensions over Israel and the party's direction.

Beyond Washington, 36 states elected governors. Democrats Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, JB Pritzker in Illinois, Wes Moore in Maryland, Maura Healey in Massachusetts and Kathy Hochul in New York all won reelection. In a stunning upset in Texas, Gina Hinojosa defeated Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who was seeking a fourth term.

In Ohio, Republican Vivek Ramaswamy lost to Democrat Amy Acton after his campaign faced backlash for an ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother, who lost custody of Acton decades ago after her husband, Acton’s stepfather, was indicted for raping Acton as a child.

Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms of Georgia will be the first Black female governor of any state. In neighboring Florida, Byron Donalds became the nation's first Black Republican to be elected governor.

Jeffries, in line to make history as the nation’s first Black speaker of the House, has outlined a 100-day agenda focused on lowering the cost of living and aggressively overseeing the Trump administration.

The especially strong showing for Democrats could boost the party's large crop of potential presidential candidates. It may also complicate the paths of Vice President JD Vance and other Republicans who may have been looking to turn their loyalty to Trump into momentum.

Associated Press journalists Joey Cappelletti, Lisa Mascaro, Linley Sanders, Aaron Kessler and Ali Swenson in Washington; Cody Jackson in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.; and Allen Breed in Raleigh, N.C., contributed.

South Carolina Democratic Senate candidate Dr. Annie Andrews takes the stage at an election night event in Charleston, S.C., Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Mic Smith)

Democratic Senate candidate Texas state Rep. James Talarico speaks at an election night event in Austin, Texas, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Attendees watch early election returns at an election night event before Democratic Senate candidate Texas state Rep. James Talarico arrives to speak in Austin, Texas, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Attendees watch early election returns at an election night event before Democratic Senate candidate Texas state Rep. James Talarico arrives to speak in Austin, Texas, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., walks out during an election night event, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

Supporters of South Carolina Democratic Senate candidate Dr. Annie Andrews cheer during her election night watch party, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in Charleston, S.C. (AP Photo/Mic Smith)

Democratic Senate candidate Rep. Chris Pappas, right, D-N.H., greets the crowd at an election night event, with Vann Bentley, left, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/Reba Saldanha)

North Carolina Democratic Senate candidate Roy Cooper speaks at an election night event Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in Raleigh, N.C. (AP Photo/Matt Ramey)

Event staff set the stage before Democratic Senate candidate Texas state Rep. James Talarico arrives to speak at an election night event in Austin, Texas, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

People cheer at an election ight event for Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in Bangor, Maine. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Dr. Theopia Johnson Tate, of Atlanta, poses for a portrait at an election night event for Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Guests attend an election night event for Republican Senate candidate Mike Collins, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, greets supporters at an election night event Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in Bangor, Maine. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Residents vote in the midterm elections at the Old Stone School in Hillsboro, Va., Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/John McDonnell)

A Sheriff's Deputy and his dog inspect ballots at the Los Angeles County Ballot Processing Center on Election Day on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in City of Industry, Calif. (AP Photo/William Liang)

Ballots are sorted on Election Day Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in San Francisco.(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

Brad Girod holds his 14-month-old daughter, Genevieve, as he votes on Election Day during the midterm election at a polling place in the National Veterans Memorial and Museum in Columbus, Ohio, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

A woman votes at the Emery Heights Community Center, Tuesday Nov. 3, 2026, during the midterm elections in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

A voting location is seen at the Greater Middle Baptist Church on Nov. 3, 2026 in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/Kevin Wurm)

People cast their ballots at the polling place at the League for People with Disabilities in Baltimore on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

A woman votes at the Emery Heights Community Center, Tuesday Nov. 3, 2026, during the midterm elections in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Samantha Pounder, of Washington, confirms her address with a poll worker while voting with her daughters Aya, 3, left, and Sade, 6, at the Emery Heights Community Center, Tuesday Nov. 3, 2026, during the midterm elections in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

People move in line to cast their ballots at the polling place at the League for People with Disabilities in Baltimore on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Voters cast their ballots at Public School 321 elementary school in the Brooklyn borough of New York on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

A volunteer places a "Vote Here" sign at the Brooklyn Museum in New York on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

Voters cast their ballots at the Brooklyn Museum in New York on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

A volunteer sorts "I Voted" stickers at the Brooklyn Museum in New York on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

A person walks to the City of Arlington South Service Center ahead of the polling place opening on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026, in Arlington, Texas. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Josh Turek speaks during a campaign rally, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026, in Council Bluffs, Iowa. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)

People listen to Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who is running for reelection, outside an agricultural business as she makes a campaign stop, Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, in Van Buren, Maine. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., introduces Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed during a campaign rally at Eastern Michigan University, Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, in Ypsilanti, Mich. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, speaks to members of the media before sign-waving with supporters at the edge of Midtown Mall, Monday, Nov. 2, 2026, in Anchorage, Alaska. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

People wait in line to cast their ballot at a polling location open for early voting at the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center, Sunday, Nov. 1, 2026, in Wasilla, Alaska. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)