David Mozer

Africa: Transportation, Bicycles and Development

Homepage Manual Contents

published in AT-News
Dec. 1987

Excerpt from: Bicycle Reference Manual for Developing Countries. Edited by Barbara Gruehl Kipke, April 1991.

Strategies and tools are needed to move underdeveloped, largely impoverished Africa into a healthier, more productive, more prosperous and sustainable society.
In the process of development we must:

• minimize the destruction of the natural environment;
• reduce demand for foreign exchange;
• increase employment;
• increase business productivity;
• increase opportunities for trade;
• increase opportunities for private enterprise;
• increase access to health care;
• increase delivery of health care;
• reduce urban congestion;
• reduce urban air pollution;
• reduce urban noise pollution;
• reduce dependency on petroleum;
• minimize energy consumption;
• minimize mineral consumption;
• increase the delivery of extension services;
• increase personal time for self improvement or community involvement;
• increase access to education;
• increase general mobility.

Transportation ls not an end in itself but an important means to other ends: economic, educational, social and personal. Transportation is a link to opportunity. It links workers to places of employment, producers to users of goods and services, students to schools, patients to health care, and everyone to family and friends.

In the Third World, transportation alternatives are not as specialized or differentiated, hence efficient, as their counterparts in more lndustrialized countries. As a consequence, other efforts to improve economic and social conditions are less efficient and the breadth of opportunities is more restricted.

Limited access to transportation, whether it is physical or financial, restcicts access to the best possible life. Conversely, improved access to transportation, especially for the poor, can improve employment prospects, reduce the money and time spent getting to jobs and schools or hauling fuel and water, reduce the costs of Inputs for small-scale enterprise activities and increase access to markets for products. In short, constraints on mobility are constraints on development. Transportation must be considered as an element of development at the most basic level.

The vast majority of African people have severe limitations on their mobility. Entire days can be spent "in travel" either walking or waiting. World Bank surveys in Kenya show that more than 90% rural trips are on foot. Most transport needs can be characterized as the movement of small loads (10-150 kg. units) over relatively short distances (1-25 km.). On the farm 70% of the work involves transport (seed, fertilizer, water, produce). In the villages, the amounts of water and wood required daily for household use are 50 kg. and 30 kg. respectively. It is estimated that their collection occupies 3-6 hours per day. While a few measurements have been made, very llttle additional attention has been paid to these aspects of transportation.

In urban areas traffic jams of private automobile and taxis obscure the constraints on mobility that are being created by "development". Corridors where the urban labor force once walked and bicycled are now blocked by wide major arterials and high speed highways and fouled with sooty pollution-laden air. For the majority poor, the "option" is to pay for standing room on a noisy, crowded, hot, uncomfortable bus or not to travel. (Studies of urban labor markets have indicated that the labor force is quite sensitive to the transportation rate of secondary income earners, especially women.)

Although Africans have access to a variety of transportation means, access is not equal. Within the range of options the alternatives are "lumpy", and each has its limitations. Walking provides personal independence and flexibility, but is relatively slow and can be backbreaking under commonly carried loads. In cities it can be dangerous and dirty. The private automobile is the domain of the elite and is likely to remain very restcicted for some time to come. The collective taxis (mammy wagons, matatus, jeepneys, podepodes, etc.) buses and trains that serve some individual transportation needs in Africa are comparatively expensive. They are affordable to relatively few and are functional only if a person's travel needs are along a major corridor and the value of the goods being transported or the personal value of the trip is high. Though currently not statistically significant in the African transportation picture, bicycles provide a combination of independence, versatility, and economy. Theoretically, there are limitations on load size and range though in an economy where labor is relatively cheap compared to capital and energy, these are hard to define. (Faced with similar constraints the North Vietnamese army moved huge loads of supplies by bicycle over hundreds of miles of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, through dense forests and mountainous terrain in wet and dry weather.) The bicycle's primary limitation is speed. Bicycles lose their advantage on long trips in corridors served by taxis. Because bicycles can be combined easily with other modes of transportation, as multi-modal transportation, they can take advantage of the efficiences of other modes while retaining their own attributes of flexibility, self-sufficiency and independence.

