Africa’s mobility tech is no longer about growing at all costs; it is now a battle for unit economics and risk management. No one knows this better than Chinazom ‘Chi-Chi’ Arinze, the founder of Muvment by Autogirl, a Nigerian peer-to-peer (P2P) mobility marketplace that wants to be the “Airbnb for vehicles” in Africa.
When a car that was rented out via her platform was involved in a car crash, Arinze was looking at a ₦20 million ($14,000) hole in her business. This raised an existential question: “What if this happens every week? What if this kills my company?”
Muvment survived the loss, with Arinze learning lessons the hard way that insurance was non-negotiable. Today, if you asked her about building in Africa’s tech ecosystem, she’d tell you it’s exhausting.
But between the law school hustle where she flipped her first car and her current expansion into Ghana and Kenya, Arinze has built a formidable system out of thin air. She started with zero capital, a Google Sheet, and a flurry of WhatsApp messages. Today, she is building a system that tries to change the way African mobility works.
Day 1: The accidental entrepreneur
Arinze didn’t set out to build a company. She wanted to make money while in university.
“I started selling cars for people, car dealers, and I was able to make income from those commissions,” she recalls. “I gathered this cash together and bought the first vehicle that I flipped and sold.” She bought it, resold it, and got her capital back. Then she kept flipping cars.
But car sales were cash-intensive and not very lucrative. She needed something that generated more money with less capital.
The pivot came from observation. Corporate clients and consultants needed cars for short periods—three months to a year. Buying and reselling after three months made no sense. Ride-hailing wasn’t reliable enough for daily corporate use. Traditional rental companies existed, but options were limited.
Meanwhile, Arinze knew parents who only used their cars during morning and evening commutes, and the rest of the day, vehicles sat idle.
“What if I tell these people that they could make money through their vehicle?? she thought.
That question became Autogirl in 2019, a peer-to-peer car rental marketplace connecting car owners with renters.
Day 500: The manual era
For the first few years, Autogirl ran entirely manually.
“There were a lot of calls, DMs, and WhatsApp messages to take bookings. A lot of Google Sheets, even paper to record bookings,” Arinze says.
The breaking point came when scale demanded automation. You can’t manage dozens of cars, hundreds of trips, and multiple revenue streams on WhatsApp and Google Sheets.
That’s when Autogirl evolved into Muvment—a technical product with proper infrastructure. Car owners could see their bookings in real-time, track earnings, and monitor pending payments. Customers could book without calling anyone. Live chat handled complaints.
By 2024, Muvment said it had completed over 12,000 rides, served over 3,000 customers, and paid out over $530,000 to car owners. The average car owner earns ₦7 million ($4,230) per vehicle annually.
The company expanded to Ghana and is eyeing Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, and Benin. Arinze even has plans for cross-border rentals—rent a car in Lagos, drive to Cotonou for the weekend, and return it to Lagos.
But growth revealed cracks in the foundation. Specifically, in insurance.
The ₦20 million wake-up call
Arinze’s first wakeup call to fix a loophole in her system was a ₦20 million ($14,000) car crash. The customer was driving under self-drive rental—Muvment’s premium service, where customers drive themselves instead of using a driver.
The car owner didn’t have comprehensive insurance, which meant Muvment would have to cover the full cost of the crash.
“Usually we tell car hosts to have comprehensive insurance, but this one did not,” Arinze said. “We did not even know how to handle the case because this was a new car that was completely totaled, and fixing it was like over ₦20-something million.”
The fear wasn’t just the money; it was the precedent it could set. “I was just like, wait, what if this happens every other week?”
Muvment had to negotiate a payment plan with the car owner. The owner covered some liability because he hadn’t followed the company’srules (comprehensive insurance is mandatory). Muvment covered the rest, and the car got fixed.
But the lesson burned in Arinze’s head: Don’t play with insurance.
“If I could go back in time and tell the person who decided to start renting cars, I’d say, don’t play with insurance, please. Incredibly important in this business. I learned it the hard way.”
Now Muvment personally verifies every insurance policy document that car owners submit. Because when there’s liability, there can be no question of who’s taking it.
“It hasn’t happened since then,” Arinze notes. But the scare changed how she thinks about risk.
Trust in a low-trust market
Operating peer-to-peer car rentals in Nigeria means asking strangers to hand over car keys worth millions of naira. Building that trust requires systems.
Most Muvment rentals come with drivers. For self-drive—the riskier service—there’s extensive KYC: driver’s license, international passport, verifiable home address, office ID. Plus the same details for the customer’s guarantor. Muvment works with verification partners like Prembly and IdentityPass to confirm identities. Once customers pass KYC, they can rent.
The system mostly works. Except when customers decide rules don’t apply to them.
In December 2023, a customer rented a car for self-driving and violated the cardinal rule – to not leave Lagos. The customer knew this and agreed to it.
Then he drove to Imo State in Eastern Nigeria—over 400 kilometers away.
“By the time we found out with the tracker, I was scared. Everybody was worried,” Arinze recalls.
But Muvment had done proper verification. They knew his details and, to some extent, had their fears abated. “We were sure that if anything happened, we’d be able to retrieve the car.”
The customer stayed in Imo State for two weeks. He kept in daily contact. “We could tell that he was just a stubborn person, right? He was ready to lose his caution fee. So he went to Imo, brought back the car, and brought it back in very good condition.
He just did not care about the rule. He forfeited his deposit and did what he wanted.
“It was a scary moment,” Arinze admits. “If there was any case of theft, retrieving it would have been very stressful because that would have to happen with a police station, and I or someone in my team would have to travel all the way to Imo to do that retrieval.”
Day 1000: The exit strategy nobody talks about
Most founders, when asked about their long-term vision, talk about building generational companies, creating lasting impact, and changing the world forever.
Arinze is refreshingly different.
“I want to exit,” she says plainly. “I believe that what I’m doing now is labor that will be paid off. There’s a larger goal—solve Africa’s mobility problem—and I’m not the only person who can do it.”
Her target buyers are companies like Turo, the world’s largest peer-to-peer car-sharing marketplace, that want to expand into Africa. Companies that want to build the same level of car-sharing service they have abroad, right here in Africa.
“The goal is to position Muvment to be the company that those companies will buy,” she explains.
After the sale? “Enjoy the rest of my life. Not doing so much hard work. Maybe passion projects, but not a lot of hard work.”
It’s a level of honesty rare among founders, especially in ecosystems that celebrate the “hustle forever” mentality. But Arinze is pragmatic about what she’s building and why.
Before the sale, though, there’s execution. Muvment is targeting profitability in Ghana this year, similar to or higher than that of Nigeria.
The company is also betting big on electric vehicles. “I believe that companies that are first movers or first testers are the ones that are going to really make it big in the next five years,” Arinze says. Muvment already lists EVs on the platform.
Cross-border travel is another frontier: rent in Lagos, drive to Benin Republic for the weekend, return to Lagos. The Know Your Customer (KYC) process and tracker systems will make it possible—risky, but possible.
