How is life in Africa’s megacities?
It’s just a snapshot: The Boda Boda Book provides insights into the daily routines of a developing middle class. — A photo documentary about the colorful world of motorcycle taxis and their economic impact.
There are more than 50 megacities with more than a million inhabitants on the African continent (in Europe, the count is only 30). Cities, where people go to work, live in apartments and ask themselves how to get from one place to the other as quick as possible. Cities, where you don’t go far with two dollars per day.
In Europe or America, we don’t have a very specific imagination of life in African cities. Pictures of shanties, dirt and poverty dominate. These pictures are part of reality — a reality, where you find well-to-do upperclasses as well as emergent middle classes.
How is life in a megacity, where not much of what we are used to in Europe or America, works?
In Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, Boda Bodas, the motorcycle taxis, play an indispensable role in the daily lives of most inhabitants. In a city with 1,5 million inhabitants, there are only two bus lines, overcrowded shared taxis and some long distance coaches, that only operate once a day.
The daily way to work, school or to the date on the evening is quite a challenge. Urban mass transit is also what the World Bank identifies as one of the major obstacles to economic development in African cities. In rapidly growing cities, public transportation — if it exists — is very expensive, private cares are unattainable for most. That restricts people even in their job choices to a radius of four to six kilometers from their homes — to distances, that can be travelled on foot.
Boda Bodas help to solve this problem. They take passengers and goods through traffic jams. Outside of the cities, they reach far flung villages that are hardly connected through roads. And they create some new problems: even more crowded streets and many accidents are the post important ones.
That’s why city governments think more and more about restricting this business. The riders stand up for their defense — and get support from the people, for whom their services are essential.
The Boda Boda Book documents Uganda’s motorcycle business and thus a section of public life in Uganda in challenging times: unorganized biker gangs turn in to small business entrepreneurs that support the country’s economy. Riders invest in helmets, trainings and laborious decorations of their bikes to stand out from other riders in the market. Occasional jobs for soldiers of fortune turn into a business that nurtures up to two million people according to research from Kampala University (that’s five percent of Uganda’s population).
The Boda Boda Book creates a snaphot of transforming business, of an emerging middle class as an example for daily routines on the African continent. It tells stories of small entrepreneurs in an emerging business and it shows stunning pictures of African motorcycle culture.
At first glance, Boda Bodas are gangs lingering on the roadside looking for quick business with tourists. At closer inspection, their stories are stories of development, growth, independence, social and economic emancipation and daily routine in one of the many megacities on the African continent …
We are working on the Boda Boda Book and we will kick off our crowdfunding camapaign in the last week of September. Until then, read on:
Website: bodaboda.org
Facebook: @bodabodabook
instagram: @bodabodabook