Transportation infrastructure development has been directed toward the private automobile. The beneficiaries are a small economic elite. This private automobile-oriented infrastructure, in many cases, is being planned and constructed by large, frequently foreign, construction companies. The vehicles are being imported from foreign manufacturers and the fuel, tires and spare parts are usually the product of off-shore corporations. The paradox for labor-surplus cash-poor governments is that the construction and maintenance of these systems is capital intensive and the vehicles to fill them draw heavily on foreign exchange. Is there wisdom in pursuing a private automobile biased, capital intensive and undifferentiated transportation policy in economies abundant with labor?

Africa goods now move on the heads and backs of its people, primarily women. While the large development agencies and most governments claim to recognize the role that transportation plays in the quality of life, in Africa the mobility needs of the mass of people are not being addressed or served by official policy or action. Although highways are being built, very few resources are being directed at the most common transportation activities. Likewise, Africa's planners have not initiated a search for a broader range of transportation solutions. A campaign is needed to plan and develop an economical, efficient, environmentally sensitive and accessible transportation infrastructure that expands the options and serve the needs of the masses of people.

Bicycles are generally ignored by transportation planners in Africa today. With a few exceptions, the topics of bicycle transportation, peoplefriendly urban design, and decentralized transportation demand are not covered in university course work. Students feel no compulsions to research them. Most college educated Africans reject the prospect of riding bicycles themselves. Planners in African capitals confirm that they know that a large part of rural labor involves carrying things and that urban centers are becoming polluted and gridlocked. But they make little effort to address these issues or search for effective long term solutions.

In Ghana, bicyclists are forbidden to use a generally empty four lane, limited access, divided road with paved shoulders on the outskirts of Accra. It has an ideal design and geometrics for cyclist safety. More people walk this road each day than drive it. If policies were more progressive, would they be bicycilng? In the Western Region of Ghana, well graded, limited access two-lane roads with paved shoulders that are excellent for cycling are being built. Cyclists are allowed, but there is no effort to encourage them.

Bicycles have always been officially ignored or banned in Africa. Their exact history is not well recorded. An early version of the bicycle, called a hobby horse bicycle, was introduced to West Africa by the Portuguese in the mid-1800's. Examples of these bicycles can be seen on art pieces from Ghana and Nigeria that date back to the turn of the century.

Today, the most common bicycle in Africa is a onespeed bike, modeled on the 1940 Raleigh Roadster. These bikes are very serviceable; but, by contemporary standards, they suffer from poor quality tires, inefficient frame geometrics, and materials and workmanship that condemn them to wobbles and breakdowns. Their urban popularity probably peaked during the late 1950's and early 1960's, just about the tiome of independence for most African countries. Prior to independence, bicycles were extensively used in Nairobi. Pictures and art show the Kenyan police force riding bicycles with their rifles strapped on their backs. Those who can remember reminisce fondly of the days when it was safe to bicycle in Nairobi. Older men speak of when, "the streets were as full of bicycles as they are now of cars and the people could come and go as they pleased without walking in queues for a bus that is crowded, noisy and rough". Urban cycling today is primarily confined to shop delivery services.

Roadster style bicycles are still used to move tons of goods in rural areas. Everything, from eggs to chickens and goats, from lifesaving drugs to huge piles of fire wood, has been strapped onto a bicycle. In a few areas bicycles play a critical role in moving produce from farms to markets or collection points on main roads. The rural use of bicycles probably has not decreased as much as urban cycling since independence, and in selected areas it may be increasing. However, rural cycling never hit the same kind of peak, nor reached anything close to its potential.

A few African sport-cyclists with multi-speed racing bicycles, sponsor and participate In 100 km. road races and annual week-long stage races. Most of the participants in competitive cycling have to make considerable sacrifices to buy equipment and spare parts. They continue In the sport on pure dedication. These cyclists lament that they have very few opportunities for good coaching, recognition or world class competition. The latest development In bicycling is the of the all-terrain-bicycle (ATN) or mountain bike. ATB's were originally developed In California in the early 1980's by enthusiasts who liked off-road riding. These vehicles, compared to familiar ten speeds, have heftier frame tubing, stronger brakes, slightly different frame angles, smaller sturdier wheels, durable nylon corded tires, and usually upright handlebars. It has been discovered that these hybrid fat-tire bikes, equipped with multiple gears, are excellent commuting and utility bikes in cities. ATB's are now the fastest growing sector of the American bicycle market.

