The transformative potential of access to bikes in rural Zambia
Mobility is a constraint in rural Zambia
It is a constraint to the economic development of businesses and communities; it is a constraint to the education of children; and it is a constraint to access to health care.
Bikes are a solution to this constraint
A bike provides a fast alternative to travelling on foot, and a low cost alternative to running a motorised vehicle.
For education, this is a means for a child to reach school without the 6 mile walk. It improves the learning outcomes for that child as they can now have the rest they need to learn. And it keeps that child in school as they grow up since they now have more time at the start and end of a day to help in their home.
For health, this is a means community health care workers can reach more patients in one day, improving the health of a community and saving lives.
For economic development, this means that a small scale farmer can take a small amount of produce to a market each day, enabling a steady income from a quick and low cost journey.
In Palabana, Zambia, improved access to bikes is starting to transform the lives of the community
I met with Michael, a worker at the local dairy cooperative who collects milk each day from around 95 local farmers for the cooperative to store and sell. The farmers arrive on bicycles at 6am every morning with a 40 litre milk can tied above their back wheel. Some cycle as far as 12 miles to deliver. There is a two hour udder-to-cooperative cut off time for the milk to stay fresh enough to store and sell, adding time pressure to their journey. The farmers are paid on a monthly basis for the milk that they provide.
The milk cooperative have partnered with Buffalo Bicycles to provide sturdy and durable bicycles for the farmers. The bicycles are paid for over a 4 month period. Bicycles were enabling these farmers to sell milk in small quantities each day, earning them a steady income from only a couple of cows each without the expenditure required to run a vehicle to perform the journey. Michael introduced me to a number of farmers benefitting from this scheme, and there was an overwhelming appreciation for how these bicycles had benefitted the farmer’s lives, their family’s lives, and their income.
Buying a bike is expensive
For communities that can’t benefit from a scheme like that of Palabana’s milk cooperative, buying a durable and sturdy bike is unaffordable.
Talking to Michael and his colleagues reinforced the potential of bikes in solving mobility constraints, but also demonstrated the challenges of payment.
Our hypothesis
We believe that acquiring a bike through a Pay-As-You-Go model could overcome financial barriers and unlock the benefits that rural mobility provides, as well as providing a viable business model for an operator. The scheme that we are hoping to pilot in Zambia, delivered under the Frontier Technology Livestreaming programme could provide this transformation, for example through trialling different approaches to mobile payment that have been developed in the Zambian home solar industry in response to relatively low rates of mobile money usage.
Next time we’ll explore how we think such a model might work, building on lessons from other sectors that have achieved greater rural access.
