Bikes incl. wooden bikes help break poverty trap - many Africans spend 4 hrs/day walking, 1/4 income on transport

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Many Africans spend 4-hours per day walking, or 1/4 of their income paying for transport. A bike can save this every day, helping to break the poverty trap.

Wooden bikes are fairly common in Rwanda and they’re used pretty much daily for transportation of goods and people. Tom Ritchey got the bright idea that the bikes should be raced as well and now the annual Wooden Bike Classic draws curious tourists from around the world for a chance to watch (and even participate).

The goals of Project Rwanda are pretty simple and they all come back to cycling: building awareness for the country (through events like the Wooden Bike Classic), specialized bike design (real steel bikes for transporting coffee crops), bike distribution, and national pride (through support of the Rwandan National Cycling Team).

Jules Fils Otong Bassong, a spectacular, colorfully-looking and grotesque-voice cyclist, is set to tour Cameroon on his bicycle made out of some of the finest wooden materials nature has blessed Cameroon with. The 40-year old Bassong looks physically strong and upbeat about what he has embarked.

The father of 8, married to Rose, a sculptor-in-wood cum carpenter has a motivation for not only daring to go on a cycling tour of Cameroon on a wooden bicycle, there are also some reasons to have made a bicycle out of wood. “I want to highlight the Cameroonian that I’m. We can also do it in Cameroon and the African continent in general. We must not only go, admire, buy and take from elsewhere in the world. Let’s believe in what we can offer, produce from our own natural resources and others will also refer and come to us. Let it be said and known that it is a bicycle made in Cameroon, accompanied by a Cameroonian trademark, with the copyrights protected,” he commented.

As the beefy name would imply, the Big Boda is about as close to a beast of burden as a bike can get. Able to carry hundreds of pounds of cargo or two additional passengers, Big Boda was designed as a cheap solution to transport goods to and from market for entrepreneurs and consumers in developing countries. WorldBike designed Big Boda as a steel frame extension that attaches to any bicycle, making even the flimsiest frame into a durable and hefty transport option.

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Photos courtesy of colchester2020.com, Project Rwanda, africanews.com, reviews.mtbr.com, bikeclub.wordpress.com, and Project H Design

Original Source: SingleTracks, Africa News, and Project H Design