South Africa’s EV Charging Start-Up Charge Skips the JSE, Opts for Blockchain-Based Token Raise
South African off-grid electric vehicle charging company Charge, previously known as Zero Carbon Charge, is gearing up for a public investment offering in the coming months — and it won’t be going through the Johannesburg Stock Exchange to do it. Instead, the company is turning to Mesh, a blockchain-powered, token-based financial markets platform, to raise capital from everyday South African investors.
Founder and chairman Joubert Roux confirmed the plans during a recent interview, revealing that Charge is currently conducting a private raise on the Mesh platform. This will be followed by a second private round before a broader public offering expected to launch in June, which will be open to any South African investor who wants to participate.
“We are always in the market. We are currently in the market with a private raise with Mesh,” Roux explained. He noted that raising institutional money in South Africa remains a significant challenge, pointing out that despite the country having the seventh largest pension fund scheme in the world, that capital tends to be extremely conservative in nature.
Mesh is a South African-founded decentralised financial markets platform that leverages blockchain technology to tokenise real-world assets. By removing traditional intermediaries like brokers and clearing houses, the platform accelerates transaction speeds while reducing costs. It also enables fractional ownership, breaking high-value assets into smaller, more affordable tokens that make investing accessible to retail participants.
Roux said the motivation behind the public offering was straightforward — inclusivity. “Private raises have certain minimum qualification hurdles, and a lot of investors approached us saying they can’t participate because they can’t come up with the R1-million minimum. So, we want to offer all South Africans a chance to invest,” he said.
Charge Expands Its Off-Grid EV Charging Network Across South Africa’s National Highways
Despite the difficulties with institutional fundraising, Charge has already secured R100-million through the Development Bank of South Africa (DBSA). That funding has been put to work. The company completed its first off-grid EV charging station near Wolmaransstad, which went live in December 2024.
Since then, Charge has broken ground on two additional facilities along the N3, with both sites expected to go live in June. A 50% offtake agreement with Zimi, a transport aggregator service provider, is already in place and is expected to drive usage and revenue as EV adoption gradually increases across the country.
Roux openly acknowledges that Charge’s business model is “enormously capital intensive upfront”, which is precisely why the private and public funding rounds are critical. The company’s long-term vision is ambitious — placing an off-grid, high-capacity EV charging station at 150km intervals along all of South Africa’s national highways.
On the unit economics side, Roux said the company needs just seven vehicles per day at each charging station to break even on an EBITDA basis. Based on current demand levels along the N3 corridor, both thresholds are expected to be met almost immediately after going live.
Roux did acknowledge a timing risk — the possibility that EV adoption could be slower than anticipated, keeping demand suppressed for longer. However, he was clear in his assessment: “This is a timing risk, but not a business risk.” The infrastructure, he argues, will be ready when the market catches up.
On the question of why Charge is bypassing the JSE entirely, Roux was candid. JSE listing requirements make an early-stage offering like this practically impossible — the process takes roughly 18 months and costs enough that it would delay capital deployment at a moment when the company needs to accelerate its network rollout, not slow it down.
Government red tape also poses a threat to the pace of expansion. Roux specifically flagged Sanral, the national roads agency, as a regulatory obstacle. Charge has formally objected to Sanral’s proposed amendments to its “rest and service facilities” policy, published in February. The policy would give Sanral authority over businesses operating within 60 metres of a national road or within 500 metres of an interchange.
Charge accused Sanral of overstepping its legal mandate, arguing that the move could stifle private investment in EV charging infrastructure under the guise of cashing in on roadside commercial activity. Beyond Sanral, Charge is also actively lobbying municipalities to adopt easier and more standardised permitting procedures to remove bureaucratic bottlenecks that slow down infrastructure deployment.
With a public token-based offering on the horizon, growing infrastructure on the ground, and a clear highway expansion strategy in place, Charge is positioning itself as a serious player in South Africa’s emerging EV ecosystem. Whether retail investor appetite matches the company’s bold ambitions remains to be seen — but the doors are about to open for ordinary South Africans to get in on the ground floor.