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Jinja, Uganda

+256 77 620312
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Youth Aid East Africa
Thankirchen 3
83623 Dietramszell

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Wheels of hope

By Richard Kisamadu


Water, food and medical care are the stuff of life, the fundamentals by which mankind survives . and they are often taken for granted. Not so in Uganda. Richard Kisamadu explains how bicycles can help these essential services reach rural people.

My country is Uganda, which Winston Churchill once called the 'The pearl of Africa'. It is a country that should be prosperous, with fertile soils and strong agricultural industries. And it is a beautiful country, from Lake Victoria, source of the Nile, to the Ruwenzori Mountains, one of the last homes of the mountain gorilla.

Yet the political history of Uganda has undermined this potential for prosperity. The killings and strife of the Idi Amin era have in recent years abated, and a measure of stability has now returned. But those meetings have left the people with a lack of infrastructure and a level of poverty which will take many years to remedy. The process of economic reform also has its victims: the International Monetary Fund 'structural adjustment program' for Uganda's economy means that there is essentially no government money being spent on social welfare and health. Alongside these difficulties, AIDS has become a serious problem, affecting, some estimate, approximately 25% of the population.

This is not to say that we are a country without hope: quite the opposite. Africa, and Uganda in particular, is a place where every resource is used to the full in the most ingenious way, where every good thing that happens is greeted with real happiness. And one of the best things that can happen to many Ugandan families is a bicycle.

In Uganda, as in much of the developing world, the bicycle is much in demand for transport of goods and people over short distances. It is an appropriate technology which can be maintained with local tools and local materials. A bicycle can provide an income directly: it can take a worker to a place of work which might otherwise be too far away, or it can be used to offer transport services.

Another important role for the bicycle is to bring produce to market. By allowing a farmer to carry his harvest in perhaps one load of up to 200 kg, and much faster and cheaper than by any other means, a bicycle can significantly improve the economic viability of small farm holdings. The farmer spends less time away from his farm, and the goods arrive fresher at the market. Women, in particular, benefit from the use of a bicycle. It usually falls to women to till the land, carry the harvest to market and to fetch drinking water. The loads . which are usually carried balanced on the head can be huge: 20 litres of water in a jerrycan weighs over 20kg. Carrying such loads from an early age, often for two hours or more each day, frequently results in serious spinal injuries. Yet on a bicycle, twice this amount can be safely and easily carried by using two jerrycans strapped to the rear rack.

Freeing women from many hours a day walking and carrying allows them to spend that time productively: in many cases, to earn a supplementary income. In Uganda's traditionally male dominated society, this is a powerful force for the emancipation of, and self.respect for, women. Earning an income empowers women to have a voice in decisions which affect them.

The bicycle, then, can be a powerful source for good. But there remains one problem. Many Ugandans, and especially women, simply cannot afford a bicycle many of them can not even afford a decent pair of shoes!

To break this deadlock, in 1991 the Bicycle Sponsorship Project and Workshop was set up in Jinja, on the northern shores of Lake Victoria, in partnership with the German organisation Youth Aid East Africa. The Project is a charitable, non.governmental organisation. The main aim is to provide bicycles to the most needy in society, especially women, as a contribution to eradication of poverty in our country.

It works like this: sponsorship is sought in Uganda and elsewhere, particularly through our partner organisation in Germany. When a donation is made, it allows the charity to buy a bicycle . the machines are usually bought in bulk from India, unassembled. The bicycles are then assembled in our workshop, near Jinja. This workshop also operates as a training centre, where, in particular, orphan children are taught the skills of cycle repair.

When the bicycle is ready, a recipient is nominated by one of the many local committees. To encourage direct contact between the donor and recipient, the recipient writes a letter to the donor explaining how they will use the bicycle.

So far, the programme has placed over 10.000 bicycles in Uganda, of which more than half have gone to women. It is impossible to keep up with demand, and this means that the committees who decide on the award of the bikes have many difficult decisions to make.

Our work has attracted the attention of many other charities and people working to eradicate poverty in Uganda, and we work closely with local health and community groups. But we also found that people from further away, and even in other countries in Africa, were trying to find out more about cycling. The result was FABIO: the First African Bicycle Information Office.

As well as disseminating awareness about the strengths and advantages of the bicycle, we are also looking for information. Uganda is like many African countries in that there is a total lack of statistical material about the use of the bicycle: no one knows just how many bicycles there are, how many miles they cover, and how they are used. We are also attempting to find out how long, on average, various sorts of bicycle withstand hard use in rural Uganda. We are also looking at affordable technologies to enhance the load.carrying capacity of cycles: robust trailers, load.carrying adaptations and the like.

Our main purpose is to raise the profile of cycling in Uganda and Africa, and to this purpose we organise cycle rallies and races, exhibitions, cycle maintenance seminars and road safety training for schools. At our headquarters we have a book and video library about cycling around the world, for any visitor to pop in and see a little of the world of bicycle culture which has reached out into our country.
last changed: 03.08.2007