So far, the ATB has had only limited introduction into Africa. There has been considerable resistance to importing these by the French, Lebanese and Asians who control imports because they are not french or not "traditional". Initially, Westerners brought them in for their personal use. They are now being procured for extension workers on isolated development projects primarily in East Africa. In the future, if the major development agencies and donor institutions recognize the enormous potential of the bicycles to plug gaps in African transportation, the ATB should play an important role. Because of their tires and configuration, all-terrain-bikes are very easy for new riders to learn on, they have wide gear ranges and they are excellent for carrying loads. These features may be of special importance for projects incorporating bicycle transportation directed towards African women.

Expanded use for bicycles will create a need for racks, trailers, and attachments. This will provide opportunities for innovation and linkages for new cottage industries.

In industrial countries, many, if not most, urban transportation problems are related directly to the use of private automobiles. In developing countries, cities still have a chance to avoid the consequences of overdeveloping such inefficient systems of urban transportation. While nonmotorized trips tend to decline in importance with rising income, there is considerable variation between cities of comparable size and physical characteristics, indicating that other factors are also influential in transportation decisions and that effective interventions can be made to direct the outcome.

If non-motorized routes used by lower income groups are blocked by development, access to employment, education and health care are also blocked. Those who can afford to switch to motorized transport, those who cannot, pay a high price for development. In economic terms, most of the additional costs imposed by an additional vehicle using an urban roadway are external. Traditionally in economics, it is assumed that these costs are borne by other road users through increased operating costs and loss of time. Not generally measured are the costs of the non- motorized victims who have their route blocked. They must abondon the trip, make a considerable longer trip or pay to make the previously free trip. The private costs of operating a vehicle on commercial vehicles are more seriously affected by congestion than automobiles because of the additional labor costs, the lack of flexibility in timing and road choice, and losses from uncertainty about bus schedules and delivery times. Unless otherwise directed through progressive planning, Inefficient use of urban streets is the rule.

Modes of transportation can be more efficient collectively than individually. If there are diverse origins and/or diverse destinations with a significant common corridor, there are good prospects for efficient multi-modal transportation. Walking to and from bus routes, subways and trains is a familiar example of this. Bicycles used with rail transit and bus service can be especially advantageous because they expand the catchment areas at both ends of the corridor. In effect the population base served by the system is increased without additional capital expense. The specifics of bicycle use in multi-modal commuting depends on factors such as terrain, weather, time, personal stamina, routes of the motor vehicle and the user's imagination.

Benefits accrue to both the transit system and the bicyclist. When used as an element of "multi-modal transportation" a bicycle's range is extended. For example: a bicycle can give a user quick access to a taxi station. It can be carried on the taxi to later provide access beyond the taxi´s destination. Similarly, a bicyclist can efficiently make multiple stops along a route, which is very difficult outside of an urban area if local taxis are used. When the business is finished, the cyclist can put the bike on top of a bus for a quick return trip. Bicycles can also be combined wlth trains, planes and boats.

To the limited extent that bicycles have been introduced into the structure of transportation in Africa, women generally have been excluded from access to the benefits. (An isolated exception is the city of Maroua, Cameroon.) African tradition puts an inordinate burden on women as the primary haulers of fuel, water, food and babies, and guardians of health care for children. Yet tradition seems to have extended to them the least benefits from new technologies, including the wheel and labor saving transport as basic as the bicycle.

While traditional parameters for men have been allowed to evolve and incorporate bicycling, carts and a wide variety of other changes, the arbiters of culture have denied such dynamism and access to women. Widely in Africa, it seems to be "improper" for women to ride a bicycle. (In comparison cyclinq is commonplace for their Asian sisters and 55, of the cyclists in the United States are women.) Do the restrictions trace back to traditional values, Moslem culture or Victorian western etiquette? A more important question is: Can African women be liberated so that they can take the burdens from their backs, get more health care and education for their children and gain grearer control over their destinies? (Interestingly, the insistence by North American women on the right to ride bicycles and the innovations in fashion that they instigated in the 1880´s were among the first salvos in the women´s rights movement that eventually led to the women´s suffrage and a long 1ist of other legislative and legal victories.)

Inappropriate transportation development has not only a high social cost but also a heavy environmental cost. Most twentieth century transportation developments have enormously increased natural resource consumption, noise pollution, air pollution, stress and pollution-related health problems. Paving reduces the permeable surface area of earth. With less absorption, surface run-off is accelerated and less water reaches the aquifer, lowering or drying up the water table. Accelerated runoff leads to increased flooding, erosion, loss of topsoil, silting of rivers, loss of fish spawning areas and destruction of marine estuaries. Vegetation is lost in the clearling for roads, and then by the destruction of floods and erosion. If ground cover doesn't regenerate itself, the consequence can be loss of range land, destruction of wildlife habitat, less surface evaporation, hotter, longer, dustier dry seasons and other permanent changes in the climate and environment. These are already serious problems that do not need to be needlessly exacerbated by development strategies which use the existing infrastructure more efficiently and which minimize the demand for additional land for transportation.

