VinFast has enlisted a company in Ghana to distribute its electric vehicles, offering the Vietnamese manufacturer a potential early-mover advantage as it looks to enter a fourth continent.

The automaker owned by Vietnam’s richest man said late Friday that it will sell “electric cars, e-scooters, e-bikes and electric buses throughout Ghana and West Africa” through a deal with the Jospong Group. VinFast wants its EVs in 50 markets by year’s end and has made deals in six countries in the past month alone to achieve that target.

In Africa, Hyundai, Nissan and Porsche lead what is the smallest EV market by continent, according to the International Energy Agency. A lack of cheap models, charging stations and mechanics deters drivers, the IEA said last year in a report.

VinFast told Nikkei Asia its strategy is to have a “diverse” lineup. That includes trucks, minicars and eight motorbike models.

“I’m not aware of anybody else doing [this] on such a big scale like us,” Chairwoman Le Thi Thu Thuy said at a recent Nikkei-Financial Times summit.

Her company’s six SUVs are priced from $19,500 to $79,800. The company did not say when sales in Ghana would start. 

China has supplied most of the EVs in Ghana, where 53.6% of buyers would prefer electric over gas-powered vehicles and 54% would not spend more than $20,000, according to a 2022 survey done for Accra’s Energy Commission.

While Africa is often discussed for its deposits of battery minerals like cobalt and copper, VinFast is choosing “geographical markets with the highest growth potential” for EV uptake, the loss-making company said in a presentation this month.

Its arrival in West Africa follows plans to export to North America, Europe and Asia. In recent weeks VinFast struck a distribution deal in Oman, its first in the Middle East, broke ground on a factory in India, debuted its first right-side steering model, in Indonesia, and announced a launch in Thailand. Its taxi affiliate also added a third locality, in Laos.

“The recent internationalization steps could be beneficial in the mid- to long-term, but they do not move the needle on BEV [battery electric vehicle] sales,” Martin Schroeder, an auto researcher and associate professor at Ritsumeikan University, told Nikkei.

He said it is unlikely that VinFast will sell many premium cars in West Africa, where used cars and scooters are a better market fit. Globally, the company delivered 34,855 electric cars last year, 72% of them to its taxi affiliate.

VinFast is the Nasdaq-listed EV arm of Vingroup, Vietnam’s biggest conglomerate whose businesses span homes, hotels, schools and artificial intelligence. Vingroup said it is exploring options, likely in West Africa, with Jospong in “taxi operations, public transportation solutions, education, hospitality and real estate.”