The World Bank recently updated its urban transport policy statement; the word "bicycle" does not appear in the report. This summarizes the lack of official recognition of bicycle transportation. Despite the use of bicycles by several hundred million people around the world, despite the fact that the cost of energy has put most African countries deeply in debt, and despite the fact that pollution and congestion are strangling the major urban centres on the continent: it is business as usual for the policy makers. Of the billions of dollars for transportation and urban projects approved by the World Bank each year, no past projects have incorporated a bicycle transportation element as a major objective.

The past emphasis on a few massive transportation projects must be re-evaluated in view of the need for many small transport means for the masses. Policies and programs must be incorporated into the development institutions so that the supply of transportation serves the demand for transportation.

A planned and directed official policy is necessary to create an integrated transportation system for the masses. Government programs must integrate financial policy and social policy, in addition to land-use planning policy: Drivers will have to pay for the real and social costs of their cars. Tax and tariff schedules which reduce utilization of bicycles by treating them as toys for the wealthy, not basic transportation for the poor (such as Kenya's 100% levy on imported bicycles), need to be re-evaluated so that they reflect the full real and social benefit that nonmotorized transportation generates. Agricultural development credit policies need to consider transportation as elements of efficient production. (Falling this they only aggravate existing transportation bottlenecks when other inputs successfully raise output.) Women will have to be given access to transportation. And, everyone must be made to realize that the transportation choices they make affect both their personal health and the nation's health.

Diverse and appropriate alternative transportation technologies must be created to exploit the existing transportation infrastructure more efficiently and further the development needs on the continent. Special attention needs to be paid to the poor and particularly women, who have historically been underserved. An improved form of transportation policy for Africa must preserve independence and flexibility, reduce overall travel time (increase productivity) and incorporate a low capital-to-labour ratio. Such a conveyance is not hypothetical. It is the bicycle. In a highly congested central city, a bicycle provides more mobility than an automobile stuck in a traffic jam and requires much less space to service and park. Ironically, the World Bank publication on cities in developing countries concludes that, "Even in large cities increased attention should be given to non-motorized traffic". In rural areas, a bicycle upgrades transportation for almost everybody who is now walking.

With transportation, and specifically bicycle transportation in mind, consider the words of K.K.S. Dadzie, Director General for Development and International Co-operation of the United Nations.
"Development is the unfolding of people´s individual and social imagination in defining goals and inventing ways to approach them. Development is the continuing process of the liberation of people and societies. There is development when they are able to assert their autonomy and, in self-reliance, to carry out activities of interest to them".

Improving and expanding mobility options is a major element of development. Bicycles alone are not the answer, but they can be a means to other economic and social goals.

Bicycles can "put it all together". In numerous ways they offer an ideal intermediate technolgy. Without a large capital outlay they provide an opportunity to move more people and goods within the pre-existing infrastructure while generating additional income and amortizing their own cost.

The hope for the bicycles in Africa is that they will further "unfold people´s individual imagination in defining and inventing ways to approach" their development and enable people to assert their personal and social autonomy and self reliance.

David Mozer is an accomplished bicyclist, bicycle activist, African scholar, collector of African art and educator. David has been bicycle touring in Africa, Europe and Inner Mongolia.
David's first trip to Africa was in 1975 as a Peace Corps Volunteer to Liberia. During the next two years he taught math and science and hiked hundreds of miles visiting isolated village schools directing an education extension program. This was followed by eight more months and thousands of miles of travel in the rest of West Africa. After completing a Masters Degree, David returned to Liberia on contract with the American Embassy. Again he travelled widely administering a grant program for village development and reporting on economic conditions. As a sidelight, he has collected hundreds of pieces of African art, a stack of material on traditional culture and folklore and broad knowledge of conditions in Africa. David has appeared on National Pubilc Radio, the Voice of America and the Voice of Kenya discussing Africa.
Nowaydays he is working for the International Bicycle Fund (IBF), a non-governmental, nonprofit, tax-exempt organization promoting bicycle transportation, economic development, international understanding and safety